Author: stephchun

Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Hanoi

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Luc XiWhat does it mean when a city of 180,000 people has more than 5,000 women working as prostitutes? This question frames Vu Trong Phung’s 1937 classic reportage Luc Xi. In the late 1930s, Hanoi had a burgeoning commercial sex industry that involved thousands of people and hundreds of businesses. It was the center of the city’s nightlife and the source of suffering, violence, exploitation, and a venereal disease epidemic. For Phung, a popular writer and intellectual, it also raised disturbing questions about the state of Vietnamese society and culture and whether his country really was “progressing” under French colonial rule. Translator Shaun Kingsley Malarney’s thoughtful and multifaceted introduction provides historical background on colonialism, prostitution, and venereal disease in Vietnam and discusses reportage as a literary genre, political tool, and historical source. A fully annotated translation of Luc Xi follows, in which Phung takes readers into the heart of colonial Hanoi’s sex industry, portraying its female workers, the officials who attempted to regulate it, the doctors who treated its victims, and the secretive medical facility known as the Nha Luc Xi (“The Dispensary”), which examined prostitutes for venereal diseases and held them for treatment.

“Among the most celebrated works of Vietnamese non-fiction reportage, Vu Trọng Phụng’s Luc Xi illuminates the culture of prostitution and the politics of venereal disease prevention in colonial Hanoi. Shaun Malarney’s translation of the text is both elegant and accurate and his detailed introduction provides useful historical context while advancing an important argument about social imbalances embedded within the institutions of colonial medicine. This is an exceptional work of historical scholarship.” —Peter Zinoman, University of California, Berkeley

Southeast Asia: Politics Meaning and Memory
November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3467-8 / $45.00 (CLOTH)

Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil Society

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Modern Buddhist ConjuncturesFor centuries, Burmese have looked to the authority of their religious tradition, Theravada Buddhism, to negotiate social and political hierarchies. Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil Society, by Juliane Schober, examines those moments in the modern history of this Southeast Asian country when religion, culture, and politics converge to chart new directions. Arguing against Max Weber’s characterization of Buddhism as other-worldly and divorced from politics, this study shows that Buddhist practice necessitates public validation within an economy of merit in which moral action earns future rewards. The intervention of colonial modernity in traditional Burmese Buddhist worldviews has created conjunctures at which public concerns critical to the nation’s future are reinterpreted in light of a Buddhist paradigm of power.

“Juliane Schober argues that Buddhist conceptions and practices are inevitably tied to conceptions of political power in social, economic, and political realms. In doing so she challenges as obsolete inherited categories of knowledge that define a normative view of Theravada Buddhism as otherworldly, nonpolitical, nonviolent, and ‘protestantized.’ Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar is essential reading for an understanding of the genealogies of hegemony and subjugation, patronage and resistance, and power and loss in contemporary Myanmar, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of Buddhism in Southeast Asia.” —Donald Swearer, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3382-4 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Politics and Public Service in Hawaii

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Backstage in a BureaucracyWhat is it like to be in charge of a large public bureaucracy? Top-level state executives set agendas, formulate policies, turn legislative mandates into actions, oversee staff operations, develop and manage budgets, and generally influence (for better or worse) agency performance. In Backstage in a Bureaucracy: Politics and Public Service, Susan Chandler and Dick Pratt provide a first-hand day-to-day look at running a large bureaucracy. For eight years Chandler was the director of the Hawai‘i State Department of Human Services, where she managed more than 2,000 employees. Dick Pratt, a public administration professor, has advised a variety of public and private organizations in Hawai’i, the Pacific, and Asia.

“Chandler and Pratt capture with clarity, insight, and good humor the challenges and complexities of leadership in the government sector. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand or contribute through public service, and a cathartic experience for anyone who’s been there.” —Susan Doyle, president, Aloha United Way, and former state deputy director of commerce and consumer affairs

January 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3501-9 / $15.00 (PAPER)

Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics Honored

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GossipGossip and the Everyday Production of Politics, by Niko Besnier, received an honorable mention for this year’s Edward Sapir Prize. The prize was established by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology in 2001 and is awarded in alternate years to a book that makes the most significant contribution to the understanding of language in society or the ways in which language mediates historical or contemporary sociocultural processes.

Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shojo Manga

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Straight from the HeartManga is the backbone of Japanese popular culture, influencing everything from television, movies, and video games to novels, art, and theater. Shojo manga (girls’ comics) has been seminal to the genre as a whole and especially formative for Japanese girls’ culture throughout the postwar era. In Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shojo Manga, Jennifer S. Prough examines the shojo manga industry as a site of cultural storytelling, illuminating the ways that issues of mass media, gender, production, and consumption are involved in the process of creating shojo manga.

“Straight from the Heart is a wonderful book, one that is timely and important in terms of academic interest in the anthropology of popular culture. Its originality lies in the author’s solid ethnographic approach to the topic and in her detailed description of the interactions between editors, artists, and consumers. Certainly it is time for such an in-depth English-language study of shojo manga. Prough’s work makes an important contribution to a number of fields—anthropology, Japan studies, gender/women’s studies, and cultural studies—and the writing style, organization, and length all make it an extremely attractive book for undergraduate course adoption.” —Laura Miller, Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Missouri-St. Louis

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3528-6 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Green Spaces in Modern Japan

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ParkscapesJapan today protects one-seventh of its land surface in parks, which are visited by well over a billion people each year. Parkscapes: Green Spaces in Modern Japan, by Thomas R. H. Havens, analyzes the origins, development, and distinctive features of these public spaces. Havens shows how revolutionary officials in the 1870s seized private properties and converted them into public parks for educating and managing citizens in the new emperor-sanctioned state. Rebuilding Tokyo and Yokohama after the earthquake and fires of 1923 spurred the spread of urban parklands both in the capital and other cities. According to Havens, the growth of suburbs, the national mobilization of World War II, and the post-1945 American occupation helped speed the creation of more urban parks, setting the stage for vast increases in public green spaces during Japan’s golden age of affluence from the 1960s through the 1980s.

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3477-7 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

The Life and Times of Shimazaki Toson

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The Kiso RoadWilliam E. Naff, the distinguished scholar of Japanese literature widely known and highly regarded for his eloquent translations of the writings of Shimazaki Toson (1872–1943), spent the last years of his life writing a full-length biography of Toson. Virtually completed at the time of his death, The Kiso Road: The Life and Times of Shimazaki Toson provides a rich and colorful account of this canonic novelist who, along with Natsume Soseki and Mori Ogai, formed the triumvirate of writers regarded as giants in Meiji Japan, all three of whom helped establish the parameters of modern Japanese literature. Professor Naff’s biography skillfully places Toson in the context of his times and discusses every aspect of his career and personal life, as well as introducing in detail a number of his important but as yet untranslated works.

“The Kiso Road sets Toson’s long and eventful life in the context of its historical and cultural moment, providing a depth of coverage that cannot be matched by any of the existing English-language books on Toson. As Naff argues, Toson is simultaneously an extraordinary and an ordinary figure, and tracing through his career provides a useful window onto an entire era of Japanese history. This is an important and authoritative book, an original contribution, and the culmination of a life’s work.” —Michael Bourdaghs, University of Chicago

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3218-6 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Also available: William Naff’s award-winning translation of Toson’s classic novel of Meiji Japan, Before the Dawn

Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs

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Relative HistoriesRelative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs, by Rocio G. Davis, focuses on the Asian American memoir that specifically recounts the story of at least three generations of the same family. This form of auto/biography concentrates as much on other members of one’s family as on oneself, generally collapses the boundaries conventionally established between biography and autobiography, and in many cases—as Davis proposes for the auto/biographies of ethnic writers—crosses the frontier into history, promoting collective memory. Davis centers on how Asian American family memoirs expand the limits and function of life writing by reclaiming history and promoting community cohesion. She argues that identity is shaped by not only the stories we have been told, but also the stories we tell, making these narratives important examples of the ways we remember our family’s past and tell our community’s story.

“Relative Histories is original in several key ways: the emphasis upon very contemporary, under-explored narratives; the use of a wide range of critical approaches to the study of life writing; the blending of film and literature and the discussion of the use of photography. The study thus would not only make a new contribution to Asian American studies but would intervene in debates on life writing, film, literature, and photography in a more general manner.” —Helena Grice, Aberystwyth University

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3458-6 / $39.00 (CLOTH)

Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF Wins Yim Suk Jay Prize

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Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMFShamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion, by Laurel Kendall, has been awarded the Yim Suk Jay Prize.

The prize is awarded by the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology to a Korean or foreign scholar who has contributed to the development of Korean cultural anthropology by authoring a book-length scholarly work of high quality and originality.

