bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Textual Exegesis as Social Commentary: Religious, Social, and Political Meanings of Indonesian Translations of Arabic Hadīth Texts
Authors: Woodward Mark R.
Published: April 2006

In social and politicaldiscourse in contemporary Indonesia, the use ofhadīthtexts serves social and political as well as more narrowly religious ends. Among the purposes of the translation and exegesis of Arabic texts are the definition of an ideal Islamic society and indications of the ways Indonesia falls short of this ideal. In a narrow sense, contemporary translations are examples of what Bernard Lewis (1988:92) calls the “authoritarian and quietist” mode of Muslim political thought because they refrain from calling for an Islamic state. But in the context of Indonesian political culture they approach what he terms the “radical activist” mode, and seek to reshape society, if not the state, in the image of the Qur’ān and hadīth.
Summoning Muslims: Print, Politics, and Religious Ideology in Afghanistan
Authors: Edwards David B.
Published: April 2006

Gulbuddin hekmatyar madethe above statement in a speech to Afghan refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan, in the early 1980s. As the leader (amīr) of Hizb-i Islami Afghanistan (the Islamic Party of Afghanistan), one of the principal Islamic parties then fighting to overthrow the Marxist regime in Afghanistan, Hekmatyar was primarily concerned in this speech with condemning the leftist leadership in Kabul and its Soviet sponsors. However, the head of the most radical of the Afghan resistance parties also took time to inform his audience about the origins of his party as a student group at Kabul University in the late 1960s. This reminiscence of student days was not a digression or flight of fancy. To the contrary, Hekmatyar's historical reflections have major significance in the context of Afghan national politics, for it is through history that Hizb-i Islami Afghanistan has staked its claim to rule Afghanistan.
Monks and Miracles: Religious Symbols and Images of Origin among Osvāl Jains
Authors: Babb L. A.
Published: April 2006

Jainism is well known as a radically ascetic strategy for achieving liberation from the world''s bondage. It is less well known as a system of religious belief and practice embedded in social life. This article will examine Jainism as a symbolism of social identity. At the center of my inquiry is a puzzling cultural fact, the seemingly paradoxical claim by many nonviolent Jains to be descended from warlike Rājpūts. Despite its extreme emphasis on ascetic withdrawal from the world, Jainism is, as I hope to show, deeply implicated in the worldly identity of certain social groups and even can function as a kind of origin myth for these groups. Understanding how this is possible requires a considerable departure from the usual perspective on Jainism. The ascetic is normally the center of attention in Jain studies. This article, however, will give equal attention to a figure less frequently considered. This is the warrior-king.
Sui Yangdi and the Building of Sui-Tang Luoyang
Authors: Xiong Victor Cunrui
Published: April 2006

Sui-tang luoyang, built IN 605–6 as the eastern capital of the Sui dynasty and subsequently the eastern capital of the Tang dynasty, was one of the great cities of medieval China. Almost as soon as it was built to the taste of Emperor Sui Yangdi (r. 604–17), Luoyang became the second largest city in China, surpassed only by Daxingcheng-Chang'an, the first capital, which had been built by Yangdi's father. Both cities were objects of scholarly interest as early as the eighth century when, in 722, Wei Shu completed hisLiangjing xinji[A new record of the two capitals] (Fukuyama Toshio).
Is Chinese Culture Distinctive?—A Review Article
Authors: Nathan Andrew J.
Published: April 2006

Anyone Who Works in the Field of Area Studies knows from experience that cultures are different. Indeed, the effort to understand the distinctiveness of cultures in comparative perspective is a central undertaking of the modern humanities and social sciences, not only in Asian studies but in studies of other parts of the world. But works on the subject seldom discuss the conceptual and methodological issues involved. What do we mean by culture in the context of comparative statements? How can a culture's distinctiveness be conceptualized? What is required to demonstrate that such distinctiveness exists, what it consists of, and what influence it has on the performance of societies? In the case of Chinese studies, how far have we come in establishing that Chinese culture is distinctive, in what ways, and with what consequences?

It is helpful to discuss these issues in terms of two bodies of literature with different ways of conceptualizing culture and its distinctiveness, although I intend to blur the distinction at the end. Following Ying-shih Yü, I will label the two approaches hermeneutic and positivistic. I do not argue that one of the approaches is better than the other; each achieves goals that the other does not. The real problem is lack of clarity about the different logical statuses of the kinds of findings that typically emerge from the two approaches. This can lead to problems when insights are transposed from the hermeneutic approach into positivistic language or vice versa.
Political Theology: Text and Practice in a Dalit Panther Community
Authors: Contursi Janet A.
Published: April 2006

The bharatiya dalit panthers is an organization of Maharashtrian Dalits (ex-Untouchables) who have converted to Buddhism and adopted as their long-range political goal the establishment of a democratic socialist state. The ideology of the Panthers, embodied in their texts and practices, synthesizes threads of Buddhist and Marxist philosophies. Longstanding debates about the supposed incompatibility of Buddhism and Marxism pose questions regarding the conjunction of religion and politics in popular movements, the role of popular texts in constituting ideologies of resistance, and the ways texts and beliefs become transformed into actions.
The Politics of Adulation: Cinema and the Production of Politicians in South India
Authors: Dickey Sara
Published: April 2006

