Showing papers in "The Journal of Asian Studies in 2003"

The Success of India's Democracy

Abstract: List of contributors Acknowledgements 1. Introduction Atul Kohli Part I. Historical Origins: 2. Indian democracy: the historical inheritance Sumit Sarkar Part II. Political Institutions and Democratic Consolidation: 3. India's federal design and multicultural national construction Jyotirindra Dasgupta 4. Center-state relations James Manor 5. Making local government work Subrata K. Mitra 6. Redoing the constitutional design: from an interventionist to a regulatory state Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph 7. The dialectics of Hindu nationalism Amrita Basu: Part III. Social Demands and Democratic Deepening 8. The struggle for equality: caste in Indian politics Myron Weiner 9. Sharing the spoils: group equity, development and democracy Pranab Bardhan 10. Social movement politics in India: institutions, interest, and identities Mary Katzenstein, Smitu Kothari, and Uday Mehta Bibliography Index.

The rise of early modern science : Islam, China, and the West

Abstract: List of illustrations New preface Preface - 1993 Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The comparative study of science 2. Arabic science and the Islamic world 3. Reason and rationality in Islam and the West 4. The European legal revolution 5. Madrasas, universities, and sciences 6. Cultural climates and the ethos of science 7. Science and civilization in China 8. Science and social organization in China 9. The rise of early modern science Epilogue: educational reform and attitudes towards science since the eighteenth century Selected bibliography Index.

Ancient China and its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History . By Nicola Di Cosmo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ix, 369 pp. $70.00 (cloth).

Abstract: Introduction Part I: 1. The Steppe Highway: the rise of pastoral nomadism as a Eurasian phenomenon 2. Bronze, iron and gold: the evolution of nomadic cultures on the northern frontier of China Part II: 3. Beasts and birds: the historical context of early Chinese perceptions of northern peoples 4. Walls and horses: the beginning of historical contacts between horse-riding Nomads and Chinese states Part III: 5. Those who draw the bow: the rise of the Hsiung-nu Nomadic Empire and the political unification of the Nomads 6. From peace to war: China's shift from appeasement to military engagement Part IV: 7. In search of grass and water: ethnography and history of the North in the Historian's Records 8. Taming the North: the rationalization of the nomads in Ssu-ma Ch'ien's historical thought Conclusion.

Presidential Address: Maps in the Mind and the Mobility of Asia

Abstract: A MAP IS A PECULIAR KIND OF VISUAL TEXT. It seems a mere instrument of utility, showing us where to go and how to put things in place. Invisible ingredients, however, render every map a Pandora’s box. Emotions are undoubtedly the most potent of all of the invisible elements in maps. The cartographic passions that make the headlines may be national ones, but in cities, towns, and villages, people have strong feelings about local maps. Street gangs, real estate developers, insurance companies, zoning boards, planners, and electorates invest maps with local politics. Landowners love their property lines. Universities map their campus identity. The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) signifies itself succinctly in its logo, a map of Asia. Such territorial attachments and many others have striking similarities: they infuse boundaries with iconic significance, tinged with feelings of security, belonging, possessiveness, enclosure, entitlement, and exclusion. Equally invisible in maps are social relations of mapping that produce maps and authorize their interpretation. The most influential mapmakers today work in national institutions, including schools, colleges, and universities. State-authorized mapping is so ubiquitous that most governments do not regulate most map making, but almost everyone draws official lines on maps by habit anyway, in accordance with cartographic regimentation that is so invisible, pervasive, and widely accepted that few people ever

