bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Problem of the Fifth Modernization—A Review Article
Authors: Harrison James P.
Published: April 2006

Statements on Democracy Wall in Beijing and in posters and underground publications throughout China, especially in 1978 and 1979, document in depth for the first time the arguments of Chinese dissidents. The dissidents maintain that without “the Fifth Modernization” of guaranteed personal freedoms and “true socialist democracy,” the four modernizations cannot succeed and China cannot become a “great socialist country.” Recent publications, some of which are reviewed in this article, give a fair sampling of these arguments and must be taken into account in future evaluations of the Chinese Revolution.
Epic and History in Early China: The Matter of Wu Tzu-hsü
Authors: Johnson David
Published: April 2006

The interconnected body of stories about Ch'un-ch'iu-Warring States times, known to most Chinese and embodied in a wide variety of verbal forms both oral and written, was a secular mythology—secular because it concerned men acting in the datable past, mythology because it was invested with a special authority for the culture at large. In my study of the sources and transmission of one small part of this mythology, the matter of Wu Tzu-hsii, I conclude that in the period down to the Former Han regional epics and hero stories were important vehicles for the transmission of Wu Tzu-hsü's story and of other stories like it. This part of Chinese verbal culture underwent a profound transformation during the imposition of centralized national rule in Ch'in and Han times. The epic tradition gradually disappeared and the old stories that survived were infused with a new meaning by historians who were driven by what can only be called a didactic imperative. Thus, epic was overwhelmed by history—China's secular scripture. The early literary versions of the matter of Wu Tzu-hsü provide compelling evidence of this.
The Boundaries of Compassion: Buddhism and National Tradition in Japanese Pilgrimage
Authors: Foard James H.
Published: April 2006

The author demonstrates how a Buddhist pilgrimage tradition affected symbolic and social changes in early modern Japan. After exploring the history of the Saikoku pilgrimage and its practice in the Tokugawa period, he suggests that Victor Turner's theories of “communitas” and “liminality,” while adequately explaining the “social modality” of the pilgrimage, do not account for the religious and cultural paradigms encountered by the pilgrim. To understand these paradigms, eighteenth and nineteenth century pilgrim guides are analyzed to show how the semantic field of the pilgrim integrated the universal salvation of Buddhism with a distinctly national tradition.
New Policies in the Communes: Notes on Rural Societal Structures in China, 1976–1981
Authors: Domes Jürgen
Published: April 2006

Since 1978 dramatic changes have occurred in Chinese rural societal policies with respect to the three levels of collective agricultural production; the parameters for family sideline occupations and village markets; and the extension and allocation of private plots. In general, these changes reflected a distinct retreat from the former emphasis on collective production. The author describes the changes that have taken place in rural societal policies and discusses the difficulties that have arisen in implementing the new policies. He also comments on statements by the current leadership used to support and justify new policies.
Presidential Address: Area Studies as a Critical Discipline
Authors: Schwartz Benjamin I.
Published: April 2006

As we all know, the modest, colorless, and ambiguous term “area studies” emerged during the course of World War II as a way of describing one minor enterprise in the war effort. It was an enterprise designed to achieve an encapsulated understanding of the unknown areas of the world in which we suddenly found ourselves engaged. During and after the war, most area studies were contemporary in orientation and, given the circumstances of their origin, extremely vulnerable to the charge of serving “nonscholarly” political or military interests.
Issues in Southeast Asian History: Room for Interpretation—A Review Article
Authors: Emmerson Donald K.
Published: April 2006

Three dimensions capture much of the variation in Western scholarly images of Southeast Asian history. Different works attribute to the region different combinations of relativeunityordiversity, continuityorchange, andoriginalityordependence. Each of these choices summarizes a major controversy in the study of Southeast Asia. Together they form a cube that can be used to review existing literature and to identify room for future interpretation. In the 1970s, the antithesis of original continuity(historicism)and dependent change(modernism)was orthodox. In the 1980s, scholars could transcend these alternatives by recasting them as an opposition of original change(microdynamism)to dependent continuity(macrosystemism). Historicist and modernist writings have relied too heavily on psychocultural and political explanations, as have the rationalizations of indigenous elites. Pursuing the proposed dialectic could therefore help to rescue economic differentiation and conflict from their present neglect as aids to understanding.
The Impact of Railroads on The Malayan Economy, 1874–1941
Authors: Kaur Amarjit
Published: April 2006

