Spring Simulated Shelves

Browse our February and March 2020 releases in Anthropology, Archaeology/Heritage Studies, History, Memory Studies, and Mobility Studies and see what’s new in paperback.

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The Social Impact of Economic Growth

Editors Susanna Price and Kathryn Robinson explore the social aspects of Chinese economic growth in their soon-to-be-published book, Making a Difference? Social Assessment Policy and Praxis and its Emergence in China. Following, Susanna Price offers further insight into the book’s origins and the impact the book may have on the field of Asian development studies.

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Why did we write this book?

We are all familiar with the striking, sometimes wildly exaggerated, news headlines on China’s rapid economic growth, its geo-political consequences and – perhaps less frequently − the possible flow-on implications for liberal democratic governance. We felt that such headlines, focusing on growth, overshadowed an alternative narrative, on the social dimensions of that growth and transformation. It came down to a simple wish: we wanted to tell a different China story that reflected our own experience and practice.

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Ruins of a Religion: ‘The Polynesian Iconoclasm’ in Photos

In his recently published book, The Polynesian Iconoclasm: Religious Revolution and the Seasonality of Power, Jeffrey Sissons explains the ten-year period during which Hawaiians, Tahitians, and other South Pacific island societies almost completely destroyed their religious temples and god figures. Later, the native religion and its symbols were replaced by the Christian religion, and the churches and laws that accompanied it. Below, the author shares the significance of the book’s cover, followed by images from the book, photos taken by the author’s son, Hugo.

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A Celebration of Asian-Pacific Heritage

In 1992, a bill was signed into law designating May as Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. According to the Asian-Pacific Heritage website, “The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869.” Commemorate this month with the following selection of Asia-Pacific titles, and view the complete list here.

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Asia Pacific World

The Journal of the International Association for Asia Pacific Studies

Chief Editor: Malcolm J.M. Cooper, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU)

Published on behalf of the International Association for Asia Pacific Studies Continue reading “A Celebration of Asian-Pacific Heritage” →

Policy-Tracing Up, Down, Sideways

In an excerpt from the Introduction of A Policy Travelogue: Tracing Welfare Reform in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Canada, published in September, Catherine Kingfisher explains just how she came to be interested in the subject of welfare policy, and its existence as a living, working idea.

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My interest in tracing policy began in the summer of 2000, when I was writing grant applications to work with welfare mothers in southern Alberta, where I had recently moved from Aotearoa/New Zealand. I discovered that in the early 1990s the Alberta provincial government of premier Ralph Klein, in the process of reforming its governing structures and welfare systems, had been heavily influenced by Roger Douglas, the former Finance Minister of New Zealand.

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The Life of Policy in Canada and New Zealand

Policies have their own lives, and these lives are not “a-cultural, rational, and straightforwardly technical,” puts forth Catherine Kingfisher in her volume, A Policy Travelogue: Tracing Welfare Reform in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Canada, published in September. Following is an excerpt from the monograph’s Introduction in which the author sets the scene for her discussion of how policy lives within welfare reform in two distinct countries.

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I use the frames of translation and assemblage to gain insight into a range of policy-related phenomena in particular spaces and contexts of occurrence. First, I explore the transformation of objects as they are translated from one philosophical and political framework—Keynesianism—into another—neoliberalism. Brodie (2002:100) points out in this regard that the privatization characteristic of neoliberalism: “[i]nvolves much more than simply removing things from one sector and placing them in another….the thing moved is itself transformed into something quite different. Objects become differently understood and regulated.”

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A Reflection on ‘Japanese Tourism’

Carolin Funck and Malcolm Cooper’s Japanese Tourism: Spaces, Places and Structures, published this month, explains the nuances of Japanese tourism, both by the Japanese and within Japan by tourists from around the world. Below, the editors recall what drew them to this fascinating field of study, how the field has changed since they started writing, and how they predict it will continue to change in the future.

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Berghahn Books: When were you drawn to the study of Japanese tourism? What inspired your love of your subject?

Malcolm Cooper: The lack of a readily available text that brought together the several elements of Japanese tourism and chronicled its form and function over the years when I first started to teach this subject more than 10 years ago.

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Aloha to Beginnings: Writing ‘Legacies of a Hawaiian Generation’

A talk-story, or mo`olelo, is an informal and traditionally Hawaiian way of sharing stories to preserve them for posterity. In The Legacies of a Hawaiian Generation, to be published this month, author Judith Schachter pairs these informal conversations with fieldwork observations to give readers a view into the island culture post-U.S. annexation. Below she shares the story of her beginning in Hawai`i, and how her work took root.

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My work in Hawai`i began “in small,” with the idea of adding a chapter to my book on American kinship, family, and adoption. I intended to see what happened to Polynesian customs when the U.S. brought its legal system to the Pacific Island state.

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The Origins of Wind Over Water

Wind Over Water: Migration in an East Asian Context, edited by David W. Haines, Keiko Yamanaka, and Shinji Yamashita, was published by Berghahn Books in November 2012. Here, the editors discuss the origins and motivations for the collection.

Wind over Water grew out of a concern to see East Asia – and East Asian scholars – better represented in the literature on contemporary human migration. Perhaps its most important purpose has been to show the full range and import of migration in East Asia rather than attempt any particular theoretical or policy argument. Thus the volume ranges, as the back cover blurb will tell you, “from Korean bar hostesses in Osaka to African entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, from Vietnamese women seeking husbands across the Chinese border to Pakistani Muslim men marrying women in Japan, from short-term business travelers in China to long-term tourists from Japan who ultimately decide to retire overseas.” While there are limitations to this kind of inclusive approach, it has the decided advantage of forcing a consideration of East Asia migration in its entirety: whether short-term or long-term, whether internal or across national borders, whether for economic or social purposes. Furthermore, it does so for countries that are closely linked politically and culturally but divided quite sharply between those with already rather well-developed economies, like Japan and South Korea, and those with still developing ones, such as China and Vietnam.