Popular south Indian cinema is a highly melodramatic entertainment form, plotted around improbable twists of fate and set in exaggerated locales, filled with songs, dances, and fight scenes. Patronized primarily by the poor, it is typically dismissed by critics, who find its vast popularity either bemusing or indicative of viewers moral and intellectual degradation. Even more confounding for many observers has been cinema's critical role in state and national politics.
State, Cultivator, Land: Determination of Land Tenures in Early Modern Japan Reconsidered
Authors: Brown Philip C.
Published: April 2006

Early modern rulers in asia and europe frequently sought to secure a better grasp of the land and other resources that provided them with the economic resources t o maintain their governments, expand their power, and permit them to conquer new lands (see, for example, Tilly 1985; Hellie 1971; Ali 1966). The “reunification” of Japan and consolidation of authority in the hands of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his Tokugawa successors is generally viewed in this same light. There is widespread scholarly agreement that Hideyoshi's authority and that of the early Tokugawa shoguns represented a new, unprecedented level of political centralization in Japan. Hideyoshi's edicts on class separation, pacification of the countryside through sword hunts, and inventories of daimyo financial resources are all taken as emblematic of this new authority. So, too, are the Laws of the Military Houses, Tokugawa edicts compelling the destruction of castles, and related measures.
A Stage of Their Own: The Problematics of Women's Theater in Post-Mao China
Authors: Chen Xiaomei
Published: April 2006

Hu shi's play of 1919,The Main Event of One's Life(Zhongshen dashi), introduced spoken drama (huaju) to the modern Chinese stage, in imitation of the plays in the Western Ibsenesque tradition. Ever since then, May Fourth male playwrights such as Guo Moruo, Ouyang Yuqian, Chen Dabei, and others, in forming a tradition countering that of the Confucian ruling ideology, have treated women's liberation and equality issues as important political and ideological strategies (Chen 1995, 137–55). Female playwrights such as Bai Wei also depicted loving mothers and courageous daughters waging a fierce struggle against the patriarchal society, symbolized either by domineering and lustful domestic fathers or by new nationalist fathers already corrupted by the emerging revolution. The tradition on the part of both male and female playwrights of exploring woman as a metaphor for national salvation and a given political agenda was most fully articulated in the street theater that grew up during the period of the War of Resistance to Japan.
The Illusion of Standardizing the Gods: The Cult of the Five Emperors in Late Imperial China
Authors: Szonyi Michael
Published: April 2006

Nineteenth-century observers of the Fuzhou area, both Chinese and Western, were struck by the worship of a group of deities associated with pestilence and epidemic disease. The local people called these gods the Five Emperors (Wudi). To Justus Doolittle, an American missionary stationed in Fuzhou, Proclaimed Zuo Zongtang, Governor-General of Fujian and Zhejiang: “the rival societies for getting up processions to parade the idols have from the beginning violated the law and corrupted morals, hence the evil must be stopped without delay” (Zuo 1867, 22). While these two observers each brought his own concern to bear on his perceptions of popular belief and ritual practice, they were united in their focus on the dangers the worship of these deities posed to public morality and order; neither was much interested in the identities or histories of these gods. But a detailed investigation of their identities and histories may explain how the deities were perceived as dangerous to public morality and order, and offers rich insight into the social history of Late Imperial China.
The Barbed Walls of China: A Contemporary Grassland Drama
Authors: Williams Dee Mack
Published: April 2006

Ethnic mongol herders in north china have traditionally enjoyed a distinctive cultural landscape. In contrast to the way dense population and intensive agriculture strictly regimented land-use practices among Han Chinese, dispersed settlement and mobile stock-herding permitted Mongol society to operate and evolve under much different spatial and ecological horizons. Such deep-rooted orientations still resist facile alignment with alien standards now imposed by Beijing, disguised as they are in the language of economic development.
The Myth of the “Three Shan Brothers” and the Ava Period in Burmese History
Authors: Aung-Thwin Michael
Published: April 2006

Change, or impending change, can often inspire the creation of myths, for it both threatens and promises. It threatens the security of the established, while providing hope to the disestablished. Change thus produces anxiety and discomfort on the one hand, euphoria and optimism on the other. Those in a position to be harmed by the change often create “negative” myths about the potential implications of that change; those not, glorify it. To misquote Claude Levi-Strauss, myths are created to control the present, hence, by implication, also the future (Levi-Strauss 1979).
How tojibunshi: Making and Marketing Self-histories of Shōwa among the Masses in Postwar Japan
Authors: Figal Gerald
Published: April 2006

