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View Rights PortalAny reader who has ever visited Asia knows that the great bulk of Western-language fiction about Asian cultures turns on stereotypes. This book, a collection of essays, explores the problem of entering Asian societies through Western fiction, since this is the major port of entry for most school children, university students and most adults. In the thirteenth century, serious attempts were made to understand Asian literature for its own sake. Hau Kioou Choaan, a typical Chinese novel, was quite different from the wild and magical pseudo-Oriental tales. European perceptions of the Muslim world are centuries old, originating in medieval Christendom's encounter with Islam in the age of the Crusades. There is explicit and sustained criticism of medieval mores and values in Scott's novels set in the Middle Ages, and this is to be true of much English-language historical fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even mediocre novels take on momentary importance because of the pervasive power of India. The awesome, remote and inaccessible Himalayas inevitably became for Western writers an idealised setting for novels of magic, romance and high adventure, and for travellers' tales that read like fiction. Chinese fictions flourish in many guises. Most contemporary Hong Kong fiction reinforced corrupt mandarins, barbaric punishments and heathens. Of the novels about Japan published after 1945, two may serve to frame a discussion of Japanese behaviour as it could be observed (or imagined) by prisoners of war: Black Fountains and Three Bamboos.
Migrant architects of the NHS draws on forty-five oral history interviews and extensive archival research to offer a radical reappraisal of how the National Health Service was made. It tells the story of migrant South Asian doctors who became general practitioners in the NHS. Imperial legacies, professional discrimination and an exodus of UK-trained doctors combined to direct these doctors towards work as GPs in some of the most deprived parts of the UK. In some areas, they made up over half of the general practitioner workforce. The NHS was structurally dependent on them and they shaped British society and medicine through their agency. Aimed at students and academics with interests in the history of immigration, immigration studies, the history of medicine, South Asian studies and oral history. It will also be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about how Empire and migration have contributed to making Britain what it is today.
As British South Asians reel from the riots of summer 2025, this book tells the inspirational story of how the community organised against racism in the past and how it continues to fight in the present. British South Asians have a long tradition of radical political activism. The 1970s and 1980s saw the community grappling with prejudice in the workplace and violence in the streets. But this history is deeper than you might think, from students agitating for independence at the heart of the British Empire to seafarers organising global strikes on the eve of the Second World War. In Come what may, we're here to stay, Taj Ali reveals how successive generations fought for rights, dignity and a sense of belonging while actively shaping the country they now call home. He shows that British South Asian political life has often been defined less by religious difference than by shared commitments to anti-imperialism and anti-racism. In pursuit of these goals, alliances have been forged with other movements, from Irish republicanism to Black Power. As racism rears its ugly head again, Come what may, we're here to stay asks: are we are doomed to repeat the past or will we learn from our mistakes and build a better world together?
The Love of Books examines the affective bond between people and books in the UK. In the context of the unprecedented abundance of media offering information, storytelling and entertainment, it investigates the attachment to print and digital books amongst readers from a range of backgrounds who read for pleasure, wish to be surrounded by print copies of books, and have trouble discarding books. Unlike existing research, which focuses on prestige, social status, and cultural capital, this study centres on meaning, materiality and emotion. Drawing on interviews and archive material, it shows how attachment emerges from the practical fusion of three elements that have so far been examined separately: the material, surface properties of books, the act of reading, and books' symbolic power.
Almost every Asian culture has a name for this particular creature – Yeren in China, Chemo in Tibet or Orang Pendek on Sumatra. For centuries it has had a place in myths and imaginations. Only the scientific world is not interested in the missing link between man and beast. A Swiss cryptozoologist is determined to change this. He sets off on an expedition to central Papua New Guinea. By his side is a man from the ethnic group of the Bugis; at the helm of the boat is someone who calls himself Jonah. And then there is Blum, in his mid-twenties, faint-hearted, but with a pronounced awareness of proper etiquette. Together they set off on a journey into well-measured uncertainty. With a self-welded cage on the bow…
Since the late 1960s, American literature has been revitalised by the work of writers such as Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexie, Sandra Cisneros and Maxine Hong Kingston. An introduction to the study of ethnic American fictions organised into four sections, each written by a specialist in the fields of African American, Asian American, Chicano/a and native American literature. Writers are discussed in their cultural/political contexts and literary traditions (rather than as exceptions or as individuals, or on a generic basis). The book highlights common themes in ethnic writing as well as specificities, and has extensive suggestions for further reading as well as a critical introduction regarding the concept of 'ethnic writing'. No competing titles - there are no textbooks, no beginners' books nor any systematised combination of ethnic fictions such as this - only edited collections on each area. ;
In the new world order mapped out by Japanese and Western imperialism in East Asia after the mid-nineteenth century opium wars, communities of merchants and settlers took root in China and Korea. New identities were constructed, new modes of collaboration formed and new boundaries between the indigenous and foreign communities were literally and figuratively established. Newly available in paperback, this pioneering and comparative study of Western and Japanese imperialism examines European, American and Japanese communities in China and Korea, and challenges received notions of agency and collaboration by also looking at the roles in China of British and Japanese colonial subjects from Korea, Taiwan and India, and at Chinese Christians and White Russian refugees. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of the history and anthropology of imperialism, colonialism's culture and East Asian history, as well as contemporary Asian affairs. ;
In the new world order mapped out by Japanese and Western imperialism in East Asia after the mid-nineteenth century opium wars, communities of merchants and settlers took root in China and Korea. New identities were constructed, new modes of collaboration formed and new boundaries between the indigenous and foreign communities were literally and figuratively established. Newly available in paperback, this pioneering and comparative study of Western and Japanese imperialism examines European, American and Japanese communities in China and Korea, and challenges received notions of agency and collaboration by also looking at the roles in China of British and Japanese colonial subjects from Korea, Taiwan and India, and at Chinese Christians and White Russian refugees. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of the history and anthropology of imperialism, colonialism's culture and East Asian history, as well as contemporary Asian affairs.
Building a neighborly community, available for the first time in paperback, explores the political economy of post-cold war East Asian co-operation by examining the history of intra-regional co-operation, against the background of China's rise and Japan's relative decline, both real and perceived. The book in particular examines how East Asian states have dealt with the South China Sea as a region-wide security challenge and the imperative for self-help after the 1997 economic crisis. The book builds on the explanatory strength of analytical eclecticism, and ultimately concludes that China, South Korea, Japan, and ASEAN states have aimed for constructing a neighborly community. The fundamental differences between a neighborly community and the kind of community that has emerged in Europe and North America are that qualification for membership is not conditional, the process of routine interactions is itself one of reassurance, the aim of inter-state interactions is to foster acceptance of each other, and changes in a member's foreign policy behaviour are accepted. ;