Asian Studies

Explore adverse contexts where place, economy, and culture impact on the development of personhood across diverse global settings from babies to adulthood

Gobi Desert herders defy extinction, thriving with strong goats, fine cashmere, and proud self-reliance.

Gobi Desert herders defy extinction, thriving with strong goats, fine cashmere, and proud self-reliance.

Imagine being Japanese, living in Singapore in the nineteen twenties and thirties, suspected by everyone around you of being a spy. Prior to December 1941, Singapore was the site of a major naval base for the occupying British. As tensions increased between the imperial powers of Japan and Britain, Japanese expatriates living in Singapore became the focus of both governments in the struggle for control and power, resulting in further marginalization, suspicion, and othering from the Singapore authorities. Based on British police records and Japanese military records of the time, this book explores what it meant to be Japanese in those circumstances, and how people were used—sometimes without their knowledge and consent—as spies and intelligence agents.

Who was Tse Tsan Tai? Insurrectionist? Socialite? Patriot? Revolutionary? Born and raised in Australia and trained in Anglo-Hong Kong's civil service, Tse Tsan Tai (1872—1938) was all of these and more. A first native media man and anti-Qing patriot, he advocated independent thinking and a free China. Through the lens of his life, this book explores a composite identity, touching on themes of diaspora, religion, colonialism, civil society, science, and revolutions in Qing and Nationalist China. Ideal reading for students of Asian Studies, East Asian Studies, Diaspora Studies, Chinese and Hong Kong History, international Relations, Indo-Pacific Studies, Colonial Studies, Cultural History, Sociology, and related courses, this fascinating course reading uses biography to ask the question: what were the original ideals for republicanism in China?

How does the place, economy, and culture of where a person is born and raised impact the development of their personhood over their life course? Drawing from five case studies across diverse global contexts, social anthropologist María Florencia Amigó considers how cultural identity, engrained beliefs and practices, and economic determinants can shape destinies, by looking at how babies become children, and children become independent adults. Connecting stories across disconnected and distant places, Infants, Children, and Youth explores growing up in adverse contexts. Beginning with early childhood malnutrition and stunting in Aceh, Indonesia, the book moves through the life course to next consider young children of migrant parents in Sydney, Australia. Back in Indonesia, older children contribute to their families' survival by working as domestic helpers, sand miners, and labourers in tobacco plantations in the island of Lombok. In their teenage years, Nepalese maidens and young men negotiate autonomy and early marriage. Finally, Amigó documents the transition from high school to workplace for youth from disadvantaged Sydney suburbs. Addressing themes such as health, work, education, and social reproduction, this book is ideal reading for students of Anthropology, Human Geography, Sociology, Education, Cultural Studies, and Gerontology.

Explore the cultural phenomenon of Chinese rock music and its influence on shaping personal and academic identity.

Explore the overlooked life of Tiun Chhang-miâ, the Taiwanese woman behind the nineteenth century's most accomplished missionary, George Leslie Mackay. Tiun Chhang-miâ (1860?-1925), a Fujian-Taiwanese girl also known as Minnie Mackay, was a key figure in nineteenth century Canadian-Taiwanese relations and the first local woman to marry a Christian missionary, George Leslie Mackay. This biography tracks Tiun's history from being a child bride to a heroine devoted to education for women and the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church. Mark Dodge delves into how Taiwanese lives were torn between harsh predicaments, and the example Tiun set as an imagined ideal of new womanhood in contested colonial space. The complex legacy left by Tiun continues, for better or worse, to be felt, in Taiwan and elsewhere, while that island nation fights for its own identity and existential rights during the twenty-first century. A tale of resilience, this book is suitable reading for students of Taiwan, Asian Studies, Taiwanese history, the history of Christianity and missions, Asian women's history, Gender Studies, Religious Studies, and Colonial Studies.

For centuries, China was a collection of local places where ancestral home and local roots were essential to people's life and career. This lifeworld was shattered by the Communist Revolution, but not before some of its brightest sons made efforts to bring it into modern times.