Category: Southeast Asia

The State in Myanmar

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The State in Myanmar, by Robert H. Taylor, attempts to draw the complex history of state-making and state perpetuation in Myanmar in one volume. The social and economic forces, as well as international and domestic issues, which have made Myanmar one of the poorest and least understood Asian countries, are discussed. The efforts of Myanmar’s kings, British colonial officials, nationalist politicians, socialist ideologues, and army generals to preserve the state in Myanmar is a history worth attempting to understand on its own terms.

“A substantive addition to [Taylor’s] 1987 version of The State of Burma, [this work] continues the story of the evolution and development of the modern Burmese state to 2008. It is clearly one of the best books (if not the best) published in the English language on the modern state in Myanmar, particularly in terms of evidence, conceptualization, methodology, analysis, and perspective. As such, it has few, if any, equals. In large part, it is because the author is an unassuming and sensitive scholar of the country’s modern institutions for nearly half a century, grounded by frequent and long-term stays in the country that have provided first-hand and unique access to data, individuals, and events. In the latter sense too, the author has few equals. Thus, both his professional and personal experiences have given him the special wherewithal for producing such a work. For scholars and other educated readers genuinely interested in, and concerned about, the affairs and people of Myanmar, this book is required reading.” —Michael Aung-Thwin, University of Hawai‘i

February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3362-6 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Socially Engaged Buddhism

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Socially Engaged Buddhism, is an introduction to the contemporary movement of Buddhists, East and West, who actively engage with the problems of the world—social, political, economic, and environmental—on the basis of Buddhist ideas, values, and spirituality. Sallie B. King, one of North America’s foremost experts on the subject, identifies in accessible language the philosophical and ethical thinking behind the movement and examines how key principles such as karma, the Four Noble Truths, interdependence, nonharmfulness, and nonjudgmentalism relate to social engagement.

Dimensions of Asian Spirituality
February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3351-0 / $16.00 (PAPER)

Chinese Intergenerational Relations in Modern Singapore

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Since gaining independence in 1965, Singapore has become the most trade-intensive economy in the world and the richest country in Southeast Asia. This transformation has been accompanied by the emergence of a deep generational divide. More complex than simple disparities of education or changes in income and consumption patterns, this growing gulf encompasses language, religion, and social memory. The Binding Tie: Chinese Intergenerational Relations in Modern Singapore, by Kristina Göransson, explores how expectations and obligations between generations are being challenged, reworked, and reaffirmed in the face of far-reaching societal change.

Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory
January 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3352-7 / $26.00 (PAPER)

Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2008 Announced

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Each year Choice Magazine, the official publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, compiles a distinguished list of Outstanding Academic Titles. The following three UH Press books were recognized for 2008. A complete list of titles will be available in Choice’s January 2009 issue.

Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China
by Grace S. Fong

“Takes the discussion in an exciting new direction. . . . The greatest contributions of this book . . . are the introductions of various women writers and the translations into English of their compositions, many discovered by the author and not heretofore translated into English. . . . Essential.” —Choice (November 2008)

Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s by Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano

“Since English-language scholars have rarely dealt with Japanese film of the 1920s and 1930s, outside the work of canonical directiors like Kenji Mizoguchi, this study is welcome. . . . Wada-Marciano offers groundbreaking analyses of such genres as the ‘middle-class’ film and the woman’s film. A final chapter provides a rich study of the links between national identity, modernity, and the signature style of Shochiku film studio. The end result is sure to stand as a definitive work for years to come. Essential.” —Choice (October 2008)

The Sociology of Southeast Asia: Transformations in a Developing Region by Victor T. King

“Victor King has produced a lucid, comprehensive, and challenging analysis of the state-of-the-art of Southeast Asian sociology. The book is not only an excellent textbook for courses on Southeast Asia or development sociology, but also ‘required reading’ for all social scientists embarking on research on the area. I am certain that it will become a long-lasting addition to the standard literature on Asia.” —Hans-Dieter Evers, University of Bonn

Negotiating Urban Space in Malaysia

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Arguably Southeast Asia’s most spectacular city, Kuala Lumpur—widely known as KL—has just celebrated fifty years as the national capital of Malaysia. But KL now has a very different twin in Putrajaya, the country’s new administrative capital. Where KL is a diverse, cosmopolitan, multiracial metropolis, Putrajaya fulfills an elitest vision of a Malay-Muslim utopia. KL’s multicultural richness is reflected in the brilliance and diversity of its architecture and urban spaces; Putrajaya, by contrast, is an architectural homage to an imagined Middle East. The “purity” of Putrajaya throws the cosmopolitan diversity of Kuala Lumpur into sharp relief, and the tension between the two places reflects the rifts that run through Malaysian society. In Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya: Negotiating Urban Space in Malaysia, Ross King considers what form of metropolis the Kuala Lumpur-Putrajaya region might foreshadow, arguing that signs of this future city are to be sought in the collision points between the utopian dreams of imagined futures and the reality of purposely forgotten pasts.

ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series
November 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3318-3 / $36.00 (PAPER)

Migration and Tourism in the Indonesian Borderlands

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Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, converges with inexpensive land and labor. Indonesian female migrants dominate the island’s economic landscape both as factory workers and as prostitutes servicing working class tourists from Singapore. Indonesians also move across the border in search of work in Malaysia and Singapore as plantation and construction workers or maids. Export processing zones such as Batam are both celebrated and vilified in contemporary debates on economic globalization. The Anxieties of Mobility: Migration and Tourism in the Indonesian Borderlands, by Johan A. Lindquist, moves beyond these dichotomies to explore the experiences of migrants and tourists who pass through Batam. Johan Lindquist’s extensive fieldwork allows him to portray globalization in terms of relationships that bind individuals together over long distances rather than as a series of impersonal economic transactions.