Robert Pringle at East-West Center Event in DC

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Pringle in DCLast month Robert Pringle, author of Understanding Islam in Indonesia: Politics and Diversity, spoke about his book at an East-West Center event in Washington, D.C. Understanding Islam seeks to clearly outline the role of Islam in Indonesia, covering the history of Islam’s arrival, its development over time, as well as the role it plays in the politics of the growing democracy. Dr. Pringle was joined by Michael H. Anderson (shown on the right in the photo), a recently retired senior foreign service officer and an Asia public diplomacy specialist.

Waste, Environment, Japan

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Troubled NaturesWhat does “environment” really mean in the complex, non-Western milieu of present-day Tokyo? How can anthropology contribute to the technical discussions and quantitative measures typically found in environmental studies? Author Peter Wynn Kirby explores these questions through a deep cultural analysis of waste in contemporary Japan. His parameters are intentionally broad—encompassing ideas of “nature,” attitudes toward hygiene, notions of health and illness, problems with vermin and toxic waste, processes of social exclusion, and reproductive threats. Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japan concludes that how surroundings are conceived, invoked, and enacted is subjective, highly contextual, and under continual negotiation—with suggestive implications for anthropology, social science, and environmental studies generally.

“Kirby’s long-term ethnographic study takes the unlikely-sounding subject of waste (in all its forms) to a fascinating depth, demonstrating the sociocultural complexity of environmental issues, and the crucial contribution that an anthropological study such as this can make to the broader field. Here is a novel way to understand the changing nature of contemporary Japan, through insights into the lives of residents of its enormous capital city and their struggle to eliminate environmental pollution and maintain the purity on which Japan has long prided itself.” —Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University

November 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3428-9 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Select UH Press Titles Now on Kindle

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UH Press is pleased to announce 9 of its titles are now available for Kindle readers. See below plus Kindle books by the “Beaches of Hawai‘i” series’ John R. K. Clark and Stuart M. Ball, Jr., author of our popular hiking guides.

The Value of Hawaii
The Value of Hawai‘i: Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future
edited by Craig Howes and Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio
How did we get here? Three-and-a-half-day school weeks. Prisoners farmed out to the mainland. Tent camps for the migratory homeless. A blinkered dependence on tourism and the military for virtually all economic activity. The steady degradation of already degraded land. Contempt for anyone employed in education, health, and social service. An almost theological belief in the evil of taxes. At a time when new leaders will be elected, and new solutions need to be found, the contributors to The Value of Hawai‘i outline the causes of our current state and offer points of departure for a Hawai‘i-wide debate on our future.

Bright Triumphs from Dark Hours
Bright Triumphs From Dark Hours: Turning Adversity into Success
by David Heenan
Bright Triumphs From Dark Hours examines the lives of ten extraordinary people who overcame great adversity in their personal or professional lives by applying winning strategies that guided them out of the darkness of near-defeat and into the light of success.

“David Heenan’s fascinating stories of overcoming adversity make Bright Triumphs both a timely and inspiring read.” —Spencer Johnson, M.D., New York Times best-selling author of Who Moved My Cheese? and Peaks and Valleys

“This is an inspiring book. All of us, if we honestly look into our hearts, we know that there have been moments when we have failed. Failed ourselves, failed our family, and failed our communities. This book tells you that failure should not be the cause and reason for your demise.” —U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye

Melal
Melal: A Novel of the Pacific
by Robert Barclay

“An absorbing, original read.” —Honolulu Weekly

“A first novel that left me dazzled. . . . All the characters—the Marshallese, the members of their spirit world, and even the Americans—are well developed and deeply, sensitively drawn.” —Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

“Barclay is a first-time novelist who simply got it right. . . . Melal is a powerful and at times heart-wrenching novel that should appeal to a wide range of readers interested in the region today.” —The Contemporary Pacific

“It is wonderful to have a novel of the Pacific, of people firmly rooted in the past and present of the great ocean, its atolls, islands, homes, and spiritual homelands. This is a wrenching story of people—voiceless, powerless—as they attempt to survive the horrors of nuclear testing, relocation, Western arrogance and domination. It is a good story with robust characters—some real and contemporary, others mythical and ancient—and an important book.” —Patricia Grace

“What separates this novel from others, even highly respected ones, is its extraordinary descriptive mastery. . . . This precise and vivid evocation of experience is what writing has been about from the beginning. In all respects, this is a superb book.” —Ian MacMillan

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