The Cultural Cold War in Korea, 1945-1950

Abstract: By definition, the cold war was understood on both sides of the conflict to be a global struggle that stopped short of direct military engagement between the superpowers (the U.S. and the USSR). In Europe, the putative center ofthat struggle, the geopolitical battle lines were fixed after the early 1950s, or they at least could not be altered by normal military means without provoking World War III—which would result in mutual annihilation. Therefore, each side hoped to make gains over the other by using more subtle, political, and often clandestine methods, winning the “hearts and minds” of people in the other bloc (as well as maintaining potentially wayward support in one's own bloc), hoping to subvert the other side from within. The cold war was an enormous campaign of propaganda and psychological warfare on both sides. A vast range of cultural resources, from propaganda posters and radio broadcasts to sophisticated literary magazines, jazz bands, ballet troupes, and symphony orchestras, were weapons in what has recently come to be called the “Cultural Cold War” (Saunders 1999). Studies of the cultural cold war have proliferated since the late 1990s, most of which focus on U.S. cultural policy and are concerned with the European “theater” of this conflict (Hixson 1997; Fehrenbach and Poiger 2000; Poiger 2000; Berghahn 2001).

The politics of power : Freeport in Suharto's Indonesia

Abstract: Even as Major General Suharto consolidated his power in the bloodletting of the mid-sixties, Freeport-McMoRan, the American transnational mining company, signed a contract with the new military regime, the first foreign company to do so. To day, in the isolated jungles of West Papua, a region that is increasingly restive under Indonesian rule, Freeport lays claim to the world's largest gold mine and one of its richest and most profitable copper mines. This volume is the first major analysis of the company's presence in Indonesia. It takes a close and detailed look at the changing nature of power relations between Freeport and Suharto, the Indonesian military, the traditional landowners (the Amungme and Kamoro), and environmental and human rights groups. It examines how and why an American company, despite such rigorous home-state laws, was able to operate in West Papua with impunity for nearly thirty years and adapt to, indeed thrive in, a business culture anchored in corruption, collusion, and nepotism.

Sima Tan and the Invention of Daoism, “Legalism,”et cetera

Abstract: Here's a short version: The “-ism” we invoke when we posit things like “Daoism” was glimpsed for the first time by Sima Tan . (d. 110 b.c.e.), lord grand astrologer (taishigong) to the Han court. His essay “Yaozhi” (Essential points), included in the final chapter of his son Sima Qian's Taishigong, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of six approaches to governance:Yinyang ,Ru (known to us as Confucians),Mo (the Mohists),Fajia (called Legalists),Mingjia (called Sophists), andDaojia (or Daode , the supposed Daoists).

What Is Happening to Caste? A View from Some North Indian Villages

Abstract: The role of caste in indian politics is undergoing considerable change. Caste and patron-client links have been regarded traditionally as the building blocks of political organization in India (Brass 1994; Manor 1997; Migdal 1988; Kothari 1988; Weiner 1967), and vertical and horizontal mobilizations by patrons and caste leaders, respectively, have been important influences on political outcomes (Rudolph and Rudolph 1967). There are indications, however, that the influence of patronage and caste might have declined considerably in recent years:[National-level] survey data reveal some important facts that run counter to the conventional wisdom on voter behavior. … In 1996, 75 percent of the sample said they were not guided by anyone in their voting decision. … Of the 25 percent who sought advice, only 7 percent sought it from caste and community leaders … that is, less than 2 percent of the electorate got direct advice on how to vote from caste and community leaders. … The most important survey data show the change over time. In 1971, 51 percent of the respondents agreed that it was “important to vote the way your caste/community does” (30 percent disagreed), but in 1996 the percentages were reversed: 51 percent disagreed with that statement (29 percent agreed). … In 1998, “caste and community” was seen as an issue by only 5.5 percent of the respondents in one poll … and [it] ranked last of nine issues in another. All the evidence points to the fact that these respondents are correct: members of particular castes … can be found voting for every party. … It is less and less true that knowing the caste of a voter lets you reliably predict the party he or she will vote for.(Oldenburg 1999, 13–15, emphasis in original)

Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine

Abstract: For architects of citizenship and nationhood, there is no shortage of conflicts and wars from which to build modern myths about submerging individual suffering and loss to greater causes. The grief, anger, and despair of individuals can be integrated over time into collectively shared assumptions about the indebtedness of the living to their heroic compatriots and ancestors. To remember these conflicts and those who (depending on the political context) either “lost” or “gave” their lives has been throughout recent history a vital act of citizenship, both “affirming the community at large and asserting its moral character” (Winter 1995, 85). Certainly from an American perspective, national identity remains “inexorably intertwined with the commemoration and memory of past wars” (Piehler 1995, 3). This observation applies even more intensely elsewhere in the world (e.g., Russia, China, France, Japan) where the loss of combatant and civilian life has been far greater.

