bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Long Bow Film Trilogy—A Review Article
Authors: Shue Vivienne
Published: April 2006

These three excellent documentaries have received both high honors from the film world and an appreciative welcome from Asia scholars eager to make use of them in the classroom. Students and non-China specialists seeing them for the first time generally praise them for “humanizing” life in rural China, for providing an “intimate” look at “real” Chinese people as they are but rarely glimpsed in the West. When students have first been primed with readings from William Hinton's two classic prose documentaries of life in Long Bow Village (Fanshen [1968] and Shenfan [1984]), the films may be especially rewarding. They put faces to a few familiar names and give us images—of donkeycarts rattling over the tired earth, of bundled babies in bare adobe courtyards—that validate the village Hinton's books have already brought to life in our minds. But for viewers who have not done any background reading on Long Bow's special history under Communist land-reform and collectivization policies or on the village's past complex patterns of religious conflict and gender politics, these films will stand on their own. They succeed well in their “intimate" and “humanizing” endeavor not because we already know something about Long Bow villagers and what they have been through but because the filmmakers have skillfully kept narration to a minimum, allowing village people themselves to do most of the communicating. In their words, their gestures, their laughter, and their eyes, we recognize again and again that familiar, perhaps uniquely human, emotion—ambivalence.
Korea's First Newspaper: The JapaneseChōsen shinpō
Authors: Altman Albert A.
Published: April 2006

In 1881, the Japanese introduced the newspaper as a means of public communication into Korea. Publication of theChōsen shinpōin the open port of Pusan is related to the political and economic circumstances in which the Japanese found themselves there. Elsewhere in East Asia, a comparable role was played by Westerners. In addition to viewing theChōsen shinpōin the context of Japanese efforts to influence Korea's modernization, the author suggests studying this newspaper as a component of the comparative history of the press in East Asia.
Ritual Paradoxes in Nepal: Comparative Perspectives on Tamang Religion
Authors: Holmberg David
Published: April 2006

Every religious system in Nepal, including that of the Tamang, is multifaceted and has numerous practitioners. Without apparent contradiction, western Tamang simultaneously engage Buddhist lamas who preside over elaborate rites of death, sacrificiallambuwho propitiate chthonic divinities and exorcise harmful agents, and shamanicbombowho recapture lost shadow souls, revive life-force, unveil an enigmatic divine, and reveal. Interpretations of religion in Nepal have treated divergent ritual strands as isolates, and there is a persistent image of the religious situation in Nepal as an amalgam of Hindu, Buddhist, and indigenous strands. This article, which ends with a Tamang myth about diverse ritual strands, concludes that particular ritual practices must be interpreted with reference to their relations to other strands in an encompassing ritual field. The field, though, need not be coherent and unified, as has often been assumed in culture theory. The ritual structure of the Tamang emerges as a variant of other ritual systems found throughout Nepal and in greater South and Southeast Asia.
The Paleoenvironment of North China—A Review Article
Authors: Ho Ping-ti
Published: April 2006

K. C. Chang has been instrumental in the West in propagating the view that North China in Neolithic times was lush, moist, and densely forested. A close scrutiny of data relating to palynology, soil science, and paleoclimate, however, indicates that the true loess areas of North China were, and have always been, semiarid steppe. In addition, the author considers Chang's belief that the earliest northern Chinese agriculture was a system of slash-and-burn or shifting cultivation to be invalid. Whereas the crucial problem in the slash-and-burn systems of the tropics and humid areas is fertility, the crucial problem in the agriculture of the loess areas is moisture, not fertility. The ability of loess soil to retain its fertility under semiarid conditions has accounted for the self-sustaining character of the agriculture of North China. These important issues, and others, are discussed in the volume under review.
Policy Implementation in the People's Republic of China: Authoritative Decisions versus Individual Interests
Authors: Manion Melanie
Published: April 2006

Policymakers in the People's Republic of China (PRC) are situated at the top of what is essentially, despite reforms, a communist system—with an ideology that is the point of reference for what is admissible action, a communist party that monopolizes political power, an economy that remains in large part centrally planned, and a coercive apparatus that effectively penetrates urban society. Top leaders in Beijing have available to implement their policies several massive bureaucracies in which relations of authority are clearly delineated.
Temples, Donors, and Gifts: Patterns of Patronage in Thirteenth-Century South India
Authors: Talbot Cynthia
Published: April 2006

The common model of the Hindu temple of South India has stressed its significance as the main integrative factor binding the disparate elements of precolonial society into one social fabric. As a focal point for economic redistribution, the South Indian temple was the conduit through which exchange occurred: material goods were transformed into the symbols of prestige and influence known as temple honors (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976). The legitimacy of the medieval South Indian ruler rested on his role as the donor par excellence, and his sovereignty had a ritual basis that was far stronger than his more mundane methods of control (Stein 1980: 45–46). The foremost reason South Indian temples were able to perform this integrative function was their wide appeal in the society—their ability to incorporate members of different communities into one community of worship. By providing employment to artisans, peasants and shepherds and by lending money to agriculturalists in their vicinities, South Indian temples also redistributed the property of the wealthy to other segments of society (Spencer 1968:292). The widespread approval accorded to patrons of temples meant that, during the later Vijayanagara age, religious gifting could be used as a strategy by outside warriors for creating allegiances on the local level in Tamil Nadu (Appadurai 1977:55–59).
The Marriage Squeeze on High-Caste Rajasthani Women
Authors: Billig Michael S.
Published: April 2006

