University of Hawai‘i Press will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday from November 26–29 and reopen on Monday, November 30. Please plan your book orders accordingly.
Author: stephchun
Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics Now Available in Paperback
Although gossip is disapproved of across the world’s societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society and culture cannot be overestimated. In particular, gossip is central to the enactment of politics: through it people transform difference into inequality and enact or challenge power structures. Based on the author’s intimate ethnographic knowledge of Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu, Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics, by Niko Besnier, uses an analysis of gossip as political action to develop a holistic understanding of a number of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality, emotion, locality, belief, and gender. It brings together two methodological traditions—the microscopic analysis of unelicited interaction and the macroscopic interpretation of social practice—that are rarely wedded successfully.
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3357-2 / $25.00 (PAPER)
Tour of Duty Now Available in Paperback
“[Constantine] Vaporis has written a magnificent book on the sankai kotai, or alternate attendance system. . . . Long considered the central political control mechanism of the Tokugawa period, the system has received surprisingly little scholarly attention until now. Filling a major gap in the understanding of Japanese history, the author provides a detailed account of the mechanics of the system and demands placed on daimyo and retainers on tours of duty in Edo. Exploiting the latest archaeological and archival sources, Vaporis makes clear the economic burden of the system on the daimyo, as well as its role as an engine of cultural, intellectual, and material exchange, from the center in Edo and between regions. The author also provides intimate details of the lives of samurai, both on the road to and from Edo and while serving their time in Edo. For all interested in early modern history. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3470-8 / $23.00 (PAPER)
New Edition of Integrated Korean Beginning 1
This is a thoroughly revised edition of Integrated Korean: Beginning 1, the first volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. In response to comments from hundreds of students and instructors of the first edition, the new edition features a more attractive two-color design with all new photos and drawings and an additional lesson and vocabulary exercises. Lessons are now organized into two main sections, each containing a conversational text (with its own vocabulary list) and a reading passage. The accompanying workbook, newly written, provides students with extensive skill-using activities based on the skills learned in the main text.
Integrated Korean series
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3440-1 / $28.00 (PAPER)
Audio files for both the textbook and workbook may be downloaded in RealAudio or MP3 format at http://www.kleartextbook.com.
The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition
Li Zezhou (b. 1930) has been an influential thinker in China since the 1950s. Before moving to the U.S. in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Li published works on Kant and traditional and contemporary Chinese philosophy. The present volume, a translation of his Huaxia meixue (1989), is considered among Li’s most significant works. Apart from its value as an introduction to the philosophy of one of contemporary China’s foremost intellectuals, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition fills an important gap in the literature of Chinese aesthetics in English. It presents Li’s synthesis of the entire trajectory of Chinese aesthetic thought, from ancient times to the early modern period, incorporating pre-Confucian and Confucian ideas, Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and the influence of Western philosophy during the late-imperial period. As one of China’s As one of China’s major contemporary philosophers and preeminent authority on Kant, Li is uniquely positioned to observe this trajectory and make it intelligible to today’s readers.
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3307-7 / $50.00 (CLOTH)
Jon Shirota Reading and Talk at Kapiolani Community College
Ethics and the State in Meiji Japan
Making a Moral Society: Ethics and the State in Meiji Japan, an innovative study of ethics in Meiji Japan (1868–1912), explores the intense struggle to define a common morality for the emerging nation-state.
“Richard Reitan argues that modern Japanese ethics—and particularly the creation of an ethics of a ‘Japanese spirit’ or ‘Japanese national character’—arose in the context of the Meiji movement for civilization, as Japan attempted to become more like Europe in order to recover its sovereignty and equality with western states. His is a thoughtful and original contribution to the historiography of Japan and valuable account of the rise of ‘national morality.’ The book demonstrates an admirable command of the material, great clarity with which Japanese concepts are explained, and an argument of nuance and subtlety. Making a Moral Society will not only be of interest to scholars of Japanese history, religion, and culture, and scholars of ethics, nationalism, and modernization generally, but will also be useful in graduate seminars and advanced undergraduate courses.” —Douglas Howland, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3294-0 / $48.00 (CLOTH)
Short Stories by Modern Korean Women Writers
Available for the first time in English, the ten short stories by modern Korean women collected in Questioning Minds: Short Stories by Modern Korean Women, translated by Yung-Hee Kim, touch in one way or another on issues related to gender and kinship politics. All of the protagonists are women who face personal crises or defining moments in their lives as gender-marked beings in a Confucian, patriarchal Korean society. Their personal dreams and values have been compromised by gender expectations or their own illusions about female existence. They are compelled to ask themselves “Who am I?” “Where am I going?” “What are my choices?” Each story bears colorful and compelling testimony to the life of the heroine. Some of the stories celebrate the central character’s breakaway from the patriarchal order; others expose sexual inequality and highlight the struggle for personal autonomy and dignity. Still others reveal the abrupt awakening to mid-life crises and the seasoned wisdom that comes with accepting the limits of old age.