The death of Emperor Hirohito on 7 January 1989, followed more recently by the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, has indeed incited a degree of historical awareness among Japanese from all walks of life. In the wake of an enigmatic period of social self-restraint (jishuku) during the final months of the Shōwa period (1926–89), fettered reflections of Shōwa Japan inundated the media. Despite a few outspoken critics at the margins, retrospectives appearing on Japanese television and in mainstream print media after Hirohito's death have largely glossed over touchy subjects such as war atrocities, war responsibility, and the continued existence of the emperor system in the postwar era. No doubt that threats of right-wing terrorism aimed at even the mildest of critics of Japan's involvement in the Fifteen-Year War (1931–45) have done their share in encouraging such self-censorship. By most accounts, such efforts have proved effective in diffusing critical public opinion and in pruning public memory. Yet, the ending of the era has provided an extra impetus and a rhetorical rationale for a reckoning of everyday life in Shōwa Japan by the masses whose lives coincided with it: it is over, so now we can tell its story.
Philippine politics in Town, District, and Province: Bossism in Cavite and Cebu
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: April 2006

Accounts of the various local, congressional, and national elections held in the Philippines since 1986 have highlighted three enduring features of Philippine democracy in the post-Marcos era. First of all, large numbers of politicians who held office for many years in the Marcos and pre-Marcos periods have won reelection, as have numerous other members of long-entrenched political families (Soriano 1987; Gutierrez 1992). Secondly, most of these politicians and clans have been known to enjoy not only political longevity but also economic preeminence within their respective municipal, congressional, or provincial bailiwicks, through landownership, commercial networks, logging or mining concessions, transportation companies, or control over illegal economies (Gutierrez 1994). Finally, evidence that fraud, vote-buying, and violence have decisively shaped the conduct and outcome of these elections (Tancangco 1992) has led some commentators to conclude that the celebrated transition from “authoritarianism” to “democracy” in Manila has been less than complete in its local manifestations (Kerkvliet and Mojares 1991, 5). With the revival of electoral politics in 1987, analysts thus began to offer evocative descriptions of, and various explanations for, the distinctive nature of Philippine democracy, with references to political clans, dynasties, caciques, warlords, and bosses appearing with great frequency in journalistic and scholarly accounts, and terms like cacique democracy, mafia democracy, feudalism, warlordism, and bossism gaining considerable currency.
For Humanity. For the Sinhalese. Dharmapala as Crusading Bosat
Authors: Roberts Michael
Published: April 2006

In 1956, eight years after political independence was secured for Sri Lanka, a major transformation was effected through the ballot. A confederation of forces led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) under S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike turfed the United National Party (UNP) and its right wing, English-educated leadership out of office. These forces represented a groundswell of the underprivileged against the privileged, and, as such, represented a radical socialist thrust. They also included a powerful strand of Sinhala nativism, i.e., of cultural nationalism, which made Sinhala the language of administration and which espoused conspiracy theories directed against the influence wielded by Catholic cabals. This body of thought has been described in the literature as “Sinhala linguistic nationalism” and “Sinhala Buddhist nationalism.” What requires underlining here is the fact that this ideological corpus had previously been in a defensive position because it was deemed a “communalism.” But, now, in 1956, the majoritarian sanction of a populist and radical victory converted it into a nationalism (see Roberts 1994, 258–59, 263–64, and ch. 12)–a force which some scholars, standing in the mid-1990s, would redefine as “chauvinism.”
Trade and Economy in Preindustrial East Asia, c. 1500–c. 1800: East Asia in the Age of Global Integration
Authors: Lee John
Published: April 2006

Two articles published in early1992 in the monthly opinion journalChūō kōronset off a minor debate on the essence of Japan's historical experience. The articles were written by Kawakatsu Heita, a professor of economic history at the Waseda University, as a critique of Ueyama Shunpei, a noted cultural historian. A rejoinder by Ueyama was published subsequently in the same journal, and a critique of Kawakatsu by another economic historian, Tsunoyama Sakae, also followed.
Women in Turfan during the Sixth to Eighth Centuries: A Look at their Activities Outside the Home
Authors: Xiaonan Deng
Published: April 2006

Some historians who study medievalChinese women have tended to neglect the situation of common women who stayed at home dealing with family affairs, preferring instead to examine the far more complete documentation on exceptional women who gained power or prominence outside the home in the largely male-dominated world. In recent years, as more historians have paid closer attention to women's daily life in medieval times, they have made great breakthroughs in drawing on a multiplicity of sources (Ebrey, 1993). Yet sometimes they are still embarrassed by the problem of insufficient materials. The oasis of Turfan, lying on the Silk Road between China and India, contains the Astana-Karakhoja graveyards that have been excavated by different explorers, both Chinese and not, since the beginning of the century. The tombs contain many goods preserved by the dry desert climate, including paper shoes, belts, and hats which Chinese scholars have pieced together to form documents. This paper draws primarily on those materials shedding light on women's activities, which most historians interested in women have yet to utilize.
God Mothers, Good Mothers, Good Lovers, Godmothers: Gender Images in Thailand
Authors: Ockey James
Published: April 2006