The main contention of this essay is that railways in Malaya were constructed specifically to serve the tin and rubber industries which were dominated by Western capitalist enterprise. The railroads were concentrated in the west coast states, reinforcing the trend toward economic specialization that had already begun. The pattern of subsequent capital investment which was related to railroad development produced wide regional inequalities. It gave rise to a spatial dualism that was most evident in the emergence of export-oriented enclaves and the associated infrastructure in the western states, leaving the eastern states outside the mainstream of capitalist development. The railways did not stimulate well-rounded economic development in the country because they had little or no multiplier effect on the local economy. The benefits of railroad construction accrued largely to the British economy. I seek to make clear the links between railway development in Malaya, the emergence of an extractive-colonial economy heavily specialized in tin and rubber, and the incorporation of the country into the international capitalist system.
“Public Opinion” and Political Power:Qingyiin Late Nineteenth Century China
Authors: Rankin Mary Backus
Published: April 2006

The author reinterprets the phenomenon ofqingyi(represented by members of theQingliuand Emperor's party) as passing through five phases from 1875 to 1898, in the course of which it enlarged its scope of demands by lower- and middle-grade metropolitan officials for a broader distribution of political power and contributed to the formation of public opinion. This evolution was attended by the rise of analogous demands for political restructuring by men in two other environments: extrabureaucratic managerial and scholarly circles and the treaty ports. Militant patriotism mobilized and eventually united different groups, stimulating nationally conscious opinion that was alienated from the political leadership. The failure of government leaders to accommodate new political initiatives redirectedqingyiinto provincial movements and set the stage for the competition between centralizing bureaucratic and societally based programs for change that led to the 1911 revolution.
The Effects of Rice Agriculture on Prehistoric Korea
Authors: Nelson Sarah M.
Published: April 2006

Rice was first introduced from China 1122 B.C., but millet had already been grown there for many centuries.” When Hulbert (1906:15) wrote these words in the early years of this century, he presumably followed some written or oral tradition regarding Kija's (Chi-tzu), the legendary agnate of the last Shang king, bringing rice to Korea. It is interesting that there was a tradition that millet cultivation preceded rice, which came from northern China at approximately 1100 B.C. Seventy-five years after Hulbert recorded the tradition in English, archaeological research has demonstrated that millet did precede rice in Korea, and that the timing of the introduction of rice at the end of the Shang dynasty is probably too late rather than too early.
Comments: On Kim and Nelson; On Kim and Choe
Authors: Choe Chong-pil , Nelson Sarah M.
Published: April 2006

Since the mid-1970s, Korean archaeologists have turned their interests to sociocultural change in Korean prehistory rather than simply the analysis of stylistic variation of artifacts. Studies on subsistence patterns in both the Chŭlmun and Mumun periods have been greatly encouraged and aided by scientific excavations. As in many other areas of the world, plant domestication has not been thoroughly studied in Korea.
Early Southeast Asia: Old Wine in New Skins?—A Review Article
Authors: Hutterer Karl L.
Published: April 2006

Early SoutheastAsia is an impressive collection of papers dealing with the archaeology, history, epigraphy, art history, and geography of early Southeast Asian states and their development. The high scholarship of individual contributions notwithstanding, the collection as a whole demonstrates that the past thirty years have seen relatively little progress in understanding this important aspect of the social and cultural history of the region. Archaeologists have made many important new discoveries but have been unable to bring them to bear within a historical synthesis; related disciplines have dealt with other types of evidence but also seem unable to translate them into a common language of cultural and social meaning.
A Political Geography of Deities: Space and the Pantheon in Sinhalese Buddhism
Authors: Winslow Deborah
Published: April 2006

The author of this article examines the role of Sinhalese Buddhist deities within the long Sinhalese tradition of using Buddhism to support political authority. Extensive contemporary information on deity territories suggests that because state political integration involves territorial integration localized deities have both reflected and been used to bring about an integration of local people into state administrative structures. However, this integration is not brought about by having the territories of the deities parallel administrative units (which they do not); it is brought about by having people think that they do, think that the territories of the gods correspond level by level to the administrative villages, districts, and provinces. As the relationship between these levels and the state has changed historically, that is, when center-hinterland integration has gone from strong to weak to strong again, people's understanding of the pantheon appears to have changed as well.
The Evolution of a Young Revolutionary—Mao Zedong in 1919–1921
Authors: Scalapino Robert A.
Published: April 2006

The years from 1919 through 1921 represent a period of major change in the political views of Mao. At the outset, he was attracted to anarchism and liberalism. At the end, he was prepared to espouse Marxism-Leninism, not because he had encompassed its doctrines, but because he had been persuaded that it represented a technique for successful revolution. In these years, Mao began as a strong Han nationalist but later denounced Chinese “imperialism” and argued for a Hunan nation. A few months later, he was espousing internationalism. Underlying these changes was the alternate hope and despair that Mao felt for China as a nation. A deep-rooted Chineseness and a penchant for political activism characterized Mao throughout this and succeeding eras.
Development and Poverty Reduction in South Asia—A Review Article
Authors: DasGupta Jyotirindra
Published: April 2006

