Showing papers in "The Journal of Asian Studies in 2010"

Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times

Abstract: How has Asia appeared as a region and been conceived as such in the last hundred years? While there is a long-standing and still burgeoning historiography of Asian connections through the study of the precolonial and early modern maritime trade, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are generally not seen as a time of growing Asian connections. The recent rise of interest in Asian connections in the current time is thus unable to grasp the continuities and discontinuities that form the present. Even more, it is unable to evaluate the risks and possibilities of the present moment.

Religious Resurgence in Contemporary Asia: Southeast Asian Perspectives on Capitalism, the State, and the New Piety

Abstract: Large portions of East and Southeast Asia are in the throes of a historically unprecedented upsurge in religious observance and association. Many of the new varieties of religiosity are inore popular, voluntary, and laity based than the religions of yesteryear. Many are also marked by the heightened participation of women, and an emphasis on inner-worldly well-being as well as otherworldly transcendence. Focusing on Southeast Asia, but with references to developments in China, this article examines the social and moral genealogy of eastern Asia's religious vitalization. Many analysts have emphasized the influence of postcolonial secularisms, neoliberal disciplines, and ascendant civil societies in the religious resurgence. Although these factors have indeed played a role, the macro-narratives of the state, capital, and democratization often give insufficient attention to the micro- and meso-passions of self family, and neighborhood, all of which have contributed to the popularization and proximatization of once restricted spiritual disciplines. essay concerns a development taking place across a broad swath of contemporary Asia: an unprecedented upsurge in religious ritual, association, and observance. The resurgence defies a century of forecasts by secularization and modernization theorists of religions imminent privatization and decline. The event also has distinctive social characteristics. Chief among these is that the new varieties of religion tend to be more popular, voluntary, and laity based than the established religions of yesteryear. Many are also marked by the heightened participation of women, although typically not by explicit normative affirmations of gender equality. Last but not least, some of the new movements also appear preoccupied less with otherworldly transcendence than with inner-worldly well-being. Of course, not all of Asia is being swept into this raging religious torrent, and not all new varieties of religion are popular, prosperity minded, or woman friendly. Two generations ago, Japan was a pioneer of laity-based, peace-and-prosperity religions (Davis 1992; Hardacre 1984; Metraux 1996).

Egalitarian Developmentalism, Communist Mobilization, and the Question of Caste in Kerala State, India

Abstract: The article critiques the "Kerala model," which holds up Kerala State, India, as a model that may be emulated by other developing countries, on account of its remarkable advances in social development. The dominant left in Kerala has often claimed credit for such achievements, leading to its glorification as a model for social democracy. This uncritical adoration, which has acquired the status of national commonsense in Kerala, has reduced marginalized people in Kerala, particularly the lower-caste Dalits and tribals, to a state of abjection. The present effort seeks to show how the marginalization of these social groups and their confinement to governmental categories was not a historical accident, but the effect of political strategies on the left that led to their exclusion from productive resources, and of the assertion of upper-caste agency in left-led anticaste struggle.

Others No More: The Changing Representation of Non-Han Peoples in Chinese History Textbooks, 1951–2003

Abstract: This article analyzes the changes in the representation of non-Han peoples in textbooks of premodern Chinese history published in China since the establishment of the People's Republic. Whereas in the early 1950s, these peoples were treated as non-Chinese others and were even referred to as "foreigners," by the beginning of the twenty-first century, they were totally incorporated into the Chinese historical self through a new narrative claiming that they had always been Chinese. Simultaneously, the textbooks exhibit a clear shift from a Han-exclusivist vision of Chinese history to a more inclusive and multi-ethnic one. Based on an analysis of the content, language, and organization of textbooks and other related materials, the article proposes that although the incorporation of non-Han peoples into the Chinese historical subject was gradual, this process accelerated dramatically as a result of a planned reform launched in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The article explains the reasons for the reform and its timing, and examines its implications for the Chinese nation-state and China's ethnic minorities.