The hit was typical in many ways. A gunman fired a nine-millimeter pistol into the car of Mass Communications Organization of Thailand chief Saengchai Sunthonwat, then fled with the driver on a waiting motorcycle. Two other members of the gang who had identified the victim also escaped. Due to the prominence of widely respected Saengchai, the police devoted a great deal of attention and resources to solving the crime. Ultimately, they traced the gunmen, who led them to the alleged mastermind. The assassination, according to police, was the result of a conflict of interest in the granting of concessions for provincial radio stations. When the accused mastermind had offered Saengchai a gift of an expensive gold chain and a valuable Buddha image to smooth relations, Saengchai refused the offer. He further insulted the mastermind by saying that the gift would only be good enough for his dog. This insult, as much as the loss of income, lay behind the killing. Although the hit was typical in many ways, two things, beyond the tragic death of a good man, make this killing academically interesting. First, the alleged mastermind was not a godfather but a godmother. Second, the press paid no attention to the fact that the culprit was a woman. In almost every reference, the word “godfather” could have been substituted for “godmother” with no change in meaning or inference.
Is India Becoming More Democratic?
Authors: Varshney Ashutosh
Published: April 2006

A great deal of confusion exists on how to discuss, and theoretically characterize, political developments in India during the last decade and a half. There is, of course, a consensus that the Congress party, a towering political colossus between 1920 and 1989, has unambiguously declined. While there are legitimate doubts about whether the decline of the Congress party will continue to be irreversible, it is clear that much of the political space already vacated by the Congress has so far been filled by three different sets of political forces. The first force, Hindu nationalism, has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention (Basu 1997; Hansen and Jaffrelot 1998; Jaffrelot 1993; Varshney 1993). The second force, regionalism, has also spawned considerable research of late (Baruah 1999; Singh forthcoming; Subramanian 1999). A third force, not so extensively analyzed, covers an array of political parties and organizations that encompass groups normally classified under the umbrella category of “lower castes”: the so-called scheduled castes, the scheduled tribes, and the “other backward classes” (OBCs). How should we understand the politics of parties representing these groups? How far will they go? What are the implications of their forward march, if it does take place, for Indian democracy?
Knowledge, Power, and Racial Classifications: The “Japanese” in “Manchuria”
Authors: Tamanoi Mariko Asano
Published: April 2006

Was knowledge always the basis of colonial power? If so, were colonial rulers invariably confident of the accuracy of their knowledge? Among the Victorian British, for example, there was widespread agreement that India could be known and represented as a series of facts (Cohn 1996, 4). Based on this agreement, the British colonial officials, missionaries, and entrepreneurs tried to demonstrate their power through what Bernard Cohn calls “officializing procedures”: counting, gathering, characterizing, ordering, and classifying the populations and their attributes in India. Such procedures offered numerous agents of colonization “seemingly immense culture-defining capacity” (Cooper and Stoler 1989, 609). Yet, their power was “never so omniscient nor secure to imagine itself as totalizing” (Dirks 1992, 7). Their insecurity may have been the result of their incomplete knowledge or even ignorance.
Colonial Masters, National Politicos, and Provincial Lords: Central Authority and Local Autonomy in the American Philippines, 1900–1913
Authors: Hutchcroft Paul D.
Published: April 2006

When the united states embarked on a campaign of overseas colonial conquest a century ago, it was for some Americans an unquestionably righteous venture in political tutelage. “[God] has made [the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples] adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples,” proclaimed Indiana Senator Albert J. Beveridge. “And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world” (Snyder 1962). The largest and most important U.S. colony was of course the Philippines, where a campaign of military conquest began in 1898 and continued into the early years of the new century.
Hong Kong's Problematic Democratic Transition: Power Dependency or Business Hegemony?
Authors: So Alvin Y.
Published: April 2006

Hong Kongs Political Development since the 1960s has seemed to indicate bright prospects for democratization, since Hong Kong had attained most of the “prerequisites” for democratization (Lipset 1994). Hong Kong had considerable wealth and a rising middle class, no extreme or intolerable inequalities, and a high level of socioeconomic development. According to the wealth explanation of Lipset (1959) and Huntington (1984), Hong Kong's robust economy should make possible high levels of urbanization, industrialization, education, literacy, and mass media exposure, all of which are conducive to democracy.
Designs on Indonesia's Muslim Communities
Authors: George Kenneth M.
Published: April 2006

On october 15, 1991, Haji Muhammad Soeharto, President of Indonesia, became the first official calligrapher for theAl-Qur'an Mushaf Istiqlal—The National Independence Illuminated Qur'an—by inking in the initial letter of theBasmallahin the opening sura (Al-Fatihah, the prologue; see Fig. 1). Four years later, just after commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Indonesian independence, he put the finishing touch to the closing sura of the Qur'an (An-Naas, or “Humanity,” Suta 114), signed the completed manuscript, and presented it to the people of Indonesia and to the Muslim world community. Although he is adept at using or reciting the Qur'anic Arabic needed for daily prayer, the profession of faith, and the verbal exchanges that bond Muslims with each other, Soeharto is a decidedly unpracticed calligrapher when it comes to Arabic orthography.
Revising the Malthusian Narrative: The Comparative Study of Population Dynamics in Late Imperial China
Authors: Lavely William , Wong R. Bin
Published: April 2006