The author reviews a number of books dealing with economic development in South Asia. He discusses the fact that, although there have been three decades of sophisticated approaches to economic growth in South Asia, mass poverty remains entrenched. He attempts to account for the striking difference between the economic growth of East Asia and that of South Asia.
Introduction: Food, Famine, and the Chinese State
Authors: Li Lillian M.
Published: April 2006

This article delineates new approaches to the study of food and famine in Chinese history. Drawing primarily from the three other articles in the symposium, the author asks in what ways the Chinese state, primarily in the high Qing period, affected population growth, agricultural production, natural cycles, and food distribution, and what a historical perspective suggests about the People's Republic of China's efforts to feed its population.
Food Riots in the Qing Dynasty
Authors: Wong R. Bin
Published: April 2006

Competition over grain supplies produced conflict when the people controlling large stores of grain failed to sell or lend grain at prices and in quantities demanded by the people needing grain. These conflicts, known generally as food riots, took place within a general political economy of grain circulation that spanned a wide variety of local situations. A brief sketch of different types of grain circulation and forms of food rioting establishes the setting for case studies that show the range of possible food riot situations and official reactions to the problems posed by food riots. Materials from the case studies are then drawn on to address the general questions of why rioters acted as they did, why their actions became a common type of conflict in the Qing dynasty, and why food riots persisted through periods of political strength and weakness.
Comments from a South Asian Perspective: Food, Famine, and the Chinese State
Authors: Greenough Paul R.
Published: April 2006

Western writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found it plausible to refer to India and China in the same breath as if they were species of a single genus, employing concepts like “Oriental despotism” and “the Asiatic mode of production.” No more. Indeed, modern language and area studies have so impressed upon us the historical uniqueness of these two societies that only infrequently will scholars cite an idea or event in the one to illuminate the experience of the other. Nonetheless, there is much to be gained by making comparisons when they cast light on particular problems or reflect upon the methods of scholarship. I thus vault the Himalayas and discuss below some contrasts in the approaches taken and the results achieved when students of historical India and China have examined the problems of subsistence. The three fine papers by James Lee, Peter Perdue, and R. Bin Wong, and the stimulating introduction by Lillian M. Li provide the pegs for these brief comments.
Stability and Prosperity in Hong Kong: The Twilight of Laissez-faire Colonialism? — A Review Article
Authors: Chan Ming K.
Published: April 2006

Both Beijing and London have vowed to maintain Hong Kong's stability and prosperity in the uncertainty surrounding the expiration of the New Territories Lease in 1997. The six books under review are timely but not entirely successful attempts to trace local socioeconomic developments since the riots of 1967. Three major themes emerge. The still-prevalent Chinese family system and social values have provided the foundation for political stability during this period of drastic changes. The general “prosperity” also entails human sacrifices and widening inequitable distribution of this increased wealth. The policies of the colonial administration have been a far cry from the ideals of laissez-faire government, and yet much remains to be done to make Hong Kong a just society.
The Goddess Śītalā and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal
Authors: Nicholas Ralph W.
Published: April 2006

Śītalā, Goddess of Smallpox, is the preeminent tutelary deity of villages in southwestern Bengal, and a goddess of the same name has a prominent role in Hindu pantheons throughout northern India. Her rise to importance is closely related to the history of smallpox, which was not recognized, in Ayurvedic medical texts, as a serious or fatal disease before the seventh century A.D. There is no evidence of the Goddess of Smallpox before the tenth to twelfth centuries, and she appears to have attained her present special significance as goddess of the village in southwestern Bengal abruptly in the eighteenth century. Earlier Indian approaches to smallpox treatment were naturalistic; when Śītalā was added to the etiology of the disease, her worship was not seen as a replacement for the biologically based therapy, but as something different and complementary. The appearance of smallpox as an epidemic calamity, rather than as an ordinary disease, during a period of more general distress in rural Bengal, marked its goddess as a figure especially suitable for community worship.
Perspectives on Sociopolitical Transformations in Cambodia/Kampuchea—A Review Article
Authors: Ebihara May
Published: April 2006

Our understanding of Cambodia/Kampuchea's immediate past is gradually being enlarged by recent works dealing with pre-1975 Cambodian society, the development and policies of the Communist Khmer Rouge, and local life during the beginning of the Vietnamese occupation. Research using a broad range of primary source material, including a growing number of interviews with refugees, provides a more detailed picture than previously available of the two successive Kampuchean regimes. There remains, however, a persistent problem in many writings: political/ideological biases that can lead to different perspectives on the Khmer Rouge and on Kampuchea under the Vietnamese.
New Evidence on the Early Chinese Conception of Afterlife—A Review Article
Authors: Yü Ying-Shih
Published: April 2006