Visually Mapping the "Nation": Swadeshi Politics in Nationalist India, 1920-1930

Abstract: In the early years of mass nationalism in colonial South Asia, Mohandas Gandhi inaugurated a swadeshi (indigenous goods) movement, which aimed to achieve swaraj, or “home rule,” by establishing India's economic self-sufficiency from Britain. Invoking an earlier movement of the same name, Gandhi created a new form of swadeshi politics that encouraged the production and exclusive consumption of hand-spun, hand-woven cloth called khadi. The campaign to popularize this movement took many forms, including the organization of exhibitions that demonstrated cloth production and sold khadi goods. On the occasion of one such exhibition in 1927, Gandhi explained the significance of exhibitions for the movement:[The exhibition] is designed to be really a study for those who want to understand what this khadi movement stands for, and what it has been able to do. It is not a mere ocular demonstration to be dismissed out of our minds immediately. … It is not a cinema. It is actually a nursery where a student, a lover of humanity, a lover of his own country may come and see things for himself.(“The Exhibition,” Young India, 14 July 1927)

The Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Chanyuan Qinggui

Abstract: The Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China contains the first complete translation of China's earliest and most influential monastic code The twelfth-century text Chanyuan qinggui (Rules of Purity for the Chan Monastery) provides us with a wealth of detail on all aspects of life in public Buddhist monasteries during the Sung (960-1279) Part One consists of Yifa's overview of the development of monastic regulations in Chinese Buddhist history, a biography of the text's author, and an analysis of the social and cultural context of premodern Chinese Buddhist monasticism Of particular importance are the interconnections made between Chan traditions and the dual heritages of Chinese culture and Indian Buddhist Vinaya Although much of the text's source material is traced directly to the Vinayas and the works of the Vinaya advocate Daoan (312-385) and the Lu master Daoxuan (596-667), the Chanyuan qinggui includes elements foreign to the original Vinaya texts - elements incorporated from Chinese governmental policies and traditional Chinese etiquette Following the translator's overview is a complete translation of the text, extensively annotated

Blinkered Visions: Islamic Identity, Hui Ethnicity, and the Panthay Rebellion in Southwest China, 1856—1873

Abstract: On 19 may 1856, qing officials in kunming, the capital of the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, systematically carried out a three-day massacre of the city's Hui (Muslim Yunnanese). Han townspeople, the local militia, and imperial officials methodically slaughtered between four and seven thousand Yunnan Hui—men, women, and children—burned the city's mosques to the ground, and posted orders to exterminate the Hui in every prefecture, department, and district in Yunnan (QPHF 1968, 6:20a, 8:4a; Gui 1953, 73). This massacre and the widespread attacks that followed signaled the beginning of the eighteen-year Hui-led Panthay Rebellion (1856–73).

Restoration or Transformation? Trapos versus NGOs in the Democratization of the Philippines

Abstract: When the philippines returned to democratic rule in 1986, two images emerged of the new democracy that were vastly different and often hard to reconcile with each other. On the one hand, many observers commented on the great extent to which the new democracy appeared merely to restore the country's previous democratic regime from between 1946 and the establishment of martial law in 1972 (Anderson 1988; McCoy 1994, 19; Wurfel 1988, 323). In this earlier democratic period, traditional political clans dominated the country's policy-making institutions and successfully blocked equity-enhancing reforms. Over the course of these decades, elite-dominated parties mastered the politics of clientelism, in which local power brokers delivered vote blocs to national politicians in exchange for the granting of particularistic favors and the blocking of progressive legislation. Fears of a restoration in the mid-1980s appeared well founded, both in the significant presence in the reopened legislature of the country's most powerful economic elites and in the resistance to agrarian and other reforms by the new president, Corazon Aquino, herself a member of a prominent land-owning family. In many respects, democratization in the 1980s marked the return to power of traditional politicians, or trapos, as they are popularly called, a word that also means “dishrag” in the Tagalog language.