Rajasthan, a large, arid state in northwestern India, is widely known to have an excess of males over females. When we consider how such a high sex ratio usually affects the relative availability of potential spouses (i.e., the marriage market), it seems logical that the scarcity of females would generate a “marriage squeeze”— an asymmetry in the availability of potential spouses—against males and thereby give females an advantage in the marriage market. It would be ironic if the “culture against females” (Miller 1981:15) that characterizes Rajasthan had the unexpected side effect of granting females the competitive edge in choosing spouses and forcing males into marriages based on compromise.
Reading Writing and Cooking: Kūkai's Interpretive Strategies
Authors: Hare Thomas Blenman
Published: April 2006

Contemporary readers of philosophy, literary criticism, and related modes of discourse face a constant challenge. Even as we doubt, or indeed, fain to reject outright, the adequacy of traditional understandings of language, we are compelled to follow its insidious rules, and in rebellion we succumb to complicity with the system we suspect. The mechanics of interpretation, the possibility of consensus on the meaning of any given word, the relation between language and physical reality or thought, the hope for communication—all these things are thrown open to severe suspicion, and even under indictment, they control the flow of evidence and the disposition of judgment. “The mastery of (a) language” no longer means the inception of babbling autonomy in a toddler, a student's competence with a foreign tongue, or critical acclaim for a new writer's genius. Now perhaps it's language that's the master. The signal ambiguity inherent in that preposition “of” both sets up and already deconstructs this possibility.
The Second Transition: Early to Mid-Meiji in Kanagawa Prefecture
Authors: Waters Neil L.
Published: April 2006

It is no easy matter for a government seeking to foster rapid economic and social changes to win acceptance of its programs. Too much control by the center assures local resistance; too much dispersal of authority empowers it. The dilemma is a familiar one today, but it is not, of course, a new one. The leaders of Meiji (1868–1912) Japan found it to be the knottiest problem in their efforts to construct a modern state. They needed to exert sufficient central control of local government to assure that their initiatives could be enacted in Japan's villages and that taxes would flow to the center in a predictable and orderly manner. But these goals required the central government to permit a measure of autonomy—to rely on pre-Meiji inter- and intravillage organizations originally devised to guard and insulate the village from the demands of higher authority. Their efforts to resolve the dilemma quickly took on a note of desperation: in the first twenty years of the Meiji era, the government radically altered the system of local administration four times.
The Misconceived Revolution: State and Society in China's Nationalist Revolution, 1923–26
Authors: Fitzgerald John
Published: April 2006

The process of state-building in the Chinese revolution was confounded, and remains obscured, by a contest between rival claimants to state power in the Nationalist and Communist parties. There is a natural temptation to trace conflict in the state-building process to ideological differences between the two parties, as they did themselves, and to overlook their similarities and downplay the potential for political conflict and social resistance inherent in state-building generally. This is the case with histories of the Nationalist Revolution of the 1920s, when the two parties came together briefly to fight for national unification and independence. Each party is assigned an irreconcilable difference of purpose, the Nationalists aiming for cohesive national revolution and the Communists for divisive social revolution, and their combined efforts are represented as the historical working through of this conflict of purpose (Rankin, Fairbank, and Feuerwerker 1986:10; Wilbur 1984). The clash of aims seems to be not far removed from a clash of ideologies, and the collapse of this First United Front is portrayed as the historical resolution to a philosophical contradiction. In the definitive words of C. Martin Wilbur, “The main weakness was disagreement among the leaders concerning the social goals of the national revolution,” traceable to “competing ideologies among intellectuals throughout China” (Wilbur 1968:223). Conflict between the parties and within society boils down, in the end, to an ideological dispute.
The Keishō and the Korean Business Elite
Authors: McNamara Dennis
Published: April 2006

A successful pattern of close ties between the state and large-scale private enterprise in Japan and Korea has attracted the attention of scholars, policymakers, and businessmen. The prewar Japanese state (Moulton 1931; Lockwood 1955; Nakagawa 1983) with its distinctive methods of promoting private enterprise played a major role in this eminently successful case of a “late developing” (Gerschenkron 1966; Rosovsky 1961) society. It also provides an early example of what has recently been termed a “capitalist development state” (Johnson 1987). Studies of prewar business-state relations have distinguished business policy associations as major loci of state ties with Japanese firms (Ishida 1968; Tiedemann 1971; Heidenheimer and Langdon 1968), thereby offering insight into the formation of an entrepreneurial elite and the role of private enterprise in state-directed development efforts.
Politics in Contemporary Japan: Pluralist Scholarship in the Conservative Era— A Review Article
Authors: Allinson Gary D.
Published: April 2006