In reviewing Michael Loewe's Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality, the author presents, on the basis of recent archeological discoveries at Ma-wang-tui, Ch'angsha, Hunan, and other places, the indigenous Chinese views of afterlife, contrary to the dominant modern theory that there was no “other world” in Chinese thought before the advent of Buddhism. Newly found silk paintings and wooden documents of the early Former Han. period show beyond doubt that the Chinese had long developed their own beliefs in a “Heaven” and an “Underworld” after death. The author also discusses the evolution of the early Chinese conception of souls, such as hun and p'o. The symbolic meanings of silk paintings and other burial-related objects are examined from the anthropological point of view.
Class Formation and Ideological Practice: A Case from Sri Lanka
Authors: Brow James
Published: April 2006

An adequate understanding of the complex connections between changes in the social relations of production and changes in the bases of group formation demands an historical approach in which consciousness and its ideological products are viewed dynamically, not as the mechanically determined superstructural reflections of material relations but as an active and constituent components of everyday social life. The concepts required for such an analysis are developed here, drawing on the seminal work of both Marx and Weber, as well as on more recent scholarship, and are applied to recent changes in agrarian relations and ideological practice in Anuradhapura District, Sri Lanka.
Continuity and Change in Indonesian Language Development
Authors: Errington J. Joseph
Published: April 2006

The development of Indonesian as a new national language is closely linked to the development of Indonesia as a new nation, but the Indonesian language has only rarely been studied as a part of larger patterns of social and cultural change. An overview of the language situation in Jakarta, Indonesia's center and capital, highlights linguistic continuities and discontinuities between that modern speech community and the traditional culture of the dominant Indonesian ethnic group, the Javanese. The speech repertoires of Jakartans do not resemble the well-known Javanese speech levels, as Benedict Anderson has suggested, but they are better described with the widely known sociolinguistic concept of diglossia. This relatively abstract characterization can be complemented by a study of patterns of borrowing into Indonesian from foreign languages, which may reflect long-standing indigenous attitudes toward power and the use of foreign linguistic codes. Different aspects of the rapidly changing linguistic situation in Jakarta may reflect on the emerging national language and culture.
Stalking the Sacrifice
Authors: Knipe David M.
Published: April 2006

This two-volume study of a great Vedic sacrifice, the Agnicayana, or “piling of the fire altar,” accomplishes two ends. First, the work is detailed ethnographic coverage of the twelve-day Agnicayana performed by the Nambudiri Brahmin community in Panjal, Kerala, South India, in April 1975. Parts 2, 4, and 5 include episodic mantraby-mantra outlines of the ritual with translations of key texts, color photographs, line drawings, and maps; a glossary and bibliography are appended. Second, parts 1 and 3 together provide a mini-encyclopedia of current information about the context of Vedic ritual in general. Twenty-two articles take up essential aspects of South Asian prehistory, ancient history, architecture, art, symbolism, and music, as well as hermeneutical studies of Vedic tradition and the Agnicayana in particular. The volumes are aesthetically stunning, and they provide a benchmark for the interdisciplinary, multifaceted study of an historic religious phenomenon.
Wrestling Against Time: The Performance Aspects of Agni
Authors: Schechner Richard
Published: April 2006

Frits Staal's massive two-volume book details the backgrounds to, and the performance of, a “Vedic ritual,” the Agnicayana, in Panjal, Kerala, in 1975. In its own terms the book is a success. Staal has set down, or told the reader where to find, every word of the twelve-day Agnicayana; he has described every ritual event; he has included many superb photographs (by Adelaide de Menil); he has collected essays on the various aspects of the Agnicayana, including comparisons with rituals of Tibet, Bali, and Java and discussions of pre-Vedic ritual. The book falls short in considering the multiple and ambivalent aspects of Agnicayana 1975: How much was Agnicayana the creation of the scholars who wanted to discover an intact Vedic ritual? To what degree did the very filming of Agnicayana transform it into a media event? What can be said about scholarship based on hybrid events such as Agnicayana 1975?
Chiang Kai-shek and the Anti-Japanese Movement in China: Zou Tao-fen and the National Salvation Association, 1931–1937
Authors: Coble Parks M.
Published: April 2006

