Author: Editor

New Book Announcement: “An Ecological History of Modern China” by Stevan Harrell

An Ecological History of Modern China, Stevan Harrell (University of Washington Press, June 2023)
An Ecological History of Modern China, Stevan Harrell (University of Washington Press, June 2023)

Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are committed to doing so? These questions are at the heart of An Ecological History of Modern China, a comprehensive account of China’s transformation since the founding of the People’s Republic from the perspective not of the economy but of the biophysical world. Examples throughout illustrate how agricultural, industrial, and urban development have affected the resilience of China’s ecosystems—their ability to withstand disturbances and additional growth—and what this means for the country’s future.

Continue reading →

New Book Announcement: “Negotiating Borders and Borderlands: The Indian Experience”, edited by Gorky Chakraborty and Supurna Banerjee

Negotiating Borders and Borderlands: The Indian Experience, Gorky Chakraborty (ed), Supurna Banerjee (ed) (Orient BlackSwan, February 2023)
Negotiating Borders and Borderlands: The Indian Experience, Gorky Chakraborty (ed), Supurna Banerjee (ed) (Orient BlackSwan, February 2023)

Borders have always been seen as physical lines of separation, which mark the “other” and group geographical spaces into territories and nation-States. However, can borders and borderlands also simultaneously exist as gateways for trade and commerce while being rigid institutions that disallow the movement of people from one part to another? Are some borders seen while others are only felt?

Continue reading →

New Book Announcement: “Sinophone Utopias: Exploring Futures Beyond the China Dream” by Andrea Riemenschnitter, Jessica Imbach, and Justyna Jaguscik

Sinophone Utopias: Exploring Futures Beyond the China Dream, Andrea Riemenschnitter, Jessica Imbach, Justyna Jaguscik (Cambria Press, Martch 2023)
Sinophone Utopias: Exploring Futures Beyond the China Dream, Andrea Riemenschnitter, Jessica Imbach, Justyna Jaguscik (Cambria Press, Martch 2023)

Focusing on counter-narratives that challenge or undermine the grand nationalist Chinese theme, this book studies the ways Sinophone artists, writers, and other cultural agents reimagine a future (world) society that can be more tolerant of cultural, ecological, ethnic, gender and ideological diversity.

Continue reading →

New Book Announcement: “Gandhi’s Travels in Tamil Nadu” by A Ramasamy

Gandhi’s Travels in Tamil Nadu, A Ramasamy, PC Ramakrishna (trans) (Orient BlackSwan, March 2023)
Gandhi’s Travels in Tamil Nadu, A Ramasamy, PC Ramakrishna (trans) (Orient BlackSwan, March 2023)

Gandhi’s Travels in Tamil Nadu highlights the deep and abiding connection and friendship Gandhi had with Tamil Nadu and its people, from the time that he, as a young lawyer, led the struggle of Indian contractual labourers, many of them Tamilians, against the colonial government in South Africa, to when he returned to India to lead the Congress and the freedom movement. It covers the period from his very first visit to (what was then) Madras State/Province in 1896, to his last visit to the state in 1946, a year before Independence.

Continue reading →

New Book Announcement: “Where the Madness Lies: Citizen Accounts of Identity and Nationalism” by Kishalay Bhattacharjee

Where the Madness Lies: Citizen Accounts of Identity and Nationalism, Kishalay Bhattacharjee (Orient BlackSwan, March 2023)
Where the Madness Lies: Citizen Accounts of Identity and Nationalism, Kishalay Bhattacharjee (Orient BlackSwan, March 2023)

The idea of citizenship today conveys a static dullness, a clerical certification, and a fixed sense of identity. By re-examining the relationship between citizenship and nationality, Where the Madness Lies redefines the multiple sources of identity that ordinary people contend with. Citizenship becomes a critical theatre where diverse identities crisscross to create new forms of meaning and interaction.

Continue reading →

New Book Announcement: “Boomtown Girl” by Shubha Sunder

Boomtown Girl, Shubha Sunder (Black Lawrence Press, April 2023)
Boomtown Girl, Shubha Sunder (Black Lawrence Press, April 2023)

Set entirely in the Bangalore region of South India, Boomtown Girl explores the ambitions, delusions, and struggles of people navigating a rapidly developing city. A rebellious teenager and her workaholic father confront their mutual distrust while dining at a newly opened Pizza Hut; a tailor nostalgic for his past glory in the employ of an Englishman grows obsessed with an American customer; a techie, his fiancée having broken off their engagement, takes a young, eager intern into his confidence.

Continue reading →

New Book Announcement: “Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy” by Lin Zhang

The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy, Lin Zhang (Columbia University Press, March 2023)
The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy, Lin Zhang (Columbia University Press, March 2023)

From start-up founders in the Chinese equivalent of Silicon Valley to rural villages experiencing an e-commerce boom to middle-class women reselling luxury goods, the rise of internet-based entrepreneurship has affected every part of China. Problematizing worldwide euphoria about digital entrepreneurship while complicating the dichotomy of “China threat vs. China model”, The Labor of Reinvention attends to the everyday labor of digital-centered entrepreneurial reinvention vis-à-vis China’s national remaking amid global technological transformations and changing geopolitical currents.

Continue reading →

New Book Announcement: “Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America” by Julia Lee

Growing Up Asian in Black and White America, Julia Lee (Henry Holt and Co, April 2023)
Growing Up Asian in Black and White America, Julia Lee (Henry Holt and Co, April 2023)

When Julia Lee was fifteen, her hometown went up in smoke during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The daughter of Korean immigrant store owners in a predominantly Black neighborhood, Julia was taught to be grateful for the privilege afforded to her. However, the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, following the murder of Latasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper, forced Julia to question her racial identity and complicity. She was neither Black nor white. So who was she?

Continue reading →

New Book Announcement: “Absence: On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East” by Byung-Chul Han

Absence: On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East, Byung-Chul Han, Daniel Steuer (trans) (Polity, March 2023)
Absence: On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East, Byung-Chul Han, Daniel Steuer (trans) (Polity, March 2023)

Western thinking has long been dominated by essence, by a preoccupation with that which dwells in itself and delimits itself from the other. By contrast, Far Eastern thought is centered not on essence but on absence. The difference between essence and absence is the difference between being and path, between dwelling and wandering.

Continue reading →

New Book Announcement: “Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan” by KuroDalaiJee

Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan, KuroDalaiJee (Leuven University Press, February 2023)
Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan, KuroDalaiJee (Leuven University Press, February 2023)

In Anarchy of the Body, art historian KuroDalaiJee sheds light on vital pieces of postwar Japanese avant-garde history by contextualizing the social, cultural, and political trajectories of artists across Japan in the 1960s. A culmination of years of research, Anarchy of the Body draws on an extensive breadth of source material to reveal how the practice of performance by individual artists and art groups during this period formed a legacy of resistance against institutionalization, both within the art world and more broadly in Japanese society.

Continue reading →