Asia Is Not One

Abstract: Asia is not “one,” and there is no singular idea of Asia. Asia is of multiple (although not always mutually exclusive) conceptions, some drawing on material forces, such as economic growth, interdependence, and physical power, and others having ideational foundations, such as civilizational linkages and normative aspirations. Some of these varied conceptions of Asia have shaped in meaningful ways the destinies of its states and peoples. Moreover, they have underpinned different forms of regionalism, which, in turn, has ensured that Asia, despite its fuzziness and incoherence, has remained a durable, if essentially contested, notion.

The Rise and Fall of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party

Abstract: THE SUMMER 2009 ELECTORAL victory of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) holds historical significance, not only for political scientists but also for the people of Japan, and possibly for the country’s Asian neighbors and the United States as well. The LDP can boast of being the most successful political party operating in a democracy since the mid-twentieth century. The party held power nearly continuously from its formation in 1955, a scant three years after the end of the U.S. occupation. In the House of Representatives (the lower but substantially more powerful house in Japan’s bicameral system), the LDP compiled an amazing record: the party did not lose a single election in more than a half century, until August 30, 2009, when the Democracy Party of Japan won a stunning upset victory. Generations of Japanese have grown up knowing no governing party other than the LDP. The only interruption to the party’s rule was a brief ten-month period in 1993–94, when a small group split from the LDP to seize power as part of a disparate coalition that did little more than pass an electoral reform bill before falling apart. Much more significant than that episode, this electoral result seems likely to have important implications for the way in which Japan’s democracy works. Nearly 60 percent of LDP incumbents were turned out, and many sitting and former ministers, even a former prime minister, lost their seats. For the DPJ, on the other hand, election night brought only smiles. The party captured an amazing 308 of the 480 seats in the Diet—an all-time record—and only seven DPJ district candidates did not find their way into the Diet. The DPJ more than doubled the LDP’s 119 seats. What makes this election result even more surprising is that in the last House of Representatives election in 2005, the LDP engineered its greatest triumph

The Reinvention of Sharī‘a under the British Raj: In Search of Authenticity and Certainty

Abstract: Influenced by Orientalist assumptions and Utilitarian ideals, and needing to enforce a system of adjudication that responded to their interests, the East India Company's officers selected among varied religious texts a set of norms and tried to apply them consistently. The decision to rely on texts rather than practice, the choice of certain precepts at the expense of others, and their rigid application ran counter to the traditional administration of justice, which had been fluid, contextual, and plural. They also distorted the meaning of Hanafi fikh, turning what had been an instrument of legitimation, a moral reference, and a source of social standing into a system of organized dispute settlement. The emphasis on religious textual sources and the attempt to use them as a basis for codification coincided with the idea, which gained ground in the nineteenth century among Muslim reformist movements, that political weakness could be countered by returning to a pristine scripturalist Islam, focused on its legal aspects and seen as a systematic doctrine devoid of ambiguities. These ideas can be also found in the Islamist thought that subsequently spread among urban reformist movements and in legal reforms adopted in Pakistan. A review of case studies, however, suggests that the flexibility and contextuality that characterized the enforcement of Islamic law in precolonial Islam is still to be found in legal practice.

Respecting Different Ways of Life: A Daoist Ethics of Virtue in the Zhuangzi

Abstract: As the ethics of virtue, with a focus on cultivating admirable traits of character instead of commanding adherence to rigid rules, becomes increasingly popular in contemporary moral discourses, scholars have tried to find evidence of virtue ethics in such ancient traditions as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. This article explores the possibility of a virtue ethics in a tradition that has been largely neglected, Chinese Daoism, by focusing on one of the most important classics in this tradition, the Zhuangzi. Contrary to a common misconception of the Zhuangzi as skeptical, relativistic, and therefore empty of any guide to moral life, it presents a solid normative ethics through various stories, and this normative ethics is a virtue ethics. The most important trait of character in this Daoist virtue ethics is respect for different ways of life—a virtue not discussed in any familiar versions of virtue ethics in the West and yet most valuable to contemporary life in a global and pluralistic society.

