China South Booky Culture Media Co. Ltd
Culture media, creative publishing, digital publishing, and other related culture media services.
View Rights PortalCulture media, creative publishing, digital publishing, and other related culture media services.
View Rights PortalPolperro Heritage Press is an independent British publisher, established in 1995. Recent titles from Polperro Press have included biographies, guides and a growing list of Cornish local history titles.
View Rights PortalThis book analyses the use of the past and the production of heritage through architectural design in the developmental context of Iran, a country that has endured radical cultural and political shifts in the past five decades. Offering a trans-disciplinary approach toward complex relationship between architecture, development, and heritage, Mozaffari and Westbrook suggest that transformations in developmental contexts like Iran must be seen in relation to global political and historical exchanges, as well as the specificities of localities. The premise of the book is that development has been a globalizing project that originated in the West. Transposed into other contexts, this project instigates a renewed historical consciousness and imagination of the past. The authors explore the rise of this consciousness in architecture, examining the theoretical context to the debates, international exchanges made in architectural congresses in the 1970s, the use of housing as the vehicle for everyday heritage, and forms of symbolic public architecture that reflect monumental time.
This book explores what to do with heritage that has been destroyed in conflict. It charts a path through the colonial histories and traumatic wars of Syria and Iraq to examine the projects and responses currently on offer and assess their flaws and limitations, including issues of digital colonialism, technological solutionism, geopolitical manoeuvring, media bias and community exclusion. Drawing on current research into the psychology and neuroscience of trauma and trauma recovery, and taking inspiration from artists and creative thinkers who challenge the status quo, this book envisages gentler, creative and ethically-driven ways to respond to heritage damaged in conflict that recentre people and their hopes, dreams and needs at the heart of these debates.
In Singapore and Malaysia, the inversion of Chinese Underworld traditions has meant that Underworld demons are now amongst the most commonly venerated deities in statue form, channelled through their spirit mediums, tang-ki. The Chinese Underworld and its sub-hells are populated by a bureaucracy drawn from the Buddhist, Taoist and vernacular pantheons. Under the watchful eye of Hell's 'enforcers', the lower echelons of demon soldiers impose post-mortal punishments on the souls of the recently deceased for moral transgressions committed during their prior incarnations. Chinese religion in contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple's spirit army. Understanding the religious divergences between Singapore and Malaysia (and their counterparts in Taiwan) through an analysis of socio-political and historical events, Fabian Graham challenges common assumptions about the nature and scope of Chinese vernacular religious beliefs and practices. Graham's innovative approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld deities. Through its alternative methodological and narrative stance, the book intervenes in debates on the interrelation between sociocultural and spiritual worlds, and promotes the destigmatisation of spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future study of mystical and religious traditions.
Performing Heritage is the first book to bring together the range of voices, debates and practices that constitute the fields of museum theatre and live interpretation. Inspiring and challenging in its scope and level of debate, Performing Heritage crosses the disciplines of performance and museum/heritage studies and offers remarkable and timely insights into the processes, outcomes and potential of this rich and rapidly developing practice - and in a variety of international contexts. The book productively brings together academic research and professional practice, and will be essential reading for all those interested in, and concerned with the future of, 'heritage' and its interpretation. ;
Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this authoritative text explores how heritage is delivered and consumed in a global world, and the ever-increasing ways in which heritage is actively valued. New international case studies see heritage as social action, as performance, and as a vehicle for innovations in tourism, challenging the notion that only official heritage practices can successfully select and interpret our links with the past. Aimed primarily at students in heritage studies and professionals in heritage industries, this book is one of three in the Understanding Global Heritage series.
Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this authoritative text presents an engaging narrative of the way politics features in heritage conservation and management. New international case studies illustrate how notions of identity, social class and nationhood may be woven into the provision of official heritage, and how heritage may be seen to be less about upholding truth or authenticity and more about delivering political objectives. Aimed primarily at students in heritage studies and professionals in heritage industries, this book is one of three in the Understanding Global Heritage series.
Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this authoritative text explores the emotive issues surrounding the commemoration of war and atrocity, and the profound challenges for conservators posed by 'virtual', 'intangible' and 'multicultural' heritage. New international case studies demonstrate that while interest in the memorialisation of the great national upheavals of the last century has never been more acute, many of the problems of conserving the past in diverse and disparate societies remain to be resolved. Aimed primarily at students in heritage studies and professionals in heritage industries, this book is one of three in the Understanding Global Heritage series.
Any 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.