“A fine-grained picture of working class Indonesians and Singaporeans who travel in opposite directions in pursuit of jobs, money, sex, drugs, legitimacy, and bright lights. They cross multiple barriers—national, urban, moral, gender, and religious—in order to attain some measure of individual success in the globalizing economies that link Singapore’s development with Indonesia’s supply of cheap migrant workers. The ethnography is rich and fascinating, and it captures a complex shifting world with delicacy, grace, and clarity.” —Aihwa Ong, University of California, Berkeley

October 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3315-2 / $22.00 (PAPER)

The Politics of Islamic Education in Southeast Asia

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When students from a Muslim boarding school were convicted for the 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali, Islamic schools in Southeast Asia became the focus of intense international scrutiny. Some analysts have warned that these schools are being turned into platforms for violent jihadism. Making Modern Muslims: The Politics of Islamic Education in Southeast Asia, edited by Robert W. Hefner, is the first book to look comparatively at Islamic education and politics in Southeast Asia. Based on a two-year research project by leading scholars of Southeast Asian Islam, the book examines Islamic schooling in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and the southern Philippines. The studies demonstrate that the great majority of schools have nothing to do with violence but are undergoing changes that have far-reaching implications for democracy, gender relations, pluralism, and citizenship.

“This is a timely, well-conceived, and extremely well-crafted volume that addresses topics of the utmost importance in today’s increasingly globalized—and dangerously fraught—world. It will appeal to a wide range of scholars with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and to general readers with vastly different levels of knowledge about the peoples and cultures of modern Asia and the culture and politics of contemporary Islam.” —Michael G. Peletz, Emory University

October 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3316-9 / $24.00 (PAPER)

The Islamization of Law in Modern Indonesia

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Challenging the Secular State: The Islamization of Law in Modern Indonesia, by Arskal Salim, examines Muslim efforts to incorporate shari’a (religious law) into modern Indonesia’s legal system from the time of independence in 1945 to the present. The author argues that attempts to formally implement shari’a in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, have always been marked by tensions between the political aspirations of proponents and opponents of shari’a and by resistance from the national government. As a result, although pro-shari’a movements have made significant progress in recent years, shari’a remains tightly confined within Indonesia’s secular legal system.

“Challenging the Secular State offers both in-depth description and insightful analysis of some of the most important aspects of modern debates over Islamic law in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. It is the kind of sophisticated treatment of local complexities that is long overdue and as such deserves the attention of readers in both Southeast Asian and Islamic studies.” —Michael Feener, National University of Singapore

September 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3237-8 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

Cambodge Now Available in Paperback

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Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860–1945, by Penny Edwards, is now available in paperback.

“Penny Edwards’ Cambodge is an original and impressive tour de force of scholarly analysis. She provides a richly textured cultural genealogy of state formation in Cambodia by reassessing the impact of French colonialism on modern Khmer thought and nation building. Relying on extensive archival research, Edwards traces a complex cultural history of Angkor as the site of competing religious and political investment that not only redefined regional boundaries and imperial power relations but also determined the very notion of Khmerness. Her book is a most important intervention in Southeast Asian history and should engage scholars across such diverse disciplines as archaeology, art, history, religion, cultural and literary studies.” —Panivong Norindr, author of Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature

September 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3346-6 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Art from Burma in the Denison Museum

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The collection of Burmese art housed at the Denison Museum in Granville, Ohio, includes more than 1,500 objects dating from the late first millennium A.D., through the twentieth century. While particularly strong on textiles originating with minority groups in Burma, it also includes Buddha images, lacquer objects, works on paper, manuscripts, wood carvings, and pieces made from bronze, silver, and ivory. The core holdings were acquired by Baptist missionaries, United States government employees, diplomats, and others living in Burma, and this material was augmented by judicious purchases.

Eclectic Collecting: Art from Burma in the Denison Museum, edited by Alexandra Green, discusses theoretical approaches to the study of textiles and examines in some depth the production and use of textiles by the Karenic, Chin, Kachin, Lahu, and Tai, and Wa minority groups, as well as ethnic Burmans, within the context of their histories and cultures. Vibrant photographs illustrate the distinctive designs characteristic of each population group and the production techniques they use.

270 illus., 261 in color, 2 maps

August 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3311-4 / $60.00 (CLOTH)

Hakka Soul

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Hakka Soul: Memories, Migrations, Meals, by Chin Woon Ping, chronicles the dreams, ambitions, and idiosyncrasies of her family, beginning with the death of her grandmother in pre-Independence Malaya. It was a tumultuous period when the occupying Japanese army had just been defeated, the British colonial government was losing its grip on the country, and a communist guerilla insurgency had broken out in the jungles of the Malay Peninsula. Her stories follow the family’s move to the United States and a journey to China to visit her father’s ancestral home.

Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies
August 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3289-6 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific

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What is globalization? How is it gendered? How does it work in Asia and the Pacific? The authors of the sixteen original and innovative essays presented in Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific: Method, Practice, Theory, edited by Kathy E. Ferguson and Monique Mironesco, take fresh stock of globalization’s complexities. They pursue critical feminist inquiry about women, gender, and sexualities and produce original insights into changing life patterns in Asian and Pacific Island societies. Each essay puts the lives and struggles of women at the center of its examination while weaving examples of global circuits in Asian and Pacific societies into a world frame of analysis. The work is generated from within Asian and Pacific spaces, bringing to the fore local voices and claims to knowledge.

August 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3241-4 / $35.00 (PAPER)

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