Abstracts

Japanese imperialism relentlessly besieged the Nationalist government of China during the Nanking decade. Chiang Kai-shek, believing that China was not ready to confront Japanese military power and obsessed with the desire to eliminate the Communists, adopted a policy of consistent appeasement toward the.Japanese. This enraged public opinion in urban China, and Zou Tao-fen, a popular journalist, led the cry for resistance to Japan. He and his associates were continually suppressed by the Nanking government; nevertheless, they published several journals in succession, each of which denounced Chiang's policy toward Japan and all of which achieved enormous circulation. Late in 1935 Zou and his followers helped organize the National Salvation Movement, which demanded that Chiang suspend the civil war against the Communists and fight the Japanese. When Chiang Kai-shek, acting under Japanese pressure, arrested Zou and the leaders of the association in 1936, they became national heroes, the legendary “Seven Gentlemen.” Zou's martyrdom and that of his associates transformed their movement into a powerful political force, one that opposed Chiang and increasingly favored the Chinese Communists.
Socialist Revolution and Women's Liberation in China—A Review Article
Authors: Honig Emily
Published: April 2006

Abstracts

It was once popular for Western scholars to view the liberation of women as one of the most dramatic accomplishments of the Chinese revolution. This article reviews three recently published studies that present a more sanguine view of the impact of the policies adopted by the Chinese Communist party on women's lives. Throughout its history (with the possible exception of the 1920s) the CCP has failed to commit itself to the achievement of gender equality. To have done so, the new scholarship suggests, would have alienated male peasants, the most important constituency of the CCP Patriarchy, rather than being dismantled, has thus been perpetuated and reinforced in China. This argument is substantiated in the three volumes under review by an analysis of Party policy and political campaigns. The extent to which these policies and campaigns reflect social reality is a task that future scholars will have to confront.
“The New Vietnam Scholarship”—A Review Article
Authors: Long Ngo Vinh
Published: April 2006

Abstracts

The book under review has been hailed by its supporters as one of the finest examples of “the new Vietnam scholarship.” Like other writings of this genre, this book claims that the United States caused the loss of South Vietnam by going to the Paris peace talks in 1968 and by yielding “far too much to Communist demands” after that. What makes this book stand out from the other writing, however, is its author's unabashed use of highly questionable sources and techniques; he attempts to show that the government of Vietnam is so absolutely evil, its policies and programs such unmitigated failures, and its leaders and cadres so totally inept, corrupt, devious, and callous that the United States and its allies should continue to exert pressure to break that government and to make it capitulate to entire sets of impossible demands prescribed by the author. Given the Cold War climate at present, this book may help to rally people to the anti-Communist cause, but it contributes nothing to scholarship.
Party, Society, and Local Elite in the Jiangxi Communist Movement
Authors: Averill Stephen C.
Published: April 2006

In August 1927 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Jiangxi seemed moribund, yet by the end of 1930 the movement was larger and more active than ever before. How did this occur? Past studies have especially emphasized Mao Zedong's famous rural guerrilla strategy, but this was only part of the story. Equally significant was the little-studied success of members of the Jiangxi hill-country elite who were also in the CCP in using established schools and educational societies, time-honored traditions of local strongman behavior, and existing bandit–secret society gangs to build many localized base areas. Such techniques were congenial to CCP leaders and essential to the movement's survival in the early days when its prestige and material resources were at a very low ebb, and when radical reforms would almost certainly have failed. Nevertheless, this strategy also fostered parochial attitudes and organizational weaknesses that clashed with the later efforts of Mao and his allies to carry out mass mobilization and fundamental land reform. Only after a prolonged and violent crisis within the base areas did the “Maoist” policies vital for the revolution's long-term growth begin to overcome the policies of elite coalition building that had been necessary for the movement to obtain its initial foothold in the Jiangxi hill country.
Introduction
Authors: Berry Mary Elizabeth
Published: April 2006

Each of the three following articles concerns gifts. Although written independently of each other and dealing with significantly different topics, they have been brought together here because their common attention to the practice of giving encourages comparative reflection on a subject of considerable scholarly interest.
From Tribute to Philanthropy: The Politics of Gift Giving in a Western Indian City
Authors: Haynes Douglas E.
Published: April 2006

Abstracts

During the nineteenth century, South Asian businessmen began to engage in modern forms of philanthropy. Focusing on the western Indian city of Surat, this essay explores the emergence of philanthropic activity within the larger “portfolios” of gift giving held by indigenous merchants from roughly 1600 to 1924. Throughout this period, Hindu and Jain commercial magnates employed gifts as means both of building up their reputations (ābrū) within high-caste society and of fostering stable ties with political overlords. Local merchants continuously adjusted their charitable choices to changes in the ideology of these overlords as they sought to obtain influence with and honors from the ruling power. Involvement in philanthropy reflected a “negotiated” accommodation to Victorian values through which elite merchants maintained a relatively secure commercial and political environment in the context of late nineteenth-century British rule. When government policies seriously threatened theirābrūduring World War I, however, local traders began to view donations to the Indian National Congress as an alternative method of conserving status and credit.
Religious Gifting and Inland Commerce in Seventeenth-Century South India
Authors: Rudner David West
Published: April 2006