Borders, Diaspora, and Regional Connections: Trends in Asian Queer Studies

Abstract: Over approximately the past fifteen years, English-language scholarship on same-sex sexuality and transgenderism in Asia has expanded dramatically.1 One of the most significant themes in this literature is the exploration of sexuality and gender as a form of identity (or "subjectivity"), practice, and cultural dis course (or "cultural logic") that has emerged in the context of the transnational movement of concepts, bodies, and imagery. The turn to issues of transnational ism, diaspora, and border crossings works toward interrogating and deconstruct ing assumptions of steamrolling Westernization or stable identity categories that fall along binaries such as traditional/modern or local/global. Within this growing literature, authors struggle with representing forms of same-sex sexuality and transgenderism not as simple products of Westernization or, alternatively, as "authentic" indigenous sexualities, but rather as complex responses to, and exten sions of, culturally determined systems of gender, nationalisms, capitalist labor and consumer practices, urbanization, and transnational movements. A second significant and related theme is the exploration of connections and commonalities across Asia and within Asian subregions, particularly Southeast Asia. The politics and logistics of research have compelled researchers to frame their studies in terms of national cultures. For example, the need to learn national languages (Central Thai, Mandarin Chinese, etc.), the organiz ation of area studies in terms of national cultures (Japanese studies, Vietnamese

Making Family and Nation: Hindu Marriage Law in Early Postcolonial India

Abstract: Postcolonial states responded differently to the group-specific personal laws that were recognized in many colonial societies. While some retained most colonial personal laws (e.g., Lebanon) and others introduced major changes (e.g., Tunisia), most introduced modest yet significant changes (e.g., Egypt, India, Indonesia). Indian policy makers retained personal laws specific to religious groups, and did not change the minority laws, although minority recognition did not rule out culturally grounded reform. They changed Hindu law alone based on their values, as they saw Hindu social reform as the key to making nation and citizen. Reform proposals drew from the modern Western valuation of the nuclear family, and from Hindu traditions that were reformed to meet standards of modernity. As Hindu nationalists and other conservatives defended lineage authority, legislators retained much of the lineage control over ancestral property. But they provided limited divorce rights, reduced restrictions on mate choice, and banned bigamy. The visions driving the initial proposals influenced many later changes in India's family laws.

Refugees, Land Reclamation, and Militarized Landscapes in Wartime China: Huanglongshan, Shaanxi, 1937–45

Abstract: This article investigates relationships between refugee flight and environmental change during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 through a study of land reclamation projects in Shaanxi's Huanglongshan region. During the conflict with Japan, China's Nationalist government resettled thousands of refugees who fled war-induced natural disasters in Henan to Huanglongshan to reclaim uncultivated wastelands. Land reclamation reflected an ongoing militarization of China's environment, as political leaders looked to land reclamation to provide relief for refugees, further economic mobilization by exploiting untapped natural resources, and foster an ethos of dedication and self-sacrifice for the nation. Unrestrained land clearance decimated forests that had returned to Huanglongshan's hillsides since its abandonment during the rebellions of the late Qing. By compelling displaced people to cultivate marginal lands, war also threatened the health of refugees by exposing them to endemic disease. Yet the militarizing logic that motivated these reclamation initiatives continued to reshape China's natural landscape long after the Sino-Japanese War ended.

Rule by Man and Rule by Law in Early Republican China: Contributions to a Theoretical Debate

Abstract: “Rule by man” and “rule by law” are frequently invoked categories in Chinese political discourse past and present, but their theoretical scope and possible interpretation remain highly controversial. Seeking to gain analytical traction on these categories, the author revisits an early Republican debate over whether virtuous men or well-designed institutions were more essential to securing political stability and social transformation in the aftermath of China's 1911 Republican Revolution. Focusing on the work of Liang Qichao, Zhang Shizhao, and their interlocutors, the author shows how “man” and “law” not only play roles in legitimizing one or another form of rule, but also help formulate questions about the interaction between individual effort and institutional influence. Viewed from this theoretical rather than historical angle, the debates become important not only for understanding wider issues in early Republican political discourse, but also for critically interrogating their contemporary variants from Chinese—rather than Western liberal-democratic—perspectives.