Bureaucrats have historically dominated many Asian polities, and Japan is no exception. Ever since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, public servants in national ministries have enjoyed special privileges and powers. They shaped Japan's emergence as an industrial state, they collaborated with militarists to govern during the wartime era, and they presided over Japan's postwar economic ascent. Only in recent decades has a bureaucratically dominant polity in Japan come under challenge. A more organized, affluent, and demanding populace has been one force encroaching on bureaucratic influence. The other has been a long-standing, increasingly experienced, and cautiously pragmatic contingent of Liberal Democratic party (LDP) leaders and legislators.
Metropolitan Manila in the Great Depression: Crisis for Whom?
Authors: Doeppers Daniel F.
Published: April 2006

Despite its Importance, “the exact course and depth of the recession in the [Philippine] Islands have never been seriously studied” (Richardson 1984:208). Indeed, studies that attempt to calculate the impact of global trade cycles, including that of the Great Depression, on the employment economies of the primate cities of Southeast Asia form a special lacuna within the generally underdeveloped literature on the economic history of Southeast Asia. This article opens both research questions by presenting a time-specific assessment of the impact of this international business contraction on important segments of the economy and society of metropolitan Manila, the capital and major port-city of the Philippines. In particular, this article focuses on the depression experience of the large Filipino bureaucratic middle class, of Filipino manual workers in commodities handling, manufacturing, and construction, and finally of the Chinese commercial sector. The article provides a first-cut disaggregation and analysis of relevant statistical data—much of it assembled here for the first time, as well as commercial reports and the contemporary press. The result is a picture of selective dislocation and hardship but one that is at once more variegated and generally less severe than anticipated.
South Asia, the World System, and World Capitalism
Authors: Washbrook David
Published: April 2006

The challenge of Immanuel Wallerstein—to reconceive the history of South Asia since 1750 as part of the development of a capitalist world system—has yet to elicit an adequate response from South Asia's historians. While a few social scientists interested in the past have sought to apply his model, the majority of historians have either gone no further than to acknowledge the importance of bilateral relations with imperial Britain in the construction of modern South Asian society, or else—it would seem increasingly—have retreated behind the walls of the “indigenous,” the “local,” the “particular,” and, at times, the just plain “peculiar” in their interpretations of South Asia's modern experience. But few historians of imperial Britain see it as a completely freestanding and self-determining entity, able to direct its relationships with India or elsewhere in a manner unconstrained by developments in other areas of the world. And on closer examination, many of the most quintessentially South Asian institutions and structures, including a large number of those that twentieth century modernization theorists please to call “traditional,” can be seen to have been shaped by global forces.
From Verse Narrative to Novel: The Development of Prose Fiction in Vietnam
Authors: Như-Quỳnh Cao Thị , Schafer John C.
Published: April 2006

When Hoàng Ngọc Phàch, a young Vietnamese living in Hanoi, published Tô' Tâm (Pure heart) in 1925, his book immediately became a cause célèbre. The first three thousand copies sold out in two weeks. The publisher printed another two thousand copies, and they too quickly disappeared from the bookstores (Phan Cự Dệ 1974:21). Girls disappointed in love succumbed to the influence of the work and committed suicide by jumping into Lake Tây or Lake Trùe Bạch. The work provoked a debate concerning what was proper reading for young women that continued into the 1930s.
He Zhen and Anarcho-Feminism in China
Authors: Zarrow Peter
Published: April 2006

Anarchists publishing in small student journals in the years before the 1911 Revolution made a significant contribution to Chinese feminism. They linked feminism to their call for a complete social revolution; they understood the oppression of women in China to be linked to modern class divisions and economic exploitation as well as traditional culture. They discussed the relationships among feminism, individual rights, and political liberties. He Zhen in particular severed feminism from nationalism, proclaiming “women's liberation” not “for the sake of the nation” but out of moral necessity.
Japanese Peasants: Moral? Rational? Revolutionary? Duped?–A Review Article
Authors: Bowen Roger
Published: April 2006

A full decade has passed since Frederic Wakeman, Jr., published his influential “Rebellion and Revolution: The Study of Popular Movements in Chinese History” (1977). He opened his article with the observation, “During the past twenty-five years, hundreds of studies of Chinese peasant rebellions have appeared in print.” He added that most of these studies had been published in the People's Republic, but in his bibliography he listed dozens of entries by Western scholars on the topic. Significantly, while noting that Western studies of peasant resistance in China “drew upon Chinese scholarship to write histories of their own,” Wakeman emphasized that Western historians were divided on the issue of whether the “Maoist depiction of Chinese history as perennial class struggle” was accurate. He summed up the controversy in these words:

