Bookonomics Asia
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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.
This edited volume presents the latest research on the intersection of religion and medicine in Asia. It features chapters by internationally known scholars, who bring to bear a range of methodological and geographic expertise on this topic. The book's central question is to what extent 'religion' and 'medicine' have overlapped or interrelated in various Asian societies. Collectively, the contributions explore a number of related issues, such as: which societies separated out religious from medical concerns, at which times and in what ways? Where have medicine and religion converged, and how has such knowledge been defined by scholars and cultural actors? Are 'religion' and 'medicine' the best terms by which scholars can grapple with knowledge about the sacred and the self, destiny and disease?
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. ;