A Guide

By Ian Jeffries

China’s role in global affairs today continues to rise. This book provides an authoritative, comprehensive and detailed overview of contemporary economic developments in China. Key topics include agriculture; the market gradually replacing central planning; the global financial crisis; the reform of state-owned industrial enterprises; the non-state sectors; the ‘open-door’ policy (including the WTO, exchange rate policy, and inward and outward direct foreign investment); and China’s economic performance in general.

The book continues - and adds to – the overview of developments up to May 2006 which were covered in the author’s China: A Guide to Economic and Political Developments (2006), and is the companion volume to Political Developments in Contemporary China: A Guide (2010) - both published by Routledge.

ISBN: 9780415478663

Published July 30 2010 by Routledge.

A Guide

By Ian Jeffries

China’s role in global events today cannot be overestimated.

This book provides a comprehensive and detailed overview of contemporary political developments in China. Key topics covered include: China's international relations with its neighbours and with the international community more widely; demographic developments; Taiwan; Macao and Hong Kong, Tibet, Uighurs; human rights, health issues (including bird flu); food contamination and defective goods; and a chronology of political developments, congresses and Central Committee sessions since May 2006; the earthquake of 12 May 2008 and the 2008 Olympic Games.

The book continues - and adds to – the overview of developments up to May 2006 which were covered in the author’s China: A Guide to Economic and Political Developments (2006), and is the companion volume to Economic Developments in Contemporary China: A Guide (2010) - both published by Routledge.

ISBN: 9780415580854

Published July 29 2010 by Routledge.

Anti-Japanism since the 1980s

By Narrelle Morris

The aim of this book is to examine and analyse the phenomenon of ‘Japan-bashing’, from its invention and popularisation in the United States in the late 1970s to the emergence of other national variants, including in Australia and Japan, to its gradual decline in the late 1990s. It is the first major book-length study of ‘Japan-bashing from a multinational perspective, one that attempts to place ‘Japan-bashing’ in its proper historical context and to examine its operation and legacy in the twenty-first century.

Despite its importance in the study of discourses about Japan, as well as in understanding broader global changes in the late twentieth century and beyond, the phenomenon of ‘Japan-bashing’ remains largely neglected in published writings. Moreover, it is a far more complex phenomenon than has been assessed thus far. While, on first glance, ‘Japan-bashing’ merely seems to recall other periods in which Japan has been viewed as a dangerous ‘other’ to ‘the West’, such as the Western emphasis on the ‘yellow peril’ from the late nineteenth century as well as Allied anti-Japanese propaganda during World War II, ‘Japan-bashing’ also had its own distinctive characteristics. Moreover, while ‘Japan-bashing’ is often described as a quaint historical, rather than a pressing contemporary, phenomenon, it is actually by no means extinct. The ongoing influence of ‘Japan-bashing’ also has parallels in other ‘bashing’ phenomena, such as ‘China-bashing’.

This book will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students in Japanese studies and international relations.

ISBN: 9780415499347

Published July 28 2010 by Routledge.

By Bina D’Costa

This book gives a detailed historical analysis of nationbuilding processes and how these are closely linked to statebuilding and to issues of war crime, gender and sexuality, and marginalization of minority groups.

With a focus on the Indian subcontinent, the author demonstrates how the state itself is involved in the construction of a gendered identity, and how control of women and their sexuality is central to the nationbuilding project. She applies a critical feminist approach to two major conflicts in the Indian subcontinent – the Partition of India in 1947 and the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971 – and offers suggestions for addressing historical injustices and war crimes in the context of modern Bangladesh. Addressing how the social and political elites were able to construct and legitimize a history of the state that ignored these issues, the author suggests a critical re-examination of the history of the creation of Bangladesh which takes into account the rise of the Islamic right and their involvement in war crimes.

Looking at the impact that notions of nation-state and nationalism have on women from a critical feminist perspective, the book will be an important addition to the literature on gender studies, international relations and South Asian politics.

ISBN: 9780415565660

Published July 23 2010 by Routledge.

An Interactive Perspective

Edited by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi, Kaori H. Okano, Sarane Boocock

This volume examines how Japan’s increasingly multicultural population has impacted on the lives of minority children and their peers at school, and how schools are responding to this trend in terms of providing minority children with opportunities and preparing them for the adult society.

The contributors focus on interactions between individuals and among groups representing diverse cultural backgrounds, and explore how such interactions are changing the landscape of education in increasingly multicultural Japan. Drawing on detailed micro-level studies of schooling, the chapters reveal the ways in which these individuals and groups (long-existing minority groups, newcomers, and the ‘mainstream Japanese’) interact, and the significant consequences of such interactions on learning at school and the system of education as a whole. While the educational achievement of children of varying minority groups continues to reflect their places in the social hierarchy, the boundaries of individual and group categories are negotiated by mutual interactions and remain fluid and situational.