Ever since malthus, it has been conventional to cast the Chinese and European preindustrial demographic systems as opposing archetypes—Europe as a model of demographic restraint, China as demographic profligate. Europe's moderate population growth, fertility control keyed to economic conditions, and favorable living standards are contrasted with China's rapid growth, periodic mortality crises, and precarious balance of population and resources. Although there is some variation in approaches and vocabularies reflecting disciplinary divisions, and recognition of the substantial variability of institutions within Europe and China, this stylized contrast continues to flourish in the demographic and historical literatures. Its persistence is important because Malthusian dynamics underlie a popular and persuasive set of explanations for the divergent paths of Chinese and European economies and societies in the industrial era. In this article we challenge this conventional dichotomy and its empirical underpinnings.
Of Consorts and Harlots in Thai Popular History
Authors: Lysa Hong
Published: April 2006

This essay is an exploration of one aspect of the politics of gender representation in Thailand, namely, how the portrayals of Siamese women in Thai popular histories form part of the present-day shaping of gender relations. I argue that moving in tandem with developments in academic historiography, popular history since the 1980s has become a battleground for cultural hegemony.

Hitherto the preserve of antiquarians, popular history has caught the interest of the emergent middle class, who are intent on inscribing their reading of the past on the Thai cultural landscape. Where gender relations are concerned, the middle class has worked out a modern rationale for the traditional view that women are subordinate to men. However, critical scholars, alert to what they see as the perpetuation of the historical subordination of women through the medium of popular history, have sought to stem the tide by addressing their critiques of the middle-class interpretations to a popular audience.
Beyond “Pure” Literature: Mimesis, Formula, and the Postmodern in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki
Authors: Strecher Matthew C.
Published: April 2006

With the publication ofKaze no Uta o Kike(Hear the Wind Sing; 1979), Murakami Haruki (b. 1949) found himself more or less at odds with well-known members of the Japanese literary establishment. If one takes Murakami at his word, this was not the result of conscious effort on his part, but rather a matter of his own individualism, a certain indifference (feigned or not) toward the conventions and opinions of professional critics in Japan's literary community. He commented to journalist Kawamoto Saburō in a 1985 interview that “[i]t never occurred to me to resist the paradigms of existing ‘pure’ literature, or to offer some kind of antithesis to it…. I don't think I worried about whether existing types of works would go on existing, so long as I could write what I wanted, how I wanted” (Kawamoto 1985, 39–40). Such a statement might be taken as a reflection of the author's anxiety not to be labeled “anti-bundan“or otherwise standing against the proliferation of so called “pure“literature, orjunbungaku.And yet, given the general trend of Japanese literature from 1980 onward, beginning perhaps with Tanaka Yasuo's plotless novelNantonaku, Kurisutaru(Somehow, Crystal; 1980), Murakami appears to belong to a growing new set of contemporary authors who do precisely that: resist the concepts and definitions of “pure“literature, redefining the term to suit their own needs.
Lower Strata, Older Races, and Aboriginal Peoples: Racial Anthropology and Mythical History Past and Present
Authors: Guha Sumit
Published: April 2006

As K. Sivaramakrishnan has pointed out in a paper published in 1993, one of the persistent ironies of postcoloniality “has been the way elites assuming the task of building a national culture and providing it with a liberatory/progressive history have turned to modes of knowledge and reconstruction produced in the colonial period.” And of the varied strands that have constituted the twentieth-century knowledge and self-knowledge of India, none is more central than the notion of the timeless, conservative caste, and its antediluvian ancestor, the unchanging primitive tribe (Sivaramakrishnan 1993; Inden 1990, 70–72). In this view South Asians, like other unprogressive people, did not change—they merely accumulated, with the latest addition to the population overlaying its predecessor, much as geological strata did. This paper will attempt to expose the historic roots and explore the contemporary ramifications of this model.
On the Absence of Privately Owned, Publicly Traded Corporations in China: The Kirby Puzzle
Authors: Bowen J. Ray , Rose David C.
Published: April 2006

In a recent article in this journal, William C. Kirby (1995) chronicled the development of China's Company Law, which was crafted in 1904 to promote industrial development by codifying a commercial code. Among other objectives, the Company Law was aimed at providing institutional support for the emergence of modern legal corporations. Indeed, it was a widespread belief among the Qing reformers of the period that “Modern industrial capitalism … demanded Western corporate structures to do business’ (Kirby 1995, 43). Kirby argued that after numerous revisions it has become clear that the Company Law has failed to promote the emergence of privately owned, publicly traded corporations. Given China's rich commercial tradition, its dramatic post-1978 reforms, and its rapid economic growth over the last two decades, Kirby's finding raises a most puzzling question for China scholars: Why is there not a single privately owned, publicly traded corporation (PPC) in mainland China?
Teaching About Home: Geography at Work in the Prewar Nagano Classroom
Authors: Wigen Kären
Published: April 2006