Abstracts

Most accounts of South Indian commerce in the seventeenth century depend on European documents and focus on Indo-European trade along the Malabar and Coromandel coasts. This article makes use of indigenous documents to analyze the way a caste of itinerant salt traders, the Nakarattars, combined worship and commerce in the interior of Tamil-speaking South India. It focuses on Nakarattar activities in the seventeenth century before they had achieved power under their better-known name, Nattukottai Chettiars, and at a time when their commercial expansion was just getting under way and when the close association of this expansion with rituals of religious gifting was already apparent. The two main purposes of the article are to illuminate the ritual dimension of commercial activity in precolonial South India and to enrich current transactional models of the relationship between temples and small groups in South India by incorporating a mercantile perspective.
The Spatial Approach to Chinese History: A Test
Authors: Sands Barbara , Myers Ramon H.
Published: April 2006

This article presents a series of statistical tests of the spatial framework offered by G. W. Skinner for use in analyzing Chinese history. Skinner argues that China is best viewed as a collection of nine distinct economic regions, each composed of a core and periphery. The authors use discriminant analysis, a multivariant statistical technique, and a twentieth-century Chinese data set to test the relevance of this view empirically. Their tests show that the Skinner framework is not supported by the data, and therefore they conclude that the model's contribution to the historical analysis of China is questionable.
Bangladesh, Bangladesh!—A Review Article
Authors: Thorp John P.
Published: April 2006

In 1981 Bangladesh celebrated its first decade of independence. This milestone was marked by a sharp increase in publications about the new nation. Authors are fascinated and not a little surprised that the “international basketcase” of 1971 has survived a vast array of economic, social, and political afflictions. The authors are also concerned about the continuing survival of Bangladesh. Current writing is concentrated on either its political history or problems of economic development and represents a major contribution to filling gaps in our knowledge of Bangladesh. Unfortunately, although most contemporary authors have limited experience in Bangladesh, they do have well-developed theoretical perspectives that guide their constructions of Bangladeshi reality. Current writing proffers Weberian, neoclassical economic, and Marxist interpretations of Bangladesh. Little fresh, in-depth, culturally sensitive, representative reporting of Bangladeshis' own interpretations of the present and aspirations for the future is being done. Academia is failing the majority of Bangladeshis by not taking seriously their ideas, aspirations, and abilities.
Author and Authority in the Bhakti Poetry of North India
Authors: Hawley John Stratton
Published: April 2006

In america we love to put our names on things. Everything from tree trunks to subway cars bears the evidence of our desire to announce what we are and own, and in the world of arts and letters the landscape is little changed. There the copyright expresses our instinct that even creativity has its property aspect: we claim what we have composed. There is a great tendency among us to be suspicious of anything unsigned, and pseudonymity is rare.
A Research Note on the Discovery of Writings by Savariraya Pillai, A Tamil Diarist of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Tinnevelly
Authors: Paul John J. , Frykenberg Robert Eric
Published: April 2006

Savariraya Pillai (1801–1874), a teacher whose entire life was spent in villages and towns of Tinnevelly District, never learned English. Moreover, in his writing, he never departed from the local Tamil. For this reason, the record of his observations upon social life and public affairs is a priceless source for historical investigation. His diaries and journals which span a period of forty years, can be compared with those of Ananda Ranga Pillai, the astute agent (dubash) of Joseph-François Dupleix, the French governor of Pondicherry whose observations were recorded a full century earlier. Nothing quite like the Pillai source material for the local history of this agrarian society has hitherto been available to scholars. The translation and publication of materials such as those discussed in this article would make a significant contribution to historiography.
Opium in Java: A Sinister Friend
Authors: Rush James R.
Published: April 2006

Opium smoking has long since disappeared as a social phenomenon in Java. But in the last century, and during the early decades of this one, smoking opium was a widespread custom in much of the island—the daily habit of hundreds of thousands, a routine part of social life among men in many regions, and a source of considerable profit to the Dutch colonial state. This article addresses the subject of opium in Java; it concentrates on the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the historical period during which opium smoking was most widespread in Java and for which the most abundant documentary resources exist.
The Divine Authorship ofPei-yu chi[Journey to the North]
Authors: Seamen Gary
Published: April 2006

