Books
William Hurst
While millions in China have been advantaged by three decades of
reform, impressive gains have also produced social dislocation. Groups
that had been winners under socialism find themselves losers in the new
order. Based on field research in nine cities across China, this
fascinating study considers the fate of one such group - 35 million
workers laid off from the state-owned sector. The book explains why
these lay-offs occurred, how workers are coping with unemployment, what
actions the state is taking to provide them with livelihoods and
re-employment, and what happens when workers mobilize collectively to
pursue redress of their substantial grievances. What happens to these
people, the remnants of the socialist working class, will be critical
in shaping post-socialist politics and society in China and beyond.
Huaiyin Li
Village China under Socialism and Reform: A Micro History, 1948-2008 (Stanford University Press, 2009). Based on the original documents from local agricultural collectives, newly accessible government archives, and the author's fieldwork in Qin village of Jiangsu Province, this book examines the experiences of Chinese villagers during the collective and reform periods. It offers a comprehensive account of rural life after the communist revolution, covering the villagers' involvement in the recurrent political campaigns since the 1950s, agricultural production under the collective system, family farming and non-agricultural economy in the reform era, and their everyday life in the family and the community. Using a micro-historical approach, this work investigates the behavior of the villagers as individuals and as a group in a discursive context in which their self interest and community norms interacted dynamically with the imposed systems and ideologies to motivate as well as constrain themselves. By scrutinizing the villagers' various patterns of participation in local politics and diverse strategies in both team farming and the household economy, this study highlights the continuities in rural transformation between the Mao and post-Mao eras. It perceives the recent developments in the village community as an outcome of the ecological, social, and institutional changes that have persisted from the collective era rather than a radical break with the pre-reform patterns of production and sociopolitical practices.
Village Governance in North China, 1875-1936 (Stanford University Press, 2005).
Drawing on government archives from Huailu County, Hebei province, this book examines local practices and official systems of social control, land taxation, and "self government" in North China villages during the late Qing and Republican periods. It addresses several fundamental issues about imperial and modern China, such as the nature of the traditional Chinese state, the patterns of peasant behavior, and state-village relations in the twentieth century. In addition to a thorough investigation of the day-to-day operation of village institutions, including both the endogenous "village regulations" and the newly imposed administrative systems, this book further explores the linguistic and symbolic dimensions of village governance. Its analysis of peasant behavior in community service activities sheds light on a village discourse that constrained as well as empowered ordinary villagers as well as the privileged elites. Its examination of the impact of "state-making" on rural society in the early twentieth century shows how the Republican state's nationalist discourse penetrated the village community to coexist or supersede the villagers' traditional values in reshaping their perceptions of local leadership and the legitimacy of power.
"This book is a hugely informative study of the changing relation between villages and the state during the late Qing and early Republican periods based on the unusually abundant archives of Huailu County… for anyone hoping to do research in this field it will be essential reading." --China Review International
"This is truly a well-written book on China's village governance, a very good example of combining theory, first-hand materials and sophisticated analysis." --Journal of Chinese Political Science
Robert Oppenheim
Kyongju Things: Assembling Place (University of Michigan Press, 2008). Kyongju is South Korea's preeminent "culture city," an urban site rich with archaeological wonders that residents compare to those of Nara, Xian, and Rome. By examining these ancient objects in relation to the controversies that engulfed South Korea's high-speed railway line when it was first proposed in the 1990s, Kyongju Things offers a grounded and theoretically sophisticated account of South Korean development and citizenship in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Its sensitivity to issues of place, knowledge, and cultural heritage and its innovative use of network theory will be of interest to a wide range of scholars in anthropology, Asian studies, the history of science and technology, cultural geography, urban planning, and political science.
"Kyongju Things is lively, providing an engaging account of Kyongju things that draws the reader into a variety of conversations, complications, and conundra. We are a party to arguments about urban planning, conversations about authentic versus merely political rituals, discussions of itineraries and sights, and suspicions about self-interest and motives. A fascinating and thought-provoking read." --DJ Hatfield, Associate in Research, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
Nancy Stalker
Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburo, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2007).
From the 1910s to the mid-1930s, the flamboyant and gifted spiritualist Deguchi Onisaburo (1871-1948) transformed his mother-in-law's small, rural religious following into a massive movement, eclectic in content and international in scope. Through a potent blend of traditional folk beliefs and practices like divination, exorcism, and millenarianism, an ambitious political agenda, and skillful use of new forms of visual and mass media, he attracted millions to Oomoto, his Shintoist new religion. Despite its condemnation as a heterodox sect by state authorities and the mainstream media, Oomoto quickly became the fastest-growing religion in Japan of the time.
In telling the story of Onisaburo and Oomoto, Nancy Stalker not only gives us the first full account in English of the rise of a heterodox movement in imperial Japan, but also provides new perspectives on the importance of "charismatic entrepreneurship" in the success of new religions around the world. She makes the case that these religions often respond to global developments and tensions (imperialism, urbanization, consumerism, the diffusion of mass media) in similar ways. They require entrepreneurial marketing and management skills alongside their spiritual authority if their groups are to survive encroachments by the state and achieve national/international stature. Their drive to realize and extend their religious view of the world ideally stems from a "prophet" rather than "profit" motive, but their activity nevertheless relies on success in the modern capitalist, commercial world.