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the geography classroom as a crucible of nationalist ideology. In the past decade, scholars from around the world have exposed the chauvinism of national atlases (Black 1997; Fahlbusch, Rossler, and Siegrist 1989), assessed the citizenship models implicit in social-studies readers (Bailly 1998; Soysal 1998), traced the institutional linkages between geography and imperialism (Bell, Butlin, and Heffernan 1995; Godlewska and Smith 1994; Livingstone 1992), and explored the role of spatial images and metaphors in shaping national identities (Hooson 1994; Thongchai 1994).
The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies
Authors: Elliott Mark C.
Published: April 2006

This essay examines the transformation from undifferentiated frontier to geographic region of that part of northeast Asia controversially referred to as Manchuria. This transition—from space to place, as it were—long has tended to be seen primarily in terms of the extension of colonial interests into China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, as I shall argue, the invention of this place began much earlier, in the seventeenth century, and owed substantially to the efforts of China's Manchu rulers, who claimed it as their homeland, the terre natale of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Even as the area was joined to the larger empire, Qing emperors took care to invest what I define as “Greater Mukden” with a unique identity.
Cultural Ideologies of Language in Precolonial India: A Symposium
Authors: Freeman Rich
Published: April 2006

The intensity of cultural investment that South Asian societies have channeled into their languages and literatures, whether gauged in a globally comparative perspective or in absolute terms, is truly remarkable. The intellectual energies poured into linguistic and aesthetic expositions, the assiduous maintenance and temporal depth of written and oral traditions, or the complexity and consequence of sociolinguistic relations, both locally and in interactions of regional diversity, would each suffice on its own to underscore South Asia's marked preoccupation with language. Their combined effect, however, has at times produced a civilizational sphere whose very self-definition rested with foundational claims to achievement in language. Yet despite the richness of this linguistic and literary history (or, perhaps, because of it), relatively few studies combine substantive textual analyses with theoretical agenda adequate to a treatment of the multiplex roles and articulations of specific languages and their interactions in the constitution of particular South Asian societies.
The Cosmopolitan Vernacular
Authors: Pollock Sheldon
Published: April 2006

Throughout southern asia at different times Starting around 1000, but in most places by 1500, writers turned to the use of local languages for literary expression in preference to the translocal language that had dominated literary expression for the previous thousand years. This development constitutes at the level of culture the single most significant transformation in the region between the creation of one cosmopolitan order at the beginning of the first millennium and another and far different one—through colonialism and globalization—at the end of the second.
Language of the People in the World of Gods: Ideologies of Tamil before the Nation
Authors: Ramaswamy Sumathi
Published: April 2006

Once upon a time, long before the rise of the modern nation, a language named Tamil wandered about in a world inhabited by divinities and extraordinary beings. This was an enchanted world of miraculous events and wondrous deeds, where the dead were brought back to life, and deserts transformed into fragrant groves; and where verses in Tamil cured fevers, stopped floods, and impaled enemies. It was a world in which poets, because of their mastery of Tamil, lorded over the gods themselves, and in which celestials vied with each other to win the affections of the language. There were even those who insisted that devotees of Tamil could look forward to a life amongst the gods, while its enemies were destined to languish in hell.
Improvisations on a Semicolonial Theme, or, How to Read a Celebration of Transnational Urban Community
Authors: Goodman Bryna
Published: April 2006

Semicolonialism, as jürgen osterhammel noted, is a label that has been generally applied to China “without much regard for its potential theoretical implications” (Osterhammel 1986, 296). The partial character of semicolonialism—as incomplete colonialism—poses the question of what difference it made that throughout the modern period China never in fact became a subject nation, but retained sovereignty over nearly all of its territory and was recognized as a sovereign nation by international law. The writings of twentieth-century Chinese nationalists and a recent profusion of theorizing about colonialism and “colonial modernity” in China, by emphasizing colonialism (Barlow 1997), have perhaps obscured rather than clarified the answer to this question. Moreover, semicolonialism in China, as a gradual accretion of phenomena associated with imperialism, varied substantially over time. Its significance for understanding nineteenth-century China, when the foreign presence within China was still quite limited, remains unclear. Several decades of research on imperialism in Shanghai have produced much debate, but no clear mapping of“where, when, howand to whateffectdidwhichextraneous forces impinge” on Chinese life (Osterhammel 1986, 295).
“Shanghai-Japan”: The Japanese Residents' Association of Shanghai
Authors: Fogel Joshua A.
Published: April 2006