Hawai‘i Studies on Korea
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3409-8 / $24.00 (PAPER)
More November Events!
Tuesday, November 10, 11:30-1:00, UH-Manoa Bookstore
UH Bookstore will host a multi-author book signing event, which will include UH Press authors Carlos Andrade (Ha‘ena), Ann Shea Bayer (Going Against the Grain), James Brandon (Kabuki’s Forgotten War), and Michi Kodama-Nishimoto, Warren Nishimoto, and Cynthia Oshiro (Talking Hawai‘i’s Story).
Wednesday, November 11, 2:00-3:30, Hawai‘i Okinawa Center
Readings from Uchinanchu: A History of Okinawans in Hawaii. Light refreshments will be served, free parking available. This event is co-sponsored by the Hawai‘i United Okinawa Association and UH’s Center for Oral History, Center for Okinawan Studies, and Center for Japanese Studies. For more information, contact the Center for Oral History (phone: 956-6165; email: kodamani@hawaii.edu).
Saturday, November 14, 9:00-12 noon, Oahu Urban Garden Center
“Second Saturday at the Garden” will feature landscape architect and horticultural expert Paul Weissich, who will answer questions and sign copies of Small Trees for the Tropical Landscape (also available for purchase).
And don’t forget… also this month:
—UH Press authors signing at the Daughters of Hawai‘i Annual Book Day
—book launch for Chinese Pioneer Families of Maui, Molokai, and Lanai
—talks, signings, and performances celebrating novelist and playwright Jon Shirota
UH Press Now Distributing Shanghai Press
University of Hawai`i Press is pleased to announce it is now a North American distributor for Shanghai Press and Publishing Development Company, a mainland China publisher of fine books in English for general readers. Highlights include:
–full-color photo essays on Tibet, the Great Wall, the Yangtze, Shaoxing (hometown of Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature), the legendary 20th-century Beijing opera star Mei Lanfang;
–full-color guides to Shanghai’s colonial Western architecture, Qufu (Confucius’ birthplace), China’s most famous cultural and natural sites;
–full-color introductions to Chinese civilization, tea, popular customs, classical furniture and home decor, architecture, calligraphy, brush painting, Beijing opera;
–the Cultural China Chinese-English Reader series, featuring abridged, bilingual editions of Chinese fiction and nonfiction for language students;
–colorful children’s books illustrating Chinese fables and idioms.
For a complete list of titles, please click here.
Chinese Avant-garde Art and Independent Cinema
Children of Marx and Coca-Cola: Chinese Avant-garde Art and Independent Cinema, by Xiaping Lin, affords a deep study of Chinese avant-garde art and independent cinema from the mid-1990s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Informed by the author’s experience in Beijing and New York—global cities with extensive access to an emergent transnational Chinese visual culture—this work situates selected artworks and films in the context of Chinese nationalism and post-socialism and against the background of the capitalist globalization that has so radically affected contemporary China. It juxtaposes and compares artists and independent filmmakers from a number of intertwined perspectives, particularly in their shared avant-garde postures and perceptions.
This book is the second volume in the Critical Interventions series.
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3336-7 / $47.00 (CLOTH)
Koreo-Japonica
The Japonic (Japanese and Ryukyuan) portmanteau language family and the Korean language have long been considered isolates on the fringe of northeast Asia. Although in the last fifty years many specialists in Japonic and Korean historical linguistics have voiced their support for a genetic relationship between the two, this concept has not been endorsed by general historical linguists and no significant attempts have been made to advance beyond the status quo. Alexander Vovin, a longtime advocate of the genetic relationship view, engaged in a reanalysis of the known data in the hope of finding evidence in support of this position. In the process of his work, however, he became convinced that the multiple similarities between Japonic and Korean are the result of several centuries of contact and do not descend from a hypothetical common ancestor.
Hawai‘i Studies on Korea
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3278-0 / $55.00 (CLOTH)