Unlike many studies of Japanese religion during this period, Prophet Motive works to dispel the notion that prewar Shinto was monolithically supportive of state initiatives and ideology.
Mark Metzler
Lever of Empire: The International gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan (University of California Press, 2006).
Mark Metzler was one of four runners-up for the Hamilton Book Award for Lever of Empire. The Robert W. Hamilton Awards for Academic Excellence presented by the University Co-op recognize leading University of Texas authors. The Hamilton Award is one of the highest honors of literary achievement given to published authors at the University of Texas at Austin.
This book, the first full account of Japan's financial history and the Japanese gold standard in the pivotal years before World War II, provides a new perspective on the global political dynamics of the era by placing Japan, rather than Europe, at the center of the story. Focusing on the fall of liberalism in Japan in late 1931 and the global politics of money that were at the center of the crisis, Mark Metzler asks why successive Japanese governments from 1920 to 1931 carried out policies that deliberately induced deflation and depression. His search for answers stretches from Edo to London to the ragged borderlands of the Japanese empire and from the eighteenth century to the 1950s, integrating political and monetary analysis to shed light on the complex dynamics of money, empire, and global hegemony. His detailed and broad ranging account illuminates a range of issues including Japan's involvement in the economic dynamics that shook interwar Europe, the character of U.S. isolationism, and the rise of fascism as an international phenomenon.
Patricia Maclachlan
The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Cornell University Press, 2006).
Co-Edited with Sheldon Garon. In The Ambivalent Consumer, Abe Fellows Sheldon Garon and Patricia L. Maclachlan of the University of Texas, Austin bring together an array of scholars who explore the ambivalence provoked by the global spread of "American" consumer culture. The first comparative volume to examine global phenomena of consumer culture from the perspective of East Asia, this book analyzes not only the attractions of mass consumption but also the many discontents and dilemmas that arise from consumerism. The Ambivalent Consumer offers a useful perspective on the political economies of consumption to address such pressing topics as movements against genetically modified foods; shifting relations among consumers, producers, and states; the differential influence of gender on consumption; and conflicting consumer attitudes toward globalization. The volume is the result of a seminar series organized by the Abe Fellowship Program of the SSRC with funding provided by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.
Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism (NY: Columbia University Press, 2002).
Providing comparisons to the United States and Britain, this book examines Japan´s postwar consumer protection movement. Organized largely by and for housewives and spurred by major cases of price gouging and product contamination, the movement led to the passage of basic consumer protection legislation in 1968. Although much of the story concerns the famous "iron triangle" of big business, national bureaucrats, and conservative party politics, Maclachlan takes a broader perspective. She points to the importance of activity at the local level, the role of minority parties, the limited utility of the courts, and the place of lawyers and academics in providing access to power. These mild social strategies have resulted in a significant amount of consumer protection.
Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang
Literary Culture in Taiwan: Martial Law to Market Law (Columbia University Press, 2004).
With monumental changes in the last two decades, Taiwan is making itself anew. The process requires remapping not only the country's recent political past, but also its literary past. Taiwanese literature is now compelled to negotiate a path between residual high culture aspirations and the emergent reality of market demands in a relatively autonomous, increasingly professionalized field. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture, Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang argues that the concept of a field of cultural production is essential in accounting for the ways writers and editors respond to political and eceonomic forces. The book traces the formation of dominant concepts of literature, competeing literary trends, and how these ideas have met political and market challenges.
Changes in Literary Field: Contemporary Taiwanese Fiction (Unitas Publishing Company, 2001).
This collection of Chang's critical essays that appeared in Chinese publications between 1987 and 2000 explores key issues of literary history in contemporary Taiwan: drastic shifts in the dominant institutions of literary production; profound influences of (and resistance to) an imported aesthetic modernism; the prominent presence of a "lyrical-sentimental" style as a by-product of the post-1949 ruling regime's sinocentric cultural narrative, etc. It also offers critical appraisals of Taiwan's representative fiction writers of the late twentieth century.
Wei-hsin Yu
Gendered Trajectories: Women, Work, and Social Change in Japan and Taiwan (Stanford University Press, 2009).
Gendered Trajectories explores why industrial societies vary in the pace at which they reduce gender inequality and compares changes in women's employment opportunities in Japan and Taiwan over the last half-century. Japan has undergone much less improvement in women's economic status than Taiwan, despite its more advanced economy and greater welfare provisions. The difference is particularly puzzling because the two countries share many institutional practices and values.
Drawing on historical trends, survey statistics, and personal interviews with people in both countries, Yu shows how country-specific organizational arrangements and industrial policies affect women's employment. In particular, the conditions faced by Japanese and Taiwanese women in the workplace have a profound effect on their labor force participation at critical points in their lives. Women's lifetime employment decisions in turn shape the divergent trajectories in gender equality.
Few studies documenting the development of women's economic lives are based on non-Western societies and even fewer adopt a comparative perspective. This perceptive work demonstrates and underscores the importance of understanding gender inequality as a long-term, dynamic social process.