Was an immiserated peasantry ruthlessly exploited by a venal landlord class through the sweep of pre-modern Chinese history? Or would it be more accurate to say that, while the population suffered in times of epidemic or famine, there were long periods of plenty when relatively affluent farmers benefited from rising agricultural prices, and negotiated rental contracts to their own liking with accommodating landlords? (Wakeman 1977:202)
Dephallicizing Women inRyūkyō shinshi: A Critique of Gender Ideology in Japanese Literature
Authors: Ariga Chieko
Published: April 2006

In surveying the history of Japanese literature since the Meiji period (1868–1912), readers immediately recognize that Japanese literature has been approached most predominantly from the perspective of the question of the “modern.” Although specific subjects of focus have varied, the primary underlying question has been whether a literary work is “modern,” “premodern,” or “antimodern.” This approach has been so firmly embedded in the Japanese literary tradition that it has established itself as the most legitimate way to examine literature written after the Meiji period.

The issue of the “modern” is related to the question of Japanese modernization; it is unquestionably important and deserves full critical attention in view of the geopolitical position of Japan in Asia, affected by Western hegemonic power over the past few centuries. However, because of this exclusive focus, other significant questions, including questions related to gender, have escaped critical attention.
Presidential Address: Reflections on Communal Violence in South Asia
Authors: Tambiah Stanley J.
Published: April 2006

Ethnic conflict is said to be rampant today. To all those instances familiar to us from the recent past, we may add the latest explosions in Southern Russia, in Eastern Europe, and in India's Kashmir.

A great deal has been written on the historical antecedents of ethnic conflicts, and on the political, religious, economic, and social circumstances in which many of them have broken out. These accounts include the effects of global processes that stem from metropolitan centers upon satellite countries, the assumptions and the problems of nation-making, and the politics of ethnic and other group entitlement claims in plural societies.
The Geographic Imagination in Early Modern Japanese History: Retrospect and Prospect
Authors: Wigen Kären
Published: April 2006

For most of the twentieth century, geography has been pushed so far into the background in the English-language corpus on early modern Japan as to be rendered virtually invisible. To the extent that it has been noticed, geography is typically seen precisely as background: the passive (if sometimes predestining) stage on which the historical drama is acted out. While attention is ritually paid to Japan's location and topography, most historians' analyses of Tokugawa development have until recently been couched in essentially aspatial terms.
Gardens in Ch'i Piao-chia's Social World: Wealth and Values in Late-Ming Kiangnan
Authors: Smith Joanna F. Handlin
Published: April 2006

By the late ming (1573–1644), the values of frugality and spending had often gone to battle. Those who promoted frugality sometimes did so with specific goals in mind—the acquisition of a plot of land, or the stockpiling of resources to ride out a failed harvest—and other times with a social conscience that militated against indulging the self while others suffered from want. Others claimed that spending was acceptable if it did not deplete one's resources or would benefit people in the long run. Yuan Ts'ai, for example, instructed his family: “A degree of luxury in accord with your financial resources is not what I am calling wasteful” (cited in Ebrey 1984:265).
Songs as Weapons: The Culture and History ofKomori(Nursemaids) in Modern Japan
Authors: Tamanoi Mariko Asano
Published: April 2006

Komori is a generic term that consists of a noun,ko(a child), and a verb,moru(to protect or to take care of); Japanese use it to refer to any person, male or female, old or young, who takes care of children. This article will focus on the young girls, hired by families in need of child care in the so-called modern Imperial period (1868–1945), who were calledkomori. Like their European counterparts, nursemaids and nannies,komoribegan to appear in what Michel Foucault has called the “discourse of power” in the late nineteenth century, i.e., in the formative period of the Japanese modern nation state. Thekomori'sappearance in Japan's discourse of power corresponded to the emergence of a subculture among thekomorithat is the focus of my analysis in this article.
Contours of Revolutionary Change in a Chinese County, 1900–1950
Authors: Schoppa R. Keith
Published: April 2006

Most Local Studies of the “revolution“in pre-1949 China have focused on Communist successes and failures during the 1930s and 1940s in the base areas of north and central China. It seems obvious, however, that in its more complete meaning the Chinese revolution in this century has been more than the story of Communist Party fortunes. On the national level, it has been the process of casting off politically enervated and/or discredited systems (the imperial, warlord, and Republican) and moving toward the vision of a fundamentally new state and society. The first major blow in this process was the abolition in 1905 of the civil service system that had served as the foundation for the political and social structure of traditional China. The revolution, which has often focused on struggles for political power and prerogative, has continued throughout the country in a number of phases, with varying actors, agendas, timing, and dynamics. Like a war made up of innumerable engagements, it has been a congeries of countless local revolutions, some only loosely linked to national-level goals. If, as a recent work put it, “[a] new generation of scholarship is emerging [in the study of the Chinese revolution] which promises to resolve old debates, bridge old dichotomies, and join formerly separate strands of analysis” (Hartford and Goldstein 1989:3), then it must take into account the larger chronological sweep of the revolution at the same time it burrows deeply into its local bases. This essay is an exploration of the contours of revolutionary change in the half-century from 1900 to 1950 in Xiaoshan County, Zhejiang Province, a county in the Lower Yangzi region that was for most of this period in the Guomindang, not the Communist sphere (map 1).
Indian Art Objects as Loot
Authors: Davis Richard H.
Published: April 2006

