Bøker i Social Sciences in Asia-serien

Why could not the Second World War catalyse science in India as it did in the West? This is one of the central questions of this volume on the British policy towards science and technology in India. Its focus is on education, research, innovation and organisation of science in such sectors as industry, agriculture, public health and transport and communications. In the process the author comes across revealing developments where science played a crucial role: an Anglo-American tussle for dominance in the region, the clash between capitalism and socialism, and the entry of neo-colonialism triggering Cold War in Asia. Many faces of humanity and science are on view --- British scientists concerned about Indiaa (TM)s development, and Indian scientists planning for national reconstruction. Of interest to all those aiming for a better understanding of the impact of science, war and international influences on the socio-economic progress in India - or other erstwhile colonies.

Promising Practices explores the ways women's participation in contemporary Japanese religious civic organizations can work as a gateway toward participatory democracy and presents new perspectives on values and social interactions that embed democracy in the everyday women's lives.

In Migration as Transnational Leisure: The Japanese Lifestyle Migrants in Australia Jun Nagatomo discusses a new type of migration in which "lifestyle" is at the core of middle class aspirations to migrate.

Asia in the Making of Christianity studies the experience of converts from fifteen locations throughout Asia, using a variety of approaches to examine the meaning of becoming Christian. The book addresses and assesses models under debate for understanding religious conversion.

Since the start of the 1990s, Central Asia has been the main purveyor of migrants in the post-Soviet space. These massive migrations impact issues of governance; patterns of social adaptation; individual and collective identity transformations; and gender relation in Central Asia.

This book compares, from a historical and sociopolitical perspective, the respective systems and contents of music education in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in response to globalization, localization and Sinificiation, with particular reference to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei.

The fate of local places increasingly rests on their capability to capitalize on their highly specific local cultural resources. "Cultural Commodities in Japanese Rural Revitalization: Tsugaru Nuri Lacquerware and Tsugaru Shamisen" examines the dynamics of this reality for the Tsugaru District of the Aomori Prefecture, Japan, and its two dominant cultural commodities, a lacquerware and a musical performance. Organized on teh basis of policy, production and consumption, the research points to historical trajectory and a combinative conceptual-operational space as the means of identifying cultural and economic potential for a cultural commodity. This analytical approach provides both for assessing the local consciousness and identifying informed policy and industry management for the commodity, making it possible to realize its potential in local revitaliszation.

What is behind the changing attitudes towards intellectual property in India and China? This exploration of empirically-based research comparisons on the character of intellectual property systems found in these two countries, offers answers to three key questions: what are the drivers that have moved them towards a closer embrace of IP norms, how have domestic and systemic influences shaped the character of this embrace, and how have state and non-state actors interacted within the international system to promote this transformation? Focusing on the software and IT services industries, it illuminates the policy drivers that have influenced IP regime adoption, and helps our understanding the process by providing a clear framework of distinctive phases of technological, political and social development.

Despite late reconsideration, a dominant paradigm rooted in Orientalist essentialisations of Islam as statically legalistic and Muslims as uniformly transgressive when local customs are engaged, continues to distort perspectives of South Asia's past and present. This has led to misrepresentations of pre-colonial Muslim norms and undue emphasis on colonial reforms alone when charting the course to post-coloniality. This book presents and challenges staple perspectives with a comprehensive reinterpretation of doctrinal sources, literary expressions and colonial records spanning the period from the reign of the 'Great Mughals' to end of the 'British Raj' (1526-1947). The result is an alternative vision of this transformative period in South Asian history, and an original paradigm of Islamic doctrine and Muslim practice applicable more broadly.

Globalization, modernization and colonialism have played a pivotal role in the social transformation of Southeast Asian societies. The essays in this volume examine three aspects of this transformation: social change and development, the role of intellectuals, religion and cultural values. The volume honours the distinguished Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas and his seminal contributions to the sociology of Southeast Asian societies. They have been written by his present and former colleagues, friends andstudents. Their contributions, reflect, complement and extend the influence of his ideas on contemporary research and social science scholarship.

"Overcoming Passion" examines the passion for race in contemporary Malaysia. Broadly the essays look at the disjunction between the falsity of race as a scientific category and the entrenched belief that race determines one's rightful identity. They probe the ways in which individual minds and institutions of power fail or refuse to recognise and act in accordance with the knowledge that race exists only insofar as its existence is sustained by the believer's belief in it. The contributors draw from a burgeoning but under-examined archive of Malaysia-related social texts, ranging from media and technological discourse, popular culture and literary production to historical writings, produced originally in English, Malay and Mandarin Chinese.

This is a book of great originality that analyses cultural change and experience of development in terms of the pursuit of the a ~good lifea (TM) as a social process. While recent anthropological critiques of development highlight the importance of a ~local knowledgea (TM), this book argues that these critiques have not gone far enough, and suggests that a much more fundamental issue concerns the ends of development as seen from a more holistic, cultural perspective. Based on ethnographic research among an ethnic Tibetan community in the Nepal Himalaya, the book eloquently illustrates how the pursuit of the good life is inextricably tied to space and history, and demonstrates the relevance of ethno-historically generated conceptions of the a ~good lifea (TM) to the practice of development.

After 1991, India after decades of stifling its own economic growth, has reformed its economy and has implemented its Look East policy to enhance its economic, business and trade linkages with East Asian economies. At the same time, Singapore has reached its own domestic limits to economic growth and is encouraging its companies to invest overseas to create its "external economic wing." Collaboration in information technology (IT) formed the key to initiating economic cooperation between Singapore and India. India has excellent IT talent but inadequate infrastructure to tap this talent for economic growth while Singapore has excelled in building high technology parks. The resulting collaboration is Singapore's flagship investment, the IT Park in Bangalore, India.

Through close readings of contemporary made-in-Singapore films (by Jack Neo, Eric Khoo, and Royston Tan) and television programs (Singapore Idol, sitcoms, and dramas), this book explores the possibilities and limitations of resistance within an advanced capitalist-industrial society whose authoritarian government skillfully negotiates the risks and opportunities of balancing its on-going nation-building project and its a oeglobal citya aspirations. This book adopts a framework inspired by Antonio Gramsci that identifies ideological struggles in art and popular culture, but maintains the importance of Herbert Marcusea (TM)s one-dimensional society analysis as theoretical limits to recognize the power of authoritarian capitalism to subsume works of art and popular culture even as they attempt consciouslya "even at times successfullya "to negate and oppose dominant hegemonic formations.

Over the past few decades, East Asia developments in terms of production, population and trade have shown remarkable dynamics. Ensuing changes in these regions of non-Western civilization are commonly interpreted in terms of a successful adaptation of modernity. However, experiences such as the regional crisis in 1997 and the tragic incident of September 2001 more than ever ask for more intensive civilizational dialogues, and urge us to carefully consider the implications of capitalist development in the East Asian context(s). This book deals with the issues of Asian values, civilizational encounters between East and West, and the development of capitalism "and" its culture in East Asian countries. Its focus on inter-civilizational exchanges and the intricate interplays between civilizational and capitalist dynamics helps us to better understand our human story and history.

Based on a large-scale survey, indepth interviews and comparative analyses, this book offers deep analyses of work stress and coping among seven professional groups: doctors, lawyers, engineers, nurses, teachers, police officers, and life insurance agents. The book makes practical recommendations for personal, organizational and societal intervention.

This volume considers the concept of conversion as a tool for understanding transformations to modernity. It examines conversions to modernity within the Ottoman domain, India, China, and Japan as a reaction to the pressures of colonialism and imperialism.