Asian studies

About: Asian studies is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 7851 publications have been published within this topic receiving 72906 citations. The topic is also known as: Asia studies & Oriental studies.

Becoming Asian American: Second-Generation Chinese and Korean American Identities

Abstract: In Becoming Asian American, Nazli Kibria draws upon extensive interviews she conducted with second-generation Chinese and Korean Americans in Boston and Los Angeles who came of age during the 1980s and 1990s to explore the dynamics of race, identity, and adaptation within these communities. Moving beyond the frameworks created to study other racial minorities and ethnic whites, she examines the various strategies used by members of this group to define themselves as both Asian and American. In her discussions on such topics as childhood, interaction with non-Asian Americans, college, work, and the problems of intermarriage and child-raising, Kibria finds wide discrepancies between the experiences of Asian Americans and those described in studies of other ethnic groups. While these differences help to explain the unusually successful degree of social integration and acceptance into mainstream American society enjoyed by this "model minority," it is an achievement that Kibria's interviewees admit they can never take for granted. Instead, they report that maintaining this acceptance "requires constant effort on their part." Kibria suggests further developments may resolve this situation-especially the emergence of a new kind of pan-Asian American identity that would complement the Chinese or Korean American identity rather than replace it.

Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought

Abstract: What is the place of Eastern thought - Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism - in the Western intellectual tradition? Oriental Enlightenment shows how, despite current talk of 'globalization', there is still a reluctance to accept that the West could have borrowed anything of significance from the East, and explores a critique of the 'orientalist' view that we must regard any study of the East through the lens of Western colonialism and domination.Oriental Enlightenment provides a lucid introduction to the fascination Eastern thought has exerted on Western minds since the Renaissance.

National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China

Abstract: In "National Past-Times", Ann S. Anagnost explores the fashioning and refashioning of modern Chinese subjectivity as it relates to the literal and figurative body of the nation. In essays revealing the particular temporality of the modern Chinese nation-state, Anagnost examines the disparate eras of its recent past and its propensity for continually looking backward in order to face the future. Using interviews and participant observation as well as close readings of official documents and propaganda materials, and popular media, Anagnost notes the discontinuities in the nation's narrative - moments where this narrative has been radically reorganised at critical junctures in China's modern history. Covering a broad range of issues relating to representation and power - issues that have presented themselves with particular clarity in the years since the violent crackdown on the student movement of 1989 - National Past-Times critiques the ambiguous possibilities produced by the market, as well as new opportunities for 'unfreedom' in the discipline of labour and the commodification of women. Anagnost begins with a retrospective reflection on the practice of 'speaking bitterness' in socialist revolutionary practice. Subsequent essays discuss the culture debates of the 1980s, the discourse of social disorder, the issue of population control, the film "The Story of Qiu Ju", and anomalies at the theme park "Splendid China." "National Past-Times" will interest scholars in anthropology and Asian studies, and in the intersection between cultural studies and international affairs.

Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics

Abstract: "Minority Rules" is an ethnography of a Chinese people known as the Miao, a group long consigned to the remote highlands and considered backward by other Chinese. Now the nation's fifth largest minority, the Miao number nearly eight million people speaking various dialects and spread out over seven provinces. In a theoretically innovative work that combines methods from both anthropology and cultural studies, Louisa Schein examines the ways Miao ethnicity is constructed and reworked by the state, by non-state elites, and by the Miao themselves, all in the context of China's post-socialist reforms and its increasing exchange and fascination with the West. She offers eloquently argued interventions into debates over nationalism, ethnic subjectivity, and the ethnography of the state. Posing questions about gender, cultural politics, and identity, Schein examines how non-Miao people help to create Miao ethnicity by depicting them as both feminised keepers of Chinese tradition and as exotic others against which dominant groups can assert their own modernity. In representing and consuming aspects of their own culture, Miao distance themselves from the idea that they are less than modern. Thus, Schein explains, everyday practices, village rituals, journalistic encounters, and tourism events are not just moments of cultural production but also performances of modernity through which others are made primitive. Schein finds that these moments frequently highlight internal differences among the Miao and demonstrates how not only minorities but more generally peasants and women offer a valuable key to understanding China as it renegotiates its place in the global order. Based on extensive, multisite fieldwork, this book will interest scholars of Asian studies, anthropology, gender studies, post-colonialism, ethnic studies, and cultural studies.