Bücher der Reihe Asia/Pacific/Perspectives

This book offers the first detailed study of the essential relationship between thought reform and the "dangerous classes"-the prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, and other "lumpenproletarians" the Communists saw as a threat to society and the revolution. Aminda Smith takes readers inside early-PRC reformatories, where the new state endeavored to transform "vagrants" into members of the laboring masses. As places where "the people" were literally created, these centers became testing grounds for rapidly changing ideas and experiments about thought reform and the subjects they produced. Smith explores reformatories as institutions dedicated to molding new socialist citizens and as symbolic spaces in which internees, cadres, and the ordinary masses made sense of what it meant to be a member of the people in the People's Republic. Drawing on extensive, previously unavailable source material, she offers convincing answers to much-debated questions about the development and future of Chinese political culture.

This compelling book analyzes the dramatic changes in rural Chinese society as a result of rapid urbanization. Building on eight decades of studies of the village of Lengshuigou, Chinese sociologists examine the fundamental changes over the last century that have radically transformed centuries-old systems of patriarchy and generational order.

This compelling book explores Okinawa's makeover as a tourist mecca among the physical ruins of the Pacific War's most devastating land battle. Gerald Figal considers how a place burdened by a history of semi-colonialism, memories of war and occupation, economic hardship, and contentious politics has reshaped itself into a resort destination.

This distinctive and enlightening book explores development of tea drinking in China, using tea culture to explore the profound question of how Chinese have traditionally expressed individuality. By linking tea to individualism, Bret Hinsch's deeply researched book makes an original and influential contribution to the history of Chinese culture.

These gripping biographies poignantly illustrate the strengths and the vulnerabilities of professional housewives and of families facing social change and economic uncertainty in contemporary Japan.

In this book, Wanning Sun illuminates the harsh reality of inequality and discrimination that China's rural migrant workers face every day, and how these workers use available media to negotiate these injustices. This book is essential reading for all concerned with the growing use of media in the cultural politics of our highly digitalized world.

Emancipation, a defining feature of twentieth-century Chinese society, is explored in detail in this compelling study. Angelina Chin expands and reinterprets the meaning of women's emancipation by examining what this rhetoric meant to lower-class women. Challenging the nation-based framework of history by focusing on two cities, Chin compares colonial Hong Kong with Guangzhou, which allows her to seamlessly integrate colonial studies and China studies.

Offers exploration of the social, economic, political, legal, and practical parameters of crime and control, locating them within a broader milieu of turbulent development and transition. This volume is useful for those interested in modern and contemporary Chinese politics, law, and society, as well as in comparative criminology and law.

Provides an introduction to the cultural and political dimensions of contemporary Chinese cinema. This book explores the world of Chinese underground and independent film, leading Western and Chinese scholars trace the changing dynamics of Chinese film culture. It is for those interested in a society caught between socialism and global currents.

In this deeply original study of the Mongols, leading scholar Uradyn E. Bulag draws on key themes of cosmopolitanism and friendship to develop a new concept he terms "collaborative nationalism." He uses this concept to explore the dilemma of minorities in China as they fight against being embraced too tightly in the bonds of "friendship." Through a rich array of case studies, Bulag illuminates the fierce competition among China, Japan, Mongolia, and Russia to appropriate the Mongol heritage to buttress their own national identities. Weighing the options the Mongols face, he argues that the ethnopolitical is not so much about identity as it is about the capacity of an ethnic group to decide and organize its own vision of itself, both within its community and in relation to other groups.

This seminal study explores the significant changes in the global IT industry as production has shifted from the developed world to massive sites in the developing world that house hundreds of thousands of workers in appalling low-wage conditions to minimize labor costs. The authors trace the development of the new networks of globalized mass production in the IT industry and the reorganization of work since the 1990s, capturing the systemic nature of an industry-wide restructuring of production and work in the global context. Their wide-ranging and detailed analysis takes the debates on the globalization of production beyond narrow perspectives of determining criteria of "success" for participation in global networks. Rather, they emphasize the changing nature of work, employment relations, and labor policies and their implications for the possibilities of sustainable economic and social development.

Provides an introduction to the cultural and political dimensions of contemporary Chinese cinema. This book explores the world of Chinese underground and independent film, leading Western and Chinese scholars trace the changing dynamics of Chinese film culture. It is for those interested in a society caught between socialism and global currents.

The May 1980 Kwangju Uprising still exerts a profound influence in Korean society. Combining personal reflections and academic analysis, this text offers an examination of the multiple meanings of this event, explaining how the memory of Kwangju has affected Korean life from politics to culture.

Offers exploration of the social, economic, political, legal, and practical parameters of crime and control, locating them within a broader milieu of turbulent development and transition. This volume is useful for those interested in modern and contemporary Chinese politics, law, and society, as well as in comparative criminology and law.

This pathbreaking study of North Korea's political history and culture sheds invaluable light on the country's unique leadership continuity and succession. The authors show how, in defiance of the instability of most revolutionary states, the durability of charismatic politics in North Korea defines its exceptional place in global politics.

To Hell and Back offers readers a stunning, "you are there" time capsule, wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino's scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written.

Using the field of genetics as a case study, this text follows the troubled development of modern natural science in China from the 1920s, through Mao's China, to the present post-socialist era.

Focusing on poverty and class in its analysis of social movements, this work shows how social movements have had to change because poverty reduction did not serve its role as a political template. It includes chapters on gender, lower castes, environment, the Hindu Right, Kerala, labor, farmers, and biotechnology.

Bringing together the work of distinguished China historians, anthropologists, and literary and film scholars, Gender in Motion raises provocative questions about the diversity of gender practices during the late imperial society and the persistence and transformation of older gender ideologies under the conditions of modernity in China. While several studies have investigated gender or labor in late imperial and twentieth century China, this book brings these two concepts together, asking how these two categories interacted and produced new social practices and theories. Individual chapters examine agricultural and urban work, travel within China, overseas study, polyandry, the acting profession, courtesan culture, female politicians, Maoist work culture, and the boundaries of virtue and respectability.Governing notions of the social order (and interrelated constructions of gender) changed radically in the modern eraΓÇöinitially with the questioning of the imperial, dynastic order and the creation of a Chinese republic in the early twentieth century, later with the creation of a Communist government and, most recently, with China''s political and cultural transformations in the post-Mao era. As ideas and practices of gender have changed, the persistence of older rhetorical signs in the interstices of new political visions has complicated the social projects and understandings of modernity, especially in terms of the creation of new public spaces, new concepts of work and virtue, and new configurations of gender.Contributions by: Madeleine Yue Dong, Bryna Goodman, Gail Hershatter, Ellen R. Judd, Joan Judge, Wendy Larson, Susan Mann, Kenneth L. Pomeranz, Tze-lan Deborah Sang, Matthew H. Sommer, Luo Suwen, Catherine Vance Yeh, and Wang Zheng.