At noon on december 3, 1937, a Japanese military parade—perhaps in ironic imitation of other processions by foreigners in Shanghai—began marching down Nanjing Road through the foreign concessions in Shanghai and along the Bund. In the lead was a military police (kenpeitai) car escorted by mounted troops bearing sabers at the hilt. They were followed by a large infantry detachment, machine-gunners, and finally by artillerymen. Japanese aircraft flew by overhead, and Japanese civilians lined the route along the way and shouted out choruses of banzai. When they arrived at Jessfield Park, they were met by a contingent of Italian ladies—allies in the anti-Comintern pact—waving Japanese flags. The event lasted until 3 p.m. and involved all 6000 Japanese troops stationed in the city. The next day a smaller contingent of troops marched in orderly fashion from Garden Bridge south to the Bund and through the concessions (Tokyo asahi shinbun, December 4, 1937, and December 5, 1937; cited in Muramatsu 1991, 308–9). Lest there be any doubt about it, this was clearly intended as a victory march, an effort to demonstrate the new reality of Japan's preeminence in Shanghai. However much this display may have been directed at the Chinese, with whom Japan had now been at war for five months, the Western residents of the concessions—with whom the resident Japanese had been at loggerheads for many years—were the primary targets. No such event ever took place in any of the other centers of Japanese residence in China, only in Shanghai, where all the Western powers were present in full force.
Colonialism and the ‘Korea Problem’ in the Historiography of Modern Japan: A Review Article
Authors: Schmid Andre
Published: April 2006

By the time emperor meiji died in 1912, mourned as the first “modern” emperor, Japan had already acquired a sizeable colonial realm. Two years earlier, Japanese newspapers and magazines had celebrated the annexation of Korea, congratulating themselves on living in an empire that was now 15 million people more populous and almost a third larger than it had been prior to annexation. For journalists and politicians at the time, the phrase “Chōsen mondai” (the Chōsen question) served as a euphemism for the panoply of issues relating to Japanese interests in the Korean peninsula. Yet despite this contemporary recognition of the significance of empire, English-language studies of Japan have been slow to interweave the colonial experience into the history of modern Japan. Today, for modern historians, the question of how, or even whether, to incorporate these events into the history of Japan is itself a quandary—what might be termed the “Korea problem” in modern Japanese historiography.
Surface Orientations in Vietnam: Beyond Histories of Nation and Region
Authors: Taylor K. W.
Published: April 2006

If we can clear our minds of “Vietnameseness” as the object of our knowledge and instead look carefully at what the peoples we call Vietnamese were doing at particular times and places, then we begin to see that beneath the veneers of shared fields of sounds and marks, or of however one may refer to mutually intelligible languages and writings, lay quite different kinds of peoples whose views of themselves and of others was significantly grounded in the particular times and terrains where they dwelled and in the material and cultural exchanges available in those times and terrains. If we speak of these peoples as oriented toward the surfaces of their times and places rather than as oriented toward an imagined unifying depth, we will shift the effects of our ideological intent upon the archive away from the figurations both of univocal national narratives and of multivocal regional narratives contextualized by the nation. In this essay, I am interested in how the archive can be read to disperse the coherencies of Vietnamese histories as epistemological or hermeneutical categories, whether they be conceived as national histories or as regional histories. Rather than simply opposing regional histories to a dominant national narrative, I believe that regional and national narratives are “cofigured” in ways similar to how Naoki Sakai has written of desires for Japanese originality in realms of language, literature, and national identity being mimetically cofigured with desires for the West (Sakai 1997, 15-16, 21-22, 51-52). Posing a regional identity does not erase or diminish the potency of a national identity but rather mimetically reinforces it in a schema of cofiguration. I endeavor an orientation toward the surface of time and place as a way of thinking beyond histories of region and nation.
Feng Meng-lung'sTreasury of Laughs: Humorous Satire on Seventeenth-Century Chinese Culture and Society
Authors: Pi-Ching Hsu
Published: April 2006

From past to present all is but talk, and all talk is but laughs. The birth ofyinandyangfrom the original chaos, the voluntary abdication and forceful overthrow of the sage kings-who's ever witnessed this sort of thing? It's nothing more than talk. Future generations will talk about our generation, just as our generation talks about past generations. To talk about something and doubt it is laughable; to talk about something and believe it is even more laughable. Classics, philosophy, and histories are nonsensical talk, and people compete to transmit them. Poetry, rhapsody, and prose are preposterous talk, and people compete to perfect them. Praise or sneer, advocacy or suppression-these are whimsical talk, and people compete to respond to them. Sometimes we laugh at others; some other times we are laughed at. Those who laugh at others are in turn laughed at by others. TheTreasury of Laughsis a collection of jokes. With all its thirteen chapters, some may still say it's a thin book. If you read it and are delighted by it, please don't be. If you read it and are enraged by it, please don't be. The world from past to present is an immense treasury of laughs; you and I are all in there as laughingstocks. Without talk there're no human beings. Without laughs there's no talk. Without laughs and talk there's no world. Cloth-Sack Monk, you're my master, you're my master!
Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas, 1842 to 1949
Authors: McKeown Adam
Published: April 2006