Let us imagine a graceful bronze image of Dancing Śiva before us. It was perhaps created by a Cola artist in eleventh-century Tamilnad to be installed in a temple to receive offerings of worship, and to parade around the town in a ceremonial palanquin on festival days. From there, this image might have followed any of several paths to stand before us now in a North American museum. Perhaps it was buried under a banyan tree in the fourteenth century when invading Islamic armies, feared for their iconoclasm, marched through the Kaveri delta on their way to Madurai. It could have been disinterred in the nineteenth century, during British rule, by a Tamil workman on a road crew, who showed it to the civil engineer, who brought it to the attention of the District Collector, who passed it on to the Director of Archaeology. In the twentieth century, perhaps, when an international market developed for such objects, it might have ended up in an auction room, a cosmic dance sold to the highest bidder. Or a government expert on culture might have selected it, after its long hibernation in the basement storehouse of its temple, as an image worthy to travel abroad as an ambassador of independent India in the international diplomatics of traveling exhibitions.
The Buddhist Mythmaking of Defilement: Sacred Courtesans in Medieval Japan
Authors: Marra Michele
Published: April 2006

When buddhist institutions directed their efforts to the evangelization of the common people during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods (1192–1573), they met a set of popular beliefs that were deeply entrenched in the lives of their new audience. In spite of local variations in the names of the deities worshiped and in the details of ritual performances, a series of “defiling” practices that were perceived as dangerous taboos (imi) provided Japanese worshipers with a common denominator that transcended geographic, linguistic, and time boundaries.
Presidential Address: Reflections on Modernity and Modernization
Authors: Najita Tetsuo
Published: April 2006

I should like to share with you some thoughts about modernity and modernization that are drawn from notes I took during a visit in October 1992 to Hachinohe in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan. I report from these notes mainly as a historian and partly as an amateur ethnographer without any special claim to “ethnographic authority.”

On that occasion, some one thousand citizens from the region gathered in Hachinohe to celebrate the 290th anniversary of the birth of Andō Shōeki (1703–62), the provocative eighteenth-century thinker and physician who practiced in this former castletown. I had been invited to give a lecture at a symposium on “Andō Shōeki and Today” and the “sympathetic relationship between community and nature” (Najita 1993).
The Novel Emerges in Cochinchina
Authors: Schafer John C. , Uyên Thế
Published: April 2006

Until Recently, Vietnamese Scholars agreed that the modern Vietnamese novel emerged in the North and that the first instances of the genre were Hoàng Ngọc Phách'sTố Tâm(Pure heart) and Nguyển Trọng Thuật'sQủa dủa đỏ(The red melon), both published in 1925. Now it is becoming generally accepted that the Vietnamese novel developed first in the South—in the French colony of Cochinchina, a region that stretched from the modern towns of Biên Hóa and Phan Thiết to Cà Mau, the southern tip of Vietnam. Trần Chánh Chiếu publishedHoàng Tố Anh hàm oan(The unjust suffering of Hoàng Tố Anh) in 1910, the same year that another Southerner, Trủỏng Duy Toản (illustration 1), publishedPhan Yên ngoại s(An unofficial history of Phan Yên). Hồ Biểu Chánh (illustration 2), who was to become the most prolific southern novelist, published his first novel,Ai làmc(Who can do it?), in 1912.
Spatial Order and Police in Imperial Beijing
Authors: Dray-Novey Alison
Published: April 2006

Historians and sociologists often treat the appearance of uniformed, armed, and bureaucratically organized police as one of the effects of industrialization. Because Europe and America had few cities of great size before the Industrial Revolution, we often have failed to separate the impact of urbanization from that of industrialization.

The data from China, on the other hand, suggest that city police forces are rooted in the social effects of population concentration with or without industrialization. In particular, the dynamics of a large, dense, and heterogeneous population produce an increased number of urban subcultures, and the potential for constant conflict among them leads to growth of the territorial arrangement that sociologists call spatial order.
Rāmāyaṇa and Political Imagination in India
Authors: Pollock Sheldon
Published: April 2006

From december1992through january1993, more than 3,000 people were killed in “communal” rioting across India, from Surat to Calcutta, from Kanpur to Bangalore. The likes of this rioting had not been seen for generations; in Bombay, for example, more than 600 people died, and the city was brought to a standstill for a week and a half. These recent events were related to but exceeded even the gruesome slaughters that took place in the last quarter of 1990, when a communal “frenzy” took hold that was then viewed as unprecedented in post-Partition India (Engineer 1991a, cf. 1991b).
Hindu Eschatology and the Indian Caste System: An Example of Structural Reversal
Authors: Milner Murray
Published: April 2006