The volatile state in Southeast Asia: Evidence from Sumatra, 1600-1800

Abstract: The communis opinio of historians is that early modern, or precolonial, states in Southeast Asia tended to lead precarious existences. The states were volatile in the sense that the size of individual states changed quickly, a ruler forced by circumstances moved his state capital, the death of a ruler was followed by a dynastic struggle, or a local subordinate head either ignored or took over the central state power; in short, states went through short cycles of rise and decline. Perhaps nobody has helped establish this opinion more than Clifford Geertz (1980) with his powerful metaphor of the “theatre state.” Many scholars have preceded and followed him in their assessment of the shakiness of the state (see, for example, Andaya 1992, 419; Bentley 1986, 292; Bronson 1977, 51; Hagesteijn 1986, 106; Milner 1982, 7; Nagtegaal 1996, 35, 51; Reid 1993, 202; Ricklefs 1991, 17; Schulte Nordholt 1996, 143–48). The instability itself was an enduring phenomenon. Most polities existed in a state of flux, oscillating between integration and disintegration, a phenomenon which was first analyzed for mainland Southeast Asia by Edmund Leach (1954) in his seminal work on the Kachin chiefdoms. This alternation of state formation and the breaking up of kingdoms has been called the “ebb and flow of power” and the “rhythm” of Malay history (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 35). In this article, I will probe into the causes of the volatility of the Southeast Asian states, using material from Sumatra to make my case.

Children of the Japanese State: The Changing Role of Child Protection Institutions in Contemporary Japan

Abstract: In Japan today over 30,000 children are in the care of the state because their parents or guardians cannot, will not, or are not considered competent to look after them. Drawing on his long-term fieldwork in an institution for such children, Roger Goodman describes what happens to them in a country that has no professional social workers and little tradition of adopting or fostering children in need of care, and explains how, in the 1990s, the convergence of several factors in particular Japan's rapidly declining birth-rate, its signing of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and its 'discovery' of child abuse led to a new role for child protection institutions which had otherwise scarcely changed over the past 50 years. In the process, he provides the first full account in English of the development and delivery of child welfare in the world's second largest economy.

Coolie Labour in Colonial Indonesia: A Study of Labour Relations in the Outer Islands, c. 1900–1940 . Edited by Vincent J. H. Houben and J. Thomas Lindblad. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999. xv, 268 pp. €39.00 (paper).

Abstract: This is a valuable and highly informative book on a subject that remains relatively underresearched. The editors and authors have meticulously utilized archival and statistical source materials from the colonial period in Indonesia—sometimes perhaps a little controversially—to offer a coherent work which provides useful new insights into the workings of the colonial economy in the Outer Islands of the Dutch East Indies and which attempts to convey an impression of what life must have been like for those involved in it, most particularly the downtrodden coolie. As one of the editors suggests, the \"book offers a new, comprehensive interpretation of the system of bonded or indentured labour in the Outer Islands of Indonesia during the first four decades of the twentieth century. It is about labourers, mostly Javanese, who worked on plantations and in mines on contract\" (p. 1)—although there is also ample reference to the Chinese coolie. The editors and authors address this topic in a well-defined social, historical, and (in part) political context—the rise of a modern economy in the sprawling, diverse Dutch colony. This involved developments such as the inception in the 1870s \"of export-oriented estate agriculture in the Outer Islands\" (p. 25), most notably in East Sumatra. They also do this in a conscious engagement with the literature in fields such as international labor migration, Asian labor history, the colonial state, and the plantation economy. More specifically, there is an engagement with the existing literature on the late colonial economy—represented in part in the well-known works of authors such as Ann Stoler and Jan Breman. Both of these authors were highly critical of the colonial state and those who ran the European-owned colonial-era economic enterprises, especially in relation to exploitative practices toward laborers.

Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954 - 1975

Abstract: What was for the United States a struggle against creeping Communism in Southeast Asia was for the people of North Vietnam a \"great patriotic war\" that saw its eventual victory against a military Goliath. The story of that conflict as seen through the eyes and the ideology of the North Vietnamese military offers readers a view of that era never before seen. \"Victory in Vietnam\" is the People's Army of Vietnam's own account of two decades of struggle, now available for the first time in English. It is a definitive statement of the Vietnamese point of view concerning foreign intrusion in their country since before American involvement and it reveals that many of the accepted truths in our own histories of the war are simply wrong. This detailed account describes the ebb and flow of the war as seen from Hanoi. It discloses particularly difficult times in the PAVN's struggle: 1955-59, when Diem almost destroyed the Communist movement in the South; 1961-62, when American helicopter assaults and M-113 armored personnel carriers inflicted serious losses on their forces; and 1966, when U.S. troop strength and air power increased dramatically. It also elaborates on the role of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the Communist effort, confirming its crucial importance and telling how the United States came close to shutting the supply line down on several occasions. The book confirms the extent to which the North orchestrated events in the South and also reveals much about Communist infiltration accompanied by statistics from 1959 until the end of the war. While many Americans believed that North Vietnam only began sending regular units south after the U.S. commitment of ground forces in 1965, this account reveals that by the time Marines landed in Da Nang in April 1965 there were already at least four North Vietnamese regiments in the South. Translator Merle Pribbenow, who spent several years in Saigon during the war, has sought to render as accurately as possible the voice of the PAVN authors, retaining much of the triumphant flavor of the text in order to provide an uncensored feel for the Vietnamese viewpoint. A foreword by William J. Duiker, author of \"Ho Chi Minh: A Life\" and other books on Vietnam, puts both the tone and content of the text in historical perspective.\

Making the Colonial State Work for You: The Modern Beginnings of the Ancient Kumbh Mela in Allahabad

Abstract: It is widely believed that the Allahabad Kumbh Mela is an ancient religious festival or that it is “ageless”, that its roots lie obscured in time immemorial. Editorials and articles in the press at mela time (every twelve years) lyrically emphasize the continuity of the pilgrimage throughout India's past, find inspiration in its durability and changeless character, and marvel at the anachronism of an ancient festival thriving in the modern world (“The Kumbh Mela”, Pioneer, 17 February 1918; “Editorial”, Leader, 16 January 1942; “Pilgrim's Process”, Times of India, 24 January 2001). There is no better example of this than the oft-quoted section of Jawaharlal Nehru's will and testament, in which the avowedly secular modernist explains his desire to have a portion of his ashes scattered at the triveni sangam, the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers and the site of the Kumbh in Allahabad:I have been attached to the Ganga and the Jumna rivers ever since my childhood and, as I have grown older, this attachment has also grown. The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people. … She has been a symbol of India's age-long culture and civilization, ever-changing, ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. … And though I have discarded much of past tradition and custom, and am anxious that India should rid herself of all shackles that bind and constrain her and divide her people, and suppress vast numbers of them, and prevent the free development of the body and the spirit; though I seek all this, yet I do not wish to cut myself off from that past completely. I am proud of that great inheritance that it has been, and is, ours, and I am conscious that I too, like all of us, am a link in that unbroken chain which goes back to the dawn of history in the immemorial past of India. That chain I would not break, for I treasure it and seek inspiration from it.(2000, 612–13)

Ethnicity, Islam, and Nationalism: Muslim Politics in the North-West Frontier Province, 1937–47 . By Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 311 pp. $35.00 (cloth).