The Chinese political system is the subject of much media and popular comment in part because China supports an economy with an apparently inexorable dynamic and impressive record of achievement. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to China's political system, outlining the major features of the Chinese model and highlighting its claims and challenges. It explores the central role of the Communist Party in the country's politics and the way in which the Party controls most elements of the political system. The book also draws parallels with previous historical periods in China's history. Finally, it addresses the question of what kind of role the People's Republic of China will play in global politics as a whole, the implications for the West and the rebalancing of relations between China and its neighbours. ;
This book examines the British cultural engagement with Hong Kong in the second half of the twentieth century. It shows how the territory fit unusually within Britain's decolonisation narratives and served as an occasional foil for examining Britain's own culture during a period of perceived stagnation and decline. Drawing on a wide range of archival and published primary sources, Hong Kong and British culture, 1945-97 investigates such themes as Hong Kong as a site of unrestrained capitalism, modernisation, and good government, as well as an arena of male social and sexual opportunity. It also examines the ways in which Hong Kong Chinese embraced British culture, and the competing predictions that British observers made concerning the colony's return to Chinese sovereignty. An epilogue considers the enduring legacy of British colonialism.
This book is the first to explore three visual media in contemporary Spain: cinema, television and the internet. It also examines cultural products in each of these media in terms of three vital themes: emotion, location and nostalgia. The first two chapters focus on emotion. They analyze the 'emotional imperative' in a recent Almodóvar feature film and in Spanish television's top-rated period drama, and investigate the politics of affect in TV drama in the last decade. The next pair of chapters deal with location. They use cultural geography to re-read contradictory accounts of the movida (the post-Franco cultural boom) and examine an attempt to anchor a US-derived genre (the youth movie) in the urban landscape of Madrid. The fifth and sixth chapters introduce the theme of location into nostalgia. They treat the unique cases of a successful Spanish heritage movie and a contemporary Spanish thriller remade in Hollywood. The peunultimate chapter investigates electronic artists and the virtual universe, and the book ends with a look at the implications of Hispano-Mexican co-productions and the interconnectedness of economic and aesthetic cultural forms. ;
Cultures of decolonisation combines studies of visual, literary and material cultures in order to explore the complexities of the 'end of empire' as a process. Where other accounts focus on high politics and constitutional reform, this volume reveals the diverse ways in which cultures contributed to wider political, economic and social change. The book demonstrates the transnational character of decolonisation, thereby illustrating the value of comparison - between different cultural forms and diverse places - in understanding the nature of this wide-reaching geopolitical change. Individual chapters focus on architecture, theatre, museums, heritage sites, fine art and interior design, alongside institutions such as artists' groups, language agencies and the Royal Mint, across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe.
This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.
Is deafness a disability to be prevented or the uniting trait of a cultural community to be preserved? Combining the history of eugenics and genetics with deaf and disability history, this book traces how American heredity researchers moved from trying to eradicate deafness to embracing it as a valuable cultural diversity. It looks at how deafness came to be seen as a hereditary phenomenon at all, how eugenics became part of progressive reform at schools for the deaf, and how, from the 1950s on, more sociocultural approaches to disability and minority led to new cooperative projects between professionals and local signing deaf communities. Analysing the transformative effects of exchange between researchers and objects of research, this book offers new insight to changing ideas about medical ethics, reproductive rights, the meaning of scientific progress and cultural diversity.
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.
Contemporary French cinema is an essential introduction to popular French film of the last 35 years. It charts recent developments in all genres of French cinema with analyses of over 120 movies, from Les Valseuses to Caché. Reflecting the diversity of French film production since the New Wave, this clear and perceptive study includes chapters on the heritage film, the thriller and the war movie, alongside the 'cinéma du look', representations of sexuality, comedies, the work of women film makers and le jeune cinéma. Each chapter introduces the public reception and critical debates surrounding a given genre, interwoven with detailed accounts of relevant films. Confirmed as a major contribution to both Film Studies and French Studies, this book is a fascinating volume for students and fans of French film alike.
Contemporary French cinema is an essential introduction to popular French film of the last 35 years. It charts recent developments in all genres of French cinema with analyses of over 120 movies, from Les Valseuses to Caché. Reflecting the diversity of French film production since the New Wave, this clear and perceptive study includes chapters on the heritage film, the thriller and the war movie, alongside the 'cinéma du look', representations of sexuality, comedies, the work of women film makers and le jeune cinéma. Each chapter introduces the public reception and critical debates surrounding a given genre, interwoven with detailed accounts of relevant films. Confirmed as a major contribution to both Film Studies and French Studies, this book is a fascinating volume for students and fans of French film alike.