Minorities and Multiculturalism in Japanese Education provides important insights into bottom-up policy making processes and consciously brings together English and Japanese scholarship. As such, it will be an important resource for those interested in education and minority issues in Japan.

ISBN: 9780415559386

Published July 21 2010 by Routledge.

By Yukiko Nishikawa

There is a growing interest in human security in Southeast Asia. This book firstly explores the theoretical and conceptual basis of human security, before focusing on the region itself. It shows how human security has been taken up as a central part of security policy in individual states in Southeast Asia, as well as in the regional security policy within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The book discusses domestic challenges for human security including the insurgencies in southern Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Transnational security issues such as terrorism, drugs, human trafficking and the situation in Burma are explored by the author, and the ‘ASEAN’ way of contrasting the values and approaches of Southeast Asian countries with those in the West is assessed. By focusing on the ongoing changes and efforts to achieve human security in Southeast Asia, this book contributes to theoretical debates on human security as well as regional studies on Southeast Asia.

ISBN: 9780415478687

Published July 16 2010 by Routledge.

By Ann Brooks

Philosophical debates around individualization and the implications for intimacy, reflexivity and identity have occupied a central part of social and cultural theorizing in the West in the last decade. In fact, late modernity has become conspicuously engaged with issues of intimacy, reflexivity and identity. The author analyses the relevance of these debates in the context of contemporary Asia and combines an analysis of significant social theorists including Beck, Giddens, Bourdieu, McNay, Adkins, and Ong with an application of these debates to social, political and cultural contexts. Drawing on empirical research, case studies, global reports, media and academic literature, the book provides a relevant, wide-ranging and contemporary analysis of the debates on Asian culture and society.

In the Foreword to the book Bryan Turner comments:

‘Professor Brooks shows consequently that the intimate and emotional cultures that have been described by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck with respect to the West have not arrived in Asia or at least that they have not become visible and permanent aspects of the social landscape.’

ISBN: 9780415551090

Published July 14 2010 by Routledge.

The Chinese View and the Contribution of Wang Gungwu

Edited by Zheng Yongnian

Despite Beijing’s repeated assurance that China’s rise will be "peaceful", the United States, Japan and the European Union as well as many of China's Asian neighbours feel uneasy about the rise of China. Although China’s rise could be seen as inevitable, it remains uncertain as to how a politically and economically powerful China will behave, and how it will conduct its relations with the outside world. One major problem with understanding China’s international relations is that western concepts of international relations only partially explain China’s approach. China’s own flourishing, indigeneous community of international relations scholars have borrowed many concepts from the west, but their application has not been entirely successful, so the work of conceptualizing and theorizing China’s approach to international relations remains incomplete.

Written by some of the foremost scholars in the field of China studies, this book focuses on the work of Wang Gungwu - one of the most influential scholars writing on international relations - including topics such as empire, nation-state, nationalism, state ideology, and the Chinese view of world order. Besides honouring Wang Gungwu as a great scholar, the book explores how China can be integrated more fully into international relations studies and theories; discusses the extent to which existing IR theory succeeds or fails to explain Chinese IR behaviour, and demonstrates how the study of Chinese experiences can enrich the IR field.

ISBN: 9780415576079

Published July 14 2010 by Routledge.

Comparative Inquiries in Science, History, and Ethics

Edited by Jing Bao Nie, Nanyan Guo, Mark Selden, Arthur Kleinman

ISBN: 9780415583770

Published July 09 2010 by Routledge.

Memba, Tongzhi and Golden Boy

By Travis S. K. Kong

This book presents a groundbreaking exploration of masculinities and homosexualities amongst Chinese gay men. It provides a sociological account of masculinity, desire, sexuality, identity and citizenship in contemporary Chinese societies, and within the constellation of global culture.

Kong reports the results of an extensive ethnographic study of contemporary Chinese gay men in a wide range of different locations including mainland China, Hong Kong and the Chinese overseas community in London, showing how Chinese gay men live their everyday lives. Relating Chinese male homosexuality to the extensive social and cultural theories on gender, sexuality and the body, postcolonialism and globalisation, the book examines the idea of queer space and numerous 'queer flows' – of capital, bodies, ideas, images, and commodities – around the world.

The book concludes that different gay male identities – such as the conspicuously consuming memba in Hong Kong, the urban tongzhi, the 'money boy' in China and the feminised 'golden boy' in London – emerge in different locations, and are all caught up in the transnational flow of queer cultures which are at once local and global.

ISBN: 9780415451895

Published July 07 2010 by Routledge.