Global Environmental Encounters in Southwest China: Fleeting Intersections and “Transnational Work”

Abstract: This paper engages with the critical literature on development through a study of transnational environmentalism in China. Within the last decade, international development efforts have become increasingly important in shaping China's encounters with global sensibilities, funds, and projects. The author builds on scholarship that approaches China as a transnational entity and examines the emerging politics of the environment in China. Based on an ethnographic case study of a conservation and development project in Yunnan Province, the paper argues against conceptions that international development agendas can be unilaterally imposed. Rather, it suggests that in order to gain traction, agendas require a variety of agents. These agents create convergences through forms of “transnational work,” by and through particular social engagements. Finally, this paper reveals how such convergences remain tenuous and fleeting, and can be quickly dissolved when one side or another changes its orientation.

The Great Rumor Mill: Gossip, Mass Media, and the Ninja Fear

Abstract: Different methods of communication imply different social and political relations. Generally, mass media are distributed through centralized broadcast stations or presses and controlled by the elite. Face-to-face communications, which circulate through physically close contact between people, have more subversive potential. The author analyzes rumors spread in the press and by word of mouth during October and November 1998 in East Java, Indonesia. Conspirators and ninjas were suspected of killing many alleged sorcerers and persecuting the traditionalist Muslim majority. In response, local residents established guards against, attacked, and even killed suspected ninjas. Suspicion also was directed against the government, elites, and the armed forces. This subversive content is attributed to the interaction of two forms of communication: oral rumors became written rumors, and vice versa.

The Rule of Colonial Indifference: Rape on Trial in Early Colonial India, 1805–57

Abstract: This article explores the history of intraracial (Indian-on-Indian) rape in early colonial India. Though at times uneven and unpredictable in their rulings, British judges created a set of evidentiary requirements and a body of legal decisions that were as harsh on rape victims as the precolonial Islamic system was presumed to be. Despite the colonial promise of a more modern and humane criminal law, the gradual displacement of Islamic law did little to widen rape victims' path to legal remedy. English common law presumptions about the frequency of false charges and a suspicion of women's claims combined with a colonial insistence on the peculiarity of Indian culture to make it difficult for victims of rape to prevail in court. The colonial legal treatment of the “unsensational” crime of rape was rather unsensational. It largely reflected contemporary trends in England, which raises the important question of what was distinctively colonial about it.

Explaining divergent responses to the North Korean abductions issue in Japan and South Korea

Abstract: This article examines the divergent approaches pursued by Japan and South Korea in their attempts to resolve an issue that is related to a fundamental responsibility of sovereign states: the protection of citizens. The case considered here is North Korea's abduction of Japanese and South Korean nationals. In Japan, the abduction issue has taken center stage in the country's North Korea policy, whereas in South Korea, recent administrations have downplayed the issue—despite the fact that nearly 500 South Korean citizens remain detained in North Korea, compared to fewer than 20 known Japanese abductions. The authors find that the key to understanding the divergent responses lies in the politicization of specific, ostensibly apolitical demands for the state to fulfill its duty to protect citizens. In particular, the proximity of the abductions issue to key nationalist themes, which politicians in each country use to mobilize support, prevents the matter from being addressed in a neutral way.