Virtually all interpreters of Hinduism agree that the notions ofsamsara, karma, andmoksaare central to nearly all varieties of Hinduism. That is, it is agreed that most Hindus assume continuing reincarnations(samsara), that a person's current incarnation and experiences are, at least in part, the fruit of past actions(karma), and that release or liberation(moksa)from this ongoing cycle is possible and desirable. As David Kinsley (1982:8) says, “certain underlying beliefs are accepted by most Hindus:karma, samsara, andmoksa, for example.” J. L. Brockington (1981:5) notes, “Doctrines concerning …samsara, karmaandmoksa …may be regarded as axiomatic by most schools of Hindu philosophy.” Thomas Hopkins (1971:50) observes, “By the early sixth century B.C.E., transmigration and the “law of karma” had been generally accepted as basic facts of existence and were rarely challenged from that time on by any major Indian system of thought.” According to A. L. Basham (1989:42): “These[karmaandsamsara]are the beliefs of nearly all Indians, other than Muslims, Christians, and Parsis, down to the present day.”
Can Democracies Accommodate Ethnic Nationalism? Rise and Decline of Self-Determination Movements in India
Authors: Kohli Atul
Published: April 2006

Numerous ethnic movements have over the years confronted the central state within India's multicultural democracy. India thus provides laboratory-like conditions for the study of these movements. In this paper I analyze three such ethnic movements—those of Tamils in Tamilnadu during the 1950s and the 1960s, of Sikhs in the Punjab during the 1980s, and of Muslims in Kashmir during the 1990s—with the aim of explaining both their rise and decline. The focus will be less on details of these movements and more on deriving some general conclusions.
Community, Authenticity, and Autonomy: Insurgence and Institutional Development in India's Northeast
Authors: Dasgupta Jyotirindra
Published: April 2006

Reports from india's northeastern states—Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura—rarely deal with the positive aspects of their institutional development processes. The national media mainly concentrates on the disquieting stories of unrest, insurgence, and violence. The negative portrait of this region offered by both the press and scholarly studies in India and abroad must be distressing for the people of the Northeastern region.

This paper suggests that an excessive preoccupation with violence and a narrow reading of the implications of insurgent violence on the part of the observers are responsible for a substantial misunderstanding of the Northeastern political processes. As a result, the positive aspects of community formation, the linkage of communities in wider political institutions as parts of the Northeastern administration and representative systems, and the contribution of these processes to the national systems remain largely unexplored. The history of insurgence is rarely narrated in the context of an equally long history of peace, social collaboration, political reconciliation, democratic participation, and innovations in institution-building and sustenance. Even the received narrative of violence is deeply flawed due to its frequent inability to attend to the possible rationality of forced desperation, and its insensitivity to the long-term constructive implications of many anti-authority struggles.
Women's Class Mobility and Identities in South Korea A Gendered, Transnational, Narrative Approach
Authors: Abelmann Nancy
Published: April 2006

In examining post-war south korea, we cannot but be struck by the rapid decrease of farm work and the dizzying increases in urban production and petty-entrepreneurial work over the course of a single generation. It is remarkable, for example, that from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s the farming population declined by almost 50 percent. Indeed, South Korea is an exemplar in the development industry and a popular example in the annals of development studies (Amsden 1989). Sociologists, however, have reached little consensus about the meaning of these structural transformations and the nature of their effects on individual and familial trajectories. In consideration of the reorganization of the labor market, even some of the most basic numbers are debated because analysts do not agree on how to characterize and classify post–Korean War jobs.
Rediscovering Manchuria: Sin Ch'aeho and the Politics of Territorial History in Korea
Authors: Schmid Andre
Published: April 2006

In the years immediately prior to Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910, the historian Sin Ch'aeho posed a fundamental challenge to conventional assumptions about the limits of Korean territoriality: was the nation bound to the peninsula or did it more properly extend into the lands of Manchuria? For Sin, the answer was straightforward. Despite writing during the waning years of the Chosŏn dynasty—a time when the court could neither defy Japan's imposition of a protectorate nor resist Japanese pressure for Emperor Kojong to cede the throne, and when thousands in the Righteous Armies (Ŭibyŏng) were dying at the hands of the Japanese military in defense of the peninsula—Sin nevertheless called brazenly for a Korean Manchuria.
Empire in the Southwest: Early Qing Reforms to the Native Chieftain System
Authors: Herman John E.
Published: April 2006