Pei-yu chi[Journey to the North] is a late Ming novel, which since Ch'ing dynasty times has usually been published together with three other short novels, namelyNanyu chi[Journey to the South],Tung-yu chi[Journey to the East], andHsi-yu chi[Journey to the West], as a composite edition entitledSsu-yu chi[The Four Journeys]. Authorship ofPei-yu chiis usually attributed to a certain Yü Hsiang-tou, but the work is popularly regarded as the mythic charter of divinity of the Emperor of the Dark Heavens (Hsüan-t'ien Shang-ti), apotheosis of the north. Arguments based on analogy with present-day religious practices on Taiwan, as well as the content and structure ofPei-yu chi, are used to support a theory that the text was originally composed as a religious tract(shan-shu)by Chinese spirit-medium cults.
The Rights of Tenants in Mid-Qing Sichuan: A Study of Land-Related Lawsuits in the Baxian Archives
Authors: Zelin Madeleine
Published: April 2006

This article, based on newly opened archives, explores the rights of tenants in the neighborhood of Chongqing during the late-eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Changes in tenancy arrangements are discussed within the context of Chongqing's role as the main transshipment center for rice and goods from Southwest China to the middle and lower Yangtze. By the 1820s there was a tendency toward the collection of fixed rents in kind. Rent deposits, a major source of liquid capital for landlords, became an almost universal feature of Baxian leases. High deposits encouraged subletting and multiple tenancy, but appear to have provided little security of tenure. The large collection of lawsuits in the Baxian Archives allows an examination of the treatment of tenants in the magistrates' court and of the rights of persons who had disposed of land by means of conditional sale (dianmai).
Chinese Area Studies in Prewar China: Japan's Tōa Dōbun Shoin in Shanghai, 1900–1945
Authors: Reynolds Douglas R.
Published: April 2006

The history of “area studies” as an academic discipline remains to be written. When it is, it will have to begin with a little known, historically important Japanese institution in China. That institution, Tōa Dōbun Shoin (East Asia Common Culture Academy or, after 1939, College) in Shanghai, 1900–1945, was established to train young Japanese for business and government service related to China. The author focuses upon the area studies dimensions of this pioneering institution's training and research program. After identifying five requisites of area studies training and research, he moves on to examine the origins, raison d'être, and meaning of Tōa Dōbun Shoin's program and to chart the phases of that program's development through each of the five requisites. In important ways, the center's curriculum, facilities, research, and publications equalled or surpassed the best American post–World War II language and area programs.
Time, Space, and Structure in the Consolidation of the T'ang Dynasty (a.d.617–700)
Authors: Somers Robert M.
Published: April 2006

This article is a pioneering effort to analyze the establishment and consolidation of the T'ang dynasty in processual and systemic terms. The author argues that the extension of dynastic power over the North China Plain was a much more gradual process than hitherto thought, and he reinterprets early T'ang policies in this light. He then examines the structure of the dynasty, using the analytical framework developed by Amitai Etzioni. In the final section, the author considers the mature dynasty under Hsüan-tsung and suggests comparisons with the Roman Empire.
Monetary Revolution and Societal Change in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Times—A Review Article
Authors: Perlin Frank
Published: April 2006

Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, edited by J. F. Richards, is a courageous attempt to survey late medieval and early modern monetary history on an appropriately global scale, while simultaneously representing the fragmentation of the present state of knowledge on the subject. Asian history has been particularly subject to an a priori compartmentalization that has hindered comparison and prevented appreciation of the elaborate connections and dependencies developing among different regions during this period; Moreover, the various ways in which flows of precious metals have been explained merely confirm this compartmentalization, both by neglecting other, central aspects of monetary history and by ignoring the wider historical questions to which it is inseparably linked. By supplementing the approach to precious metals with a parallel focus on the vigorous trades in less precious monetary media, it becomes possible to rephrase the problem in terms of infrastructural societal conditions in different regions, which in the first place permitted trade flows to take place. In this respect, we need to dissolve the hard frontiers separating the conventional units of discussion and to see international commerce, and a wide range of different regional developments, as part and parcel of an increasingly complex, many-levelled web of interactive stimuli, which now needs to be reconstructed, debated, and researched.
Ideology and Sexuality: Rape Laws in Qing China
Authors: Ng Vivien W.
Published: April 2006

It is generally accepted that Qing China (1644–1912) was a straitlaced, sexually repressed society. Robert H. van Gulik, for example, ended his study of sexual life in China with the fall of the Ming dynasty, in part because he believed that Chinese attitudes toward sexuality became much more repressive after the Ming, and the generalizations he made in his book were not appropriate for the Qing (1961:333–36). This dramatic change in attitude has been attributed to the resurgence of Cheng- Zhu Neo-Confucianism, with its strict view of sexual relations in general, and female sexuality in particular (Ropp 1981:120–24).
False Specialization and the Purdah of Scholarship—A Review Article
Authors: Papanek Hanna
Published: April 2006