Abstract: Focusing on the politics of the North-West Frontier Province of India between 1937 and 1947, this book examines the only Muslim majority province which suported the Indian National Congress in its struggle against the British Raj. It explores the rise of the Khudai Khidmatgars, the preference of the NWFP Muslims for the Congress, and Muslim League's initial failure to acquire their support. Finally the dismissal of the provincial Congress ministry by M.A. Jinnah on the eve of Partition is examined.

The genealogical mentality in modern China

Abstract: Xuanwei, a county-level municipality (xianji shi) located in the northeastern corner of Yunnan province, has nothing remarkable to boast. It is, of course, one of the largest counties in China and "home of the Yunnan ham." Xuanwei is even the native place of Zhuo Lin, wife of the late Deng Xiaoping. Such trivia apart, Xuanwei's vital statistics read as a microcosm of interior China that moreover cover a wide variety of ecological and socioeconomic regimes. For mainly this reason, Stig Th0gersen of Aarhus University and I decided in 1998 that Xuanwei's unremarkable status made it the ideal rural inland fieldwork site that we sought for European researchers. The fact that I did not expect anything special contributed to my paying little attention to Wang Ya'nan, one of our counterparts from the Institute of Folk Literature at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, when he claimed that in Xuanwei descent group genealogies were produced in great quantity. In the course of my fieldwork, I only gradually came to appreciate that the scope and relevance of the genealogical enterprise in Xuanwei extended far beyond the narrow confines of this remote county. Genealogies are part of an essentializing discourse of belonging that is one of the key ingredients in Chinese understandings of the paradox between the notions of a unifying Chineseness and dividing local identities. At different points in time, this unfolding discourse has met (confirmed, refuted, or merged with) efforts from the empire, the Republic, or the People's Republic at state formation and later, nation building. The genealogical enterprise that I encountered in Xuanwei, therefore, should emphatically not be considered as a simple reenactment of an unchanging cultural form, reproducing an equally unchanging Chinese national essence. One of the objectives of my analysis of Chinese genealogies is, as Prasenjit Duara (1995) puts it,

From Teahouse to Playhouse: Theaters As Social Texts in Early-Twentieth-Century China

Abstract: The qing court had a love-hate relationship with popular drama. From the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–95) to the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908), several Qing rulers were renowned for their doting patronage of popular opera, yet the state was far from sanguine about drama's social effects, viewing public theaters with great suspicion. Theaters, in the eyes of the authorities, were notorious hangouts for ruffians, slackers, gamblers, and insurgents, providing these roustabouts with the ideal environment in which to scheme and swindle. In addition to waging campaigns to censor and weed out “seditious passages” from popular dramas (Guy 1987, 92), emperors throughout the Qing dynasty issued dozens of edicts regulating the construction, location, and clientele of commercial theaters. In rural areas, especially in times of unrest, local authorities often canceled scheduled performances for fear that such occasions offered gangs and secret societies prime opportunities for stirring up trouble (Mackerras 1972, 37). Urban theaters were no safer. According to popular lore, even the Kangxi emperor was cheated by hoodlums when he ventured into a public theater during one of his legendary outings disguised as a commoner (Liao 1997, 80). Yet in spite of their reputation for breeding disorder and moral vice, commercial theaters—commonly known as teahouses (chayuan)—increasingly thrived, and in this new social space, the genre of Peking opera came into full flower during the last century of the Qing dynasty.

Contentious Kwangju: The May 18 Uprising in Korea's Past and Present

Abstract: Introduction 1 Contentious Kwangju Part I 2 Origins and Development Chapter 1 3 The Formation of an Absolute Community Chapter 2 4 Simin'gun: Citizens' Army during Kwangju Uprising Chapter 3 5 An American Missionary's View Chapter 4 6 Has Kwangju Been Realized? Part II 7 Legacy and Representation Chapter 5 8 From Heroic Victims to Disabled Survivors: The 5.18 Injured after Twenty Years Chapter 6 9 The Kwangju Uprising as a Vehicle of Democratization: A Comparative Perspective Chapter 7 10 Victims and Heroes: Competing Visions of May 18 Chapter 8 11 Re-inventing the Region: The Cultural Politics of Place in Kwangju City and South Cholla Province Afterword 12 The Historical Watershed