By the time the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723–35) issued the above edict in January 1728, criticism of Beijing's new confrontational approach toward the native chieftains of southwest China had already reached embarrassing proportions. With increasing frequency, civilian and military officials in Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Sichuan referred to the state's abolition of native chieftainships as “senseless,” “a plan devoid of vision and purpose,” and “wantonly destructive of life and property.” Ortai (1680–1745), Yue Zhongqi (1686–1754), and several other officials recently assigned to the southwest by Yongzheng were labeled “reckless opportunists” intent on inciting disturbances among native chieftains and the indigenous non-Han peoples of southwest China in order to further their careers (ZPYZ, He Shiji 2a–3b; Ding Shijie 16b; Ortai 1:95a–b; Famin 21a–24b; YZSL 46:20b–21b). According to one influential official assigned to the southwest, “Your humble servant takes this opportunity to inform [the emperor] of the devastation and misery caused by [Ortai's] actions, in hope this policy towards native chieftains will be brought to an end and we can resume the strategy of peaceful assimilation initiated during previous reigns” (ZPZZ, Zu Binggui 1772.6).
The Ritual Formation of Confucian Orthodoxy and the Descendants of the Sage
Authors: Wilson Thomas A.
Published: April 2006

This essay explores the ritual dimension of the formation of Confucian orthodoxy in China from around the fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. Recent scholarship on orthodoxy has shown how the civil service examination system bound together hundreds of thousands of educated men with the court in pedagogical practices that effectively regulated what constituted acceptable knowledge of the classics used to legitimate the imperial regime and its policies. Without questioning the central importance of the examinations in the propagation of orthodoxy, in this essay I expand the scope of this problem to consider the role of ritual in reproducing orthodoxy by focusing on the uneasy convergence of the state cult of Kongzi—known in the West as Confucius—with the family cult of his flesh-and-blood descendants.
The Islamic Turn in Indonesia: A Political Explanation
Authors: Liddle R. William
Published: April 2006

In December 1995, the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals, ICMI (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim se-Indonesia), held its second national congress in Jakarta (Kompas, December 4–10, 1995; Republika, December 4–10, 1995; Gatra, December 9 and 16, 1995; Forum Keadilan, January 1, 1996; Ummat, December 11, 1995). Twelve hundred delegates, representing 42,000 members from all Indonesian provinces and from many Indonesian Islamic communities abroad, participated. Minister of Research and Technology B. J. Habibie, generally considered President Suharto's favorite cabinet member, was chosen for a second five-year term as national chair. Sixteen ministers, nearly half the cabinet, were elected to leadership positions, and the president himself was designated ICMI's “Protector” (Pelindung).
Culture, Virtue, And Political Transformation In Contemporary Northern Viet Nam
Authors: Malarney Shaun Kingsley
Published: April 2006

Recent Research On The Emergence Of civil society in Asia has illustrated that a range of nonstate actors have begun exercising a demonstrable influence on the politics of many countries in the region. Whether it be such grand manifestations as urban white collar workers or students mobilizing in South Korea to end the rule of Chun Doo Hwan (Lee 1993, 351); the urban Thai middle class uniting in the spring of 1992 to end the authoritarian Suchinda regime (Paribatra 1993); the more assertively political groups such as nongovernmental organizations in Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan working to protect the environment (Lee 1993; Paribatra 1993; Weller and Hsiao 1998); or the more prosaic groups of Chinese factory workers, entrepreneurs, crime syndicates, orqigongdevotees slowly reworking the state's boundaries (Chamberlain 1993; Madsen 1993; McCormick, Su and Xiao 1992; Perry 1993; Wank 1995), nonstate actors are challenging the state's control over political life and attempting to redefine the political realm in ways that accommodate their own needs and interests. In Viet Nam, as Carlyle Thayer notes, the development of civil society is at a “nascent” stage in which there is still “little scope for the organisation of activity independent of the party-led command structures” (Thayer 1992, 111). However, despite their relative organizational weakness, Vietnamese citizens have begun asserting their own voice in politics. Emboldened by the 1986 Renovation (Dô'i Mó'i) policy's agenda toward “‘broadening democracy’” (Turley 1993a, 263), many Vietnamese have taken advantage of this opportunity to participate more directly in the political process.
Liberating Animals in Ming-Qing China: Buddhist Inspiration and Elite Imagination
Authors: Smith Joanna F. Handlin
Published: April 2006

Terms, like monuments, long stand unchanged. They might acquire new contexts, attract new associations, and thus be transformed in content or meaning. Yet the very constancy of the term beguiles us to assume some immutable essence instead. Such has been the case for the termfangsheng, which literally means “releasing lives,” but specifically referred to the practice of freeing animals from captivity or rescuing them from death, and which I therefore translate variously as “releasing,” “liberating,” or “saving” animals. The termfangshengis usually traced back to the fifth century, when it appeared in theBook of Brahmā's Net (Fanwang jing);and it can be tracked forward to the present, where it is still used for practices observed in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and New York. Understood to have originated in a Buddhist text and to have beenin currency for at least 1500 years, it thus signals the power and durability of a Buddhist belief.
Guarding Beijing's Food Security in the Qing Dynasty: State, Market, and Police
Authors: Li Lillian M. , Dray-Novey Alison
Published: April 2006