Within the last decade, many publications have appeared in South Asia (especially India) and North America on subjects relating to women. Scholars concerned with the study of South Asia have generally neglected these publications instead of integrating them into research and teaching on South Asia. This neglect results from a “false specialization” on both subject matter and scholars interested in research on women, which has led to a “purdah of scholarship” or segregation of the new scholarship on women. The reasons for this segregation include prejudice, the absence of an emphasis on family and kinship in current South Asia studies, neglect of research on Muslim populations, the complexities of gender in the Hindu tradition, and the nature of institutional support for research on women. Advocacy for women's equality is characteristic of the new research on women in South Asia, both by North American and South Asian writers. The core of the substantive argument presented in the article is as follows: Gender differences are among the fault lines along which the effects of major social, economic, political changes are distributed within populations. Gender relations are proving to be vulnerable in the face of rapid change. The increased consciousness of women's issues in South Asia is the result of accelerated changes within these societies which have affected gender differences and gender relations. Gender is increasingly understood to be a factor in accelerating class differentiation and in other processes of change.

New contributions to the research literature on women and gender in South Asia are reviewed under three headings: (1) “complementary” studies that highlight forgotten sectors of the population; (2) stocktaking assessments that summarize data about women and government activities; (3) “integrative” studies that aim to develop social theory and methodology. The final section of the review suggests new lines for future scholarship, particularly with regard to control over female labor deployment.
Peasants versus Capitalists in the Indian Sugar Industry: The Impact of the Irrigation Frontier
Authors: Attwood Donald W.
Published: April 2006

Has the organization of commercial agriculture in the Third World been shaped primarily by external forces from the world economy? This study of sugar production in northern and western India shows that industrialists were generally unable to impose a plantation system on the local peasantry, despite the great technical and economic advantages of doing so. Control of the land, in most cases, did not pass into the hands of industrialists. The organization of crop production remained almost unchanged in the north, while in the west, despite initial progress toward a plantation system, the local cultivators responded by taking control of the industry into their own hands. Thus, contrary to experience in much of the New World, Indian villagers did not become passive victims of the sugar industry; those in the west went even further, in taking over the industry themselves. The contrast between these regions can be explained in part by the temporary existence of an “irrigation frontier” in the west.
The Spiral of Suicide and Social Change in Sri Lanka
Authors: Kearney Robert N. , Miller Barbara D.
Published: April 2006

The suicide rate in Sri Lanka tripled between 1955 and 1974, soaring from 6.9 to 22.1 per 100,000 population. Sharp increases were recorded for both sexes, most age groups, and all of the nation's twenty-two districts. The incidence of suicide was greatest in the age range of 15 to 29 years. High rates consistently appeared in the districts of the northeast that either contained local majorities of the Sri Lanka Tamil ethnic minority or experienced rapid population growth due to heavy in-migration. The rising suicide rate may be related to the growing competition for education and careers, high unemployment, internal migration, and the increasing age at marriage, all of which contribute to the fundamental dislocation of a once more stable and predictable society.
Muslim Tombs and Ethnic Folklore: Charters for Hui Identity
Authors: Gladney Dru C.
Published: April 2006

The Hui minority, the largest of ten Muslim nationalities in China, is distributed throughout every province and city and over 70 percent of all counties (Map 1; Diao 1967:169). This paper endeavors to shift discussion away from conventional considerations of whether the Hui are really “Muslim” or merely inheritors of a cultural tradition somewhat different from the Han majority. Instead, I propose to examine one important area of interest to Hui communities throughout China, namely the lore and events surrounding various tombs and shrines, which I categorize as historic, Sufi, and local. Historic tombs reflect concerns that put local Hui identity in an international perspective; Sufi tombs link the Hui in national networks and often divide them regionally; and local tombs evoke interests that are more communal, reflecting practical concerns and personal identities.
Social Mobility, Popular Ideology, and Collective Violence in Modern Sri Lanka
Authors: Rogers John D.
Published: April 2006

Riots, rebellions, and other disturbances have broken out periodically in most parts of South Asia in modern times. Both early resistance to British rule and the religious and nationalist violence of the later colonial period have attracted a good deal of attention from scholars. One of the general trends apparent from this research is the weakening of distinctions among “communal,” “economic,” and “political” disturbances, and detailed studies have emphasized the ambiguity of most riots. Ostensibly religious affrays often reflected more general social and economic tensions, while the expression of economic grievances was often channeled by cultural or political beliefs.
Javanese, Peranakan, and Chinese Elites in Cirebon: Changing Ethnic Boundaries
Authors: Hoadley Mason C.
Published: April 2006

This article traces the development of ethnic relations in West Java during the period of transition from local government to Dutch colonial rule. Changes in relations between Javanese and Chinese-origin elites provide its subject matter, the West Javanese principality of Cirebon its locale, and the half century preceding the massacre of the Chinese in Batavia by the Dutch East India company in 1740 its period.