Another people of India project: Colonial and national anthropology

Abstract: In a bookstore in delhi, a salesman, apprised of my interest in lower-caste politics, handed me a tome about the officially listed Dalit, or untouchable, groups, The Scheduled Castes (Singh 1995). The first thing to strike me was the cover, a glossy photograph of a presumably Scheduled Caste woman with her back against a tall stone wall, surrounded by her four grubby kids. She is beaming. The second thing to strike me was the title of this new series, of which this was the second volume. The series, by the central government's Anthropological Survey of India, was called the People of India, a name that had been used for several rather notorious colonial ethnographic projects. Intrigued, I began to examine this most recent avatar of the People of India.

Dead bodies in the postwar discourse of identity in seventeenth-century Korea: Subversion and literary production in the private sector

Abstract: As katherine verdery notes, dead bodies have had political lives in virtually every civilization since antiquity. They frequently emerge as powerful metaphors of change, especially after a time of crisis when the meaning of political symbols is redefined. This is vividly exemplified by what happened to the exhumed bodies of various ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia (Verdery 1999, 1–22). Postwar discourse is another site in which dead bodies frequently emerge as metaphors. Some of the most unforgettable sights concerning World War II are pictures of huge piles of exhumed human bodies from the mass graves of Jews. We know that these are not skeletons of those who have died natural deaths because these images have often been shown along with the pictures of inmates of the concentration and death camps, emaciated to the point of nonrecognition as living human beings. Through this process, the pictures have acquired an independent status as encoded language: they signify unbelievable evil committed against humanity, and they display the moral weakness of the rest of humanity that failed to resist and end such atrocities.

The GI War Against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During World War II . By Peter Schrijvers. New York: New York University Press, 2002. 320 pp. $45.00 (cloth).

Abstract: Dedication List of Abbreviations List of Endnote Abbreviations Preface Acknowledgements PART I: FRONTIER Pioneers Romantics Missionaries Imperialists PART II: FRUSTRATION Nature Masses Mind 'Going Asiatic' PART III: FURY Human Rage Industrial Violence Technological Destruction Notes Bibliography Index

Multiple modernities : cinemas and popular media in transcultural East Asia

Abstract: Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction - Jenny Kwok Wah Lau Part I: States of Modernities 1. Globalization and Youthful Subculture: The Chinese Sixth-Generation Films at the Dawn of the New Century - Jenny Kwok Wah Lau 2. Marx or Market: Chinese Rock and the Sound of Fury - Jeroen de Kloet 3. Reexamining the East and the West: Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, "Orientalism," and Popular Culture - Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto 4. Stranger Than Tokyo: Space and Race in Postnational Japanese Cinema - Yomota Inuhiko, translated by Aaron Gerow 5. Discourse on Modernization in 1990s Korean Cinema - Han Ju Kwak 6. Youth in Crisis: National and Cultural Identity in New South Korean Cinema - Frances Gateward 7. The Fragmented Commonplace: Alternative Arts and Cosmopolitanism in Hong Kong - Hector Rodriguez Part II: Postmodernism and Its Discontents 8. Immediacy, Parody, and Image in the Mirror: Is There a Postmodern Scene in Beijing? - Dai Jinhua, translated by Jing M. Wang 9. Terms of Transition: The Action Film, Postmodernism, and Issues of an East-West Perspective - Chuck Kleinhans 10. Consuming Asia: Chinese and Japanese Popular Culture and the American Imaginary - David Desser Part III: Women in Modern Asia 11. Of Executioners and Courtesans: The Performance of Gender in Hong Kong Cinema of the 1990s - Augusta Lee Palmer and Jenny Kwok Wah Lau 12. The Woman with Broken Palm Lines: Subject, Agency, Fortune-Telling, and Women in Taiwanese Television Drama - Lin Szu-Ping About the Contributors Index