The Intricacies of Premodern Asian Connections

Abstract: his study of the reemergence of intra-Asian connections published in this issue of the Journal of Asian Studies, Prasenjit Duara has aptly underscored the importance of comprehending the patterns of interactions and connectivities among Asian societies during the precolonial period. The following comments will reaffirm most of his contentions, but also will problematize the issue, especially in regard to some of the neglected topics and the conceptualization of the premodern interactions. I will address three issues. First, Duara s essay emphasizes Asian interactions, mostly through the maritime channels, starting sometime in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. He also mentions, albeit briefly, that these contacts extend further back in history. The first section of my comments will elaborate on these pre-thirteenth-century linkages in order to demonstrate that they contributed significantly to the formation of later networks of exchange. I will highlight the role played by the intermediary states and peoples in linking various parts of Asia during the first millennium of the common era. The current emphasis on premodern India and China often obscures the important contributions made by these intermediary states and people. Second, I will argue that conflicts and warfare were also important elements of cross-cultural interactions in precolonial Asia. These often involved military confrontations and political aspirations to control strategic passes, straits, and territories. Thus, looking back into the past does not necessarily provide us with a model for peace and harmony that can be replicated in contemporary political discourse, as politicians from some Asian countries have tried to do.

From Undemocratic to Democratic Civil Society: Japan's Volunteer Fire Departments

Abstract: How do undemocratic civic organizations become compatible with democratic civil society? How do local organizations merge older patriarchal, hierarchical values and practices with newer more egalitarian, democratic ones? This article tells the story of how volunteer fire departments have done this in Japan. Their transformation from centralized war instruments of an authoritarian regime to local community safety organizations of a full-fledged democracy did not happen overnight. A slow process of demographic and value changes helped the organizations adjust to more democratic social values and practices. The way in which these organizations have made the transition offers important lessons for emerging democracies around the world.

An ordinary country.

Abstract: Africans see themselves as a nation that loves sport, but with the World Cup in football imminent, there appears to be a sense of exhaustion both in the media and among the population. One important reason is that football does not dominate the public imagination of sport, as cricket and rugby do. The game is played and loved in the black townships, the fortunes of African footballplaying nations are followed devotedly, and players such as Didier Drogba have a larger-than-life standing in the country. But football has not become a metaphor for the nation, as rugby and cricket have become. Whether this reflects a racial affiliation alone is hard to get at, because the local team, Bafana (which could be genially translated as "the boys"), are eighty-eighth in the FIFA rankings, without a ghost of a chance of winning the Cup, while at rugby and cricket, South Africa are world beaters. The moment when South Africa won the World Cup in rugby in 1995 was a deeply emotional moment of racial reconciliation and a rainbow vision of the future, sentimentalized in Clint Eastwoods film Invictus (2009), which was based on John Carlin s book. Carlin s melancholy epigraph reflects the general mood now, with perceptions of a decline of political morals, the incapacity of the state to carry out projects, and the fraying of civil society. While mega-events such as the Beijing Olympics and the Commonwealth Games in Delhi this year overtly appeal to notions of national glory, it is a moot question what order of nationalism is being summoned in these contexts. National pride is in short supply in South Africa. The international press continues with the general theme of Afro-pessimism, remarking on the high levels of crime, AIDS, and prostitution in the country. Local newspapers mirror these anxieties they are replete with stories of corruption, lawlessness, and the absence of intellectual life in the public sphere. Very few across the racial

Inauthentic Sovereignty: Law and Legal Institutions in Manchukuo

Abstract: Although Manchukuo is easily dismissed as a puppet of Japan, at the time of its founding, it was one of many examples of a partially sovereign state. Specific compromises of Manchukuo's sovereignty shaped the formation of its domestic institutions, such as the legal sphere, in tangible ways. Manchukuo handed over to Japan the power to staff and ideologically mold its judiciary, while the tutelary attitude that Japan took toward the state was concretely manifested in aspects of Manchukuo penal and civil law, and a surprisingly contentious path to the abrogation of Japanese extraterritoriality. With the outbreak of war, Manchukuo effectively surrendered its national sovereignty to the needs of the Japanese empire, sacrificing its jurisdictional integrity as well. While not denying the deliberate attempt made by Japan to misrepresent the independence of Manchukuo, this article also seeks to understand more precisely how Manchukuo's architects assumed certain limits to state sovereignty, and how this understanding systematically crippled the new state's legal institutions.