Each of these epigrams is from an exemplary work of primary research. While not entirely exclusive—potential for overlap appears in the ideas of “mutual development” and “transfer” of culture—they each exemplify different research agendas that result in competing narratives of Chinese migration. Sucheng Chan's work is part of a larger project of contemporary Asian American studies to incorporate Chinese as important actors in American history. It emphasizes the adaptations of Chinese social organization in the United States, and explains them as necessary and unprecedented responses to unfamiliar challenges. Although Chan pays more attention than many Asian American historians to Chinese nationalism, transnational families, and continued links to China, she does not follow the implications of these descriptions so far as to reformulate her narrative of migration as a monodirectional relocation followed by locally conditioned transformation (see also S. Chan 1991, 63–66,96–97; 1990). In their most extremely America-centered versions, Asian American histories have treated these extra-American phenomena as little more than byproducts of exclusion and racism, and denounced the idea of the temporary Chinese sojourner as an orientalist construction (A. Chan 1981).
Nationalism, Imperialism, and the International Education Movement in Early Twentieth-Century Japan
Authors: Lincicome Mark E.
Published: April 2006

The literature on nationalism ascribes a pivotal role to schools in creating what Benedict Anderson calls an “imagined community,” through the formation and dissemination of a common national identity and a shared national consciousness where none existed before (e.g., Anderson 1983; Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1990; Smith 1991). It is not unusual to find Japan cited as a prime example of this process, not only among theorists of nationalism, but among Japan specialists, as well (e.g., Beauchamp 1988, 226–29; Cummings 1980, 17–25; Hunter 1989, 192–97; Ienaga 1978; Pyle 1996, 125–30; Rohlen 1983, 46–57; Schoppa 1991, 29–31; Thomas 1996, 254–62). In general, they portray the first two decades of the Meiji period, between 1868 and 1890, as the era when a modern national consciousness merged with a revivified nativist identity to form an “emperor-centered nationalism” that was institutionalized and propagated by the state, chiefly through a newly established compulsory, centralized school system. Frequently, this assertion is supported by citing the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890), which begins, “Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad and everlasting and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; Our subjects, ever united in loyalty and filial piety, have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof.” This distinctive brand of Japanese nationalism is also regarded as a factor contributing to the subsequent development of Japanese imperialism and the country's pursuit of a colonial empire abroad, which began with its victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), and concluded fifty years later with its defeat in the Pacific War.
Embroidering the Past:PhulkariTextiles and Gendered Work as “Tradition” and “Heritage” in Colonial and Contemporary Punjab
Authors: Maskiell Michelle
Published: April 2006

While the men worked in the fields in the wine-like [winter] air, the women sat in the afternoon sun spinning and embroidering while they sang together, before starting to cook for their men. They embroidered phulkaris….” (Tandon 1968, 65). These stereotypes of feminine and masculine work in Prakash Tandon's memory bookPunjabi Centuryillustrate dominant literary representations of economic production in Punjab, a province of the British Raj from the mid-nineteenth century until it was partitioned between independent India and Pakistan in 1947 (see fig. 1). Many Punjabi women usedphulkari(literally, “flower-work”) embroidery to decorate their daily garments and handmade gifts in the nineteenth century. Illustrations only partially convey the vibrant visual impact of phulkaris, and even color photographs fail to capture fully the sheen of the silk thread. The embroidery ranges from striking geometric medallions in reds, shocking pinks, and maroons, through almost monochromatic golden tapestry-like, fabric-covering designs, to narrative embroideries depicting people and objects of rural Punjab. Women stitched phulkaris generally on handwoven cotton cloth (khadi), and phulkaris shared linked construction techniques, a dominant embroidery stitch (the darning stitch), and several distinctive motifs (Frater 1993, 71–74; Yacopino 1977, 42–45; Askari and Crill 1997, 95–101).
Cultural Intellectuals and the Politics of the Cultural Public Space in Communist China (1979–1989): A Case Study of Three Intellectual Groups
Authors: Gu Edward X.
Published: April 2006

In China, the period from 1979 to 1989 was one of thawing and awakening. Moving away from the rigors of the “political winters” in Mao's time, Chinese society revived its diversity and vigor that had been harshly depressed for a long time by a revolutionary-totalitarian regime (Tsou 1986). One of the tremendous changes occurred in the cultural realm. In the mid and late 1980s thousands of Chinese cultural intellectuals, from well-known professors to junior university students, were caught up in a nonofficially initiated cultural movement, which has been widely called the “culture fever” (wenhua re). They engaged with great eagerness in searching for an alternative intellectual framework, derived from modern Western theories in social sciences and humanities, to replace the official ideology. They undertook a passionate reexamination of the virtues, weaknesses, and possibilities of Chinese traditional culture. They warmly debated what should make up the cultural prerequisites for China's modernization and whether or how Chinese traditional culture could be relevant to China's present and future. With the alteration of the structure of ideological alternatives, the legitimacy of the Party's orthodox ideology—Marxism-Leninism and the Thought of Mao Zedong—became marginalized. As many China scholars have pointed out, the legitimacy crisis was one of the most important historically contextual factors to play a key role in the events leading to the 1989 Tiananmen movement (see, for example, Tsou 1991, 277–80; and Ding 1994, 145–48).