An essential feature of beijing'slong history as China's imperial capital was the ability to feed its population despite a geographical location distinctly unfavorable to agricultute. For all ancient and modern states, provisioning the capital is not only a matter of pride and prestige but a question of survival. The failure to feed civil officials, military supporters, and the urban population that serves them is a visible sign of a government's inadequacy and easily leads to political unrest. For these reasons, all states have tended to favor the food security of their cities, and especially their capital cities. In this China has no claim to uniqueness.
Competing Inequalities: The Scheduled Tribes and the Reservations System in India's Jharkhand
Authors: Corbridge Stuart
Published: April 2006

This paper reports on the economic and political consequences of reserving government and public-sector jobs for members of the Scheduled Tribes in the Indian State of Bihar. It also contributes to a more general debate on the system of compensatory discrimination that has existed in India since the 1940s, and which was made tangible for middle class Indians by the decision of the government of V. P. Singh (1989–90) to adopt some of the recommendations of the Second Backward Classes Commission (1979–80: chairman B. P. Mandal). The Mandal Commission report advised that a system of reserved jobs in central government could usefully be extended from the Scheduled Castes and Tribes of India (roughly 15 and 7.5 percent of the population, respectively) to embrace a broader collection of Socially and Economically Backward Classes.1 In August 1990 V. P. Singh found it expedient to act upon Mandal's suggestion that up to 49.5 percent of all jobs in central government services and public undertakings should be reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
The Rise of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt
Authors: Jaffrelot Christophe
Published: April 2006

The rise of the other backward classes (OBCs) is certainly one of the main developments in the Hindi-belt politics over the last ten years. The OBCs are castes in the Indian social system that are situated above the Untouchables but below the forward castes (the “twice born,” Brahmins, Kshatriyas [warriors] and Vaishyas [merchants]) and the intermediate castes (mostly peasant proprietors and even dominant castes). They form the bulk of the Shudras—the fourth category (varna) of the classical Hindu social arrangement. The OBCs, whose professional activity is often as field-workers or artisans, represent about half of the Indian population, but they have occupied a subaltern position so far. Their rise for the first time seriously questions upper-caste domination of the public sphere.
Centering the King of Chosŏn: Aspects of Korean Maritime Diplomacy, 1392–1592
Authors: Robinson Kenneth R.
Published: April 2006

In diplomatic settings, the King of Chosŏn Korea showed different faces to different people between 1392 and 1592. The monarch looked toward the Emperor of Ming China as a status inferior and acted as a status equal with rulers of Japan and Ryukyu. In a recasting of the Chinese precept that diplomacy should not be conducted with subjects, he sat upon the throne as status superior to Japanese and Ryukyuans who had been permitted or denied tributary relationships. And he was the “sovereign” before Japanese and Jurchen “subjects” upon whom he had bestowed nominal appointments to military posts. Each posture necessitated a complex of policies, regulations, rites, and practices, including concealment of the tributary from imperial view.
Migration and Native Place:Qiaokanand the Imagined Community of Taishan County, Guangdong, 1893–1993
Authors: Hsu Madeline Y.
Published: April 2006

An the spring of 1984, officials of Taishan County, Guangdong, erected a statue in the central square of the county seat to commemorate the man whose life represented the highest attainment of ambition, idealism, and patriotism in recent local history. The man so honored was neither a conquering general nor a communist zealot. Taishan's chosen hero was a master of commerce and industry, who overcame the early disadvantages of birth to an impoverished family to become a wealthy and successful businessman, a powerful labor contractor, a railroad engineer, and the owner of a thriving import-export business based in the American city of Seattle. Chen Yixi (1844–1928) was not distinguished by financial success alone, for many other Taishanese men went to America, where, by dint of hard work, determination, and luck, they also became wealthy men.
Changing Television News in Japan
Authors: Krauss Ellis S.
Published: April 2006

In the industrialized democratic world, broadcasting news monopolies and oligopolies have all but disappeared. Whereas public broadcasters in Western Europe in the earlier postwar period had a monopoly or duopoly on televised news, today there is a more diverse market with competition from other public and commercial broadcasters, often carried by new technology such as satellites. In the United States, the oligopoly of the three networks in news has been broken by both CNN on cable and, to a lesser extent, PBS in its program “News Hour.” Thus the new competition introduced into broadcasting systems has been the result of either changed government policy or new technological mediums, or in certain instances both.
Confucian Commentary and Chinese Intellectual History
Authors: Gardner Daniel K.
Published: April 2006

As early as the han dynasty, exegetes of the texts in the Confucian canon were preparing written commentary on them, and by the dynasty's end they were interspersing their glosses in the body of these texts as interlinear, running commentary. From this time on, few Chinese would have read any classic from the canon without commentarial companion. And, as Confucianism came to be identified over the course of the imperial period with the Chinese cultural traditionpar excellence, the writing of interlinear commentary on the canon of texts became a standard, even dominant, mode of scholarly and philosophical discourse for Chinese literati. It was in commentary that these men would offer their reflections on the meaning of Confucian doctrine as it had evolved through the centuries and attempt to construct a philosophical or moral vision meaningful in a world far removed from that of the classical age.