Making Space for Islam: Religion, Science, and Politics in Contemporary Malaysia

Abstract: In October 2007, Malaysia celebrated sending its first astronaut into space, as part of a cooperative venture on board a Russian space mission. As Malaysia's first astronaut was a Muslim, the Malaysian government commissioned, through its Department of Islamic Development, a project to create a definitive set of guidelines for the practice of Islam in outer space, specifically on board the International Space Station. What may on the surface appear to be a practical exercise in clarifying religious practice reveals upon closer examination to be a complex restructuring of Malaysia's domestic and international politics, with the role of Islam as the catalytic and somewhat controversial centerpiece.

The Begims of the Mystic Feast: Turco-Mongol Tradition in the Mughal Harem

Abstract: The founders of India's Mughal Empire were the last surviving remnants of the Timurid-Mongol ruling elite, descendants of Timur and Chingis Khan, for whom the traditions and institutions of Central Asia were universally recognized and potent symbols of cultural prowess and legitimacy. These ideas and understandings were not abandoned in the dynasty's displacement and reestablishment in India. Among them remained a distinctly Timurid understanding of the rights and roles of elite women—not only with regard to their artistic production or patronage but also, in marked contrast to their contemporaries the Ottomans and Safavids, the power offered to young, even childless, royal women and their active participation in dynastic survival and political success. In generations of Mughal rule on the Subcontinent, the comfortable cultural accommodation of independent elite women was a vital component of the Timurid cultural and social legacy, inherited and carefully maintained at the royal courts of India.

Asia's Declining Death Penalty

Abstract: For most cultures and most of human history, the death penalty was taken for granted and directed at a wide range of offenders. In ancient Israel, death was prescribed for everything from murder and magic to blasphemy, bestiality, and cursing one's parents. In eighteenth-century Britain, more than 200 crimes were punishable by death, including theft, cutting down a tree, and robbing a rabbit warren. China of the late Qing dynasty had some 850 capital crimes, many reflecting the privileged position of male over female and senior over junior.

The Idea of Asia and Its Ambiguities

Abstract: Duara s "Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times" is a rich and inspiring paper. The distinction between the concept of region and the concept of regionalization shows the authors historical approach. Asia as a region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the result of imperial regionalism and the anti-imperialist regionalization project. The question of Asian "modernity" must eventually deal with the relationships both between Asia and European colonialism and between Asia and modern capitalism. A lot of research has shown Asia as a region from a long historical perspective, but most can be thought of as a modern construction of the early history of Asia in light of imperial or anti-imperialist projects in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Apocryphal Suicide of Saigō Takamori: Samurai, Seppuku , and the Politics of Legend

Abstract: According to standard reference works, the Meiji leader Saigō Takamori committed ritual suicide in 1877. A close reading of primary sources, however, reveals that Saigō could not have killed himself as commonly described; instead, he was crippled by a bullet wound and beheaded by his followers. Saigō's suicide became an established part of Japanese history only in the early 1900s, with the rise of bushidō as a national ideology. By contrast, in the 1870s and 1880s, the story of Saigō's suicide was just one of many fantastic accounts of his demise, which also included legends that he ascended to Mars or escaped to Russia. Remarkably, historians have treated Saigō's suicide as an unproblematic account of his death, rather than as a legend codified some four decades later. This essay links the story of Saigō's suicide to the rise of modern Japanese nationalism, and examines other Saigō legends as counternarratives for modern Japan.

From Power to Value: Ranked Titles in an Egalitarian Society, Laos

Abstract: In the Southeast Asian highlands, different types of hierarchy appear as forms of social organization as well as devices for intersocietal communication. In the present case, ranked titles from centralized Tai Meuang hierarchies such as the Lao or the Lue in southern China have been adopted by Rmeet (Lamet) uplanders in northern Laos, where the main type of hierarchy is the decentralized superiority of wife-givers over wife-takers. In the process of adoption, title-giving was subordinated to wife-giving, and today the wife-givers are the ritual source of ranks. In the course of history, title-giving has thus been integrated into Rmeet forms of sociocosmic reproduction while, at the same time, titles have lost their initial function of communication between upland societies and lowland state formations.