ASAA Publications: WOMEN IN ASIA (WIAS)
ROUTLEDGE PUBLISHERS
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The Women's Forum of the ASAA operates a publication series in conjunction with Routledge that focuses on promoting scholarship on Women in Asia. The Women in Asia series aims to explore the central role women play in creating the new Asia and re-creating Asian womanhood. It seeks to encourage a productive conversation between scholars in women’s studies and Asian studies. The contributions of women to the social, political and economic transformations occurring in the Asian region are legion. Women have served as leaders of nations, communities, workplaces, activist groups and families. Asian women have joined with others to participate in fomenting change at the micro and macro levels. They have been both agents and targets of national and international interventions in social policy at the level of the household and family. In the performance of these myriad roles women have forged new and modern gendered identities that are recognisably global and local. Their life experiences are rich, diverse and instructive.
The Asian Studies Association of Australia sponsors this publication series as part of its on-going commitment to promoting knowledge about women in Asia. In particular, the ASAA Women’s Forum provides the intellectual vigour and enthusiasm that maintains the Series. At its inception in 1992, the Women in Asia Series (WIAS) sought to promote knowledge about women in Asia to both the academic and general audiences. To this end, WIAS books draw on a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, sociology, political science, cultural studies and history.
On this page:
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FORTHCOMING BOOKS |
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NEW BOOKS |
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PREVIOUS VOLUMES |
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Call for manuscripts |
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Editorial Board |
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How to Purchase |
Call for manuscripts
Submissions from prospective authors are welcomed and should be addressed to the Series Editor, Professor Lenore Lyons at the University of Sydney (lenore.lyons@sydney.edu.au) in the first instance.
Submissions should consist of:-
1) Book proposal:
a. Proposed Title
b. Author name and contact details
c. Aims, Main Themes and Areas of Innovation
d. Chapter Headings (with brief synopsis of each)
e. Proposed Submission Date
f. Word length
g. Tables, figures, illustrations (whether they will be required, and if so, how many, etc)
h. Target Market
i. Main Competing Works
j. Author biography
k. References Cited - 2) Author CV
- 3) Sample chapters – at least one sample chapter should be included
Manuscripts should be in the region of 90,000 words. All manuscripts are subject to refereeing.
Editorial Board Members
Lenore Lyons (Chair - University of Sydney)
Louise Edwards (University of Hong Kong)
Andrea Whittaker (Melbourne University)
Vera Mackie (Curtin University)
Sue Blackburn (Monash University)
Anne McLaren (Melbourne University)
Mina Roces (ASAA Publications, UNSW)
FORTHCOMING BOOKS
Hyaeweol Choi, New Women in Colonial Korea (30 June 2012)
This book provides the first English translation of some of the central archival material concerning the development of New Woman (sin yosong) in Korea during the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It includes selected writings of both women and men who put forward their views on some of the key issues of new womanhood, including gender equality, chastity, divorce, education, fashion, hygiene, birth control, and the women’s movement. The authors whose essays and private letters are included express a range of attitudes about the new gender ethics and practices that were deeply influenced by the incessant flow of new and modern knowledge, habits and consumer products from metropolitan Japan and the West. Emphasizing the global nature of the phenomenon of the New Woman and Modern Girl, this sourcebook provides key references to a dynamic and multifarious history of modern Korean women, whose ideals and life experiences were formed at the intersection of Western modernity, Korean nationalism, Japanese colonialism and resilient patriarchy.
Emma Fulu, Domestic Violence In Asia (31 July 2012)
This book explores changing patterns of domestic violence in Asia. Based on extensive original research in the Maldives, it argues that forces of globalisation, consumerism, Islamism and democratisation are changing the nature of domestic relations, with shifting ideas surrounding gender and Islam being particularly significant. The book points out that domestic violence has been relatively low in the Maldives in comparison with other Asian countries, as a result of, the book argues, a history of relatively equal gender relations, an ideology of masculinity that is associated with calmness and rationality where violence is not considered an acceptable means of dealing with problems, and flexible marriage and divorce practices. The book shows how these factors are being undermined by new ideas which emphasise the need for wifely obedience, increasing gender inequality and the right of husbands to be coercive.
Kyungja Jung, Practising Feminism in South Korea (31 July 2012)
The Korean women’s movement, which is widely seen, in both Western and non-Western countries, as exemplary in terms of women’s activism, experienced a dramatic change in its direction and strategy in the early 1990s, a typical example of the new approach being an increasing focus on sexual violence issues. The anti-sexual violence movement has had a huge impact in bringing women’s issues on to the public agenda in Korea, and has been claimed as the heart of the women’s movement in Korea. This book examines feminist practice in Korea, focusing on and analysing the experiences of the first Sexual Assault Centre in Korea. Based on extensive original research, including interviews with activists and extensive participant observation, it explores why feminist activists in South Korea have organized vigorous activities on sexual violence, what has been the impact of the movement, and what have been the strategies and challenges in achieving their objectives.
Kay Schaffer and Xianlin Song, Women’s Writing in Post-Socialist China (31 August 2012)
Women’s writing in post-Socialist China has seen phenomenal growth in recent years, and this book examines this growth and its relationship to the transformation of women’s lives. The book focuses on four genres of women’s writing - life narratives and autobiographical fiction, popular literature, historical biographies and oral narratives - emerging out of the transcultural flow of ideas between western and indigenous Chinese feminisms. Together, these contemporary forms of writing represent a feminist labour of women who consciously conceptualise their work as an active force in cultural construction and transformation, and carve out a previously under-explored space for women’s desires, subjectivities and identities in post-Soviet China. The book argues that the discrete historical and political contexts which shape the writing have a direct bearing on global feminist theory and practice, and this critical study of selected genres and writers highlight the shifts in feminist perspectives within the contemporary local and global cultural landscape.
Kabita Chakraborty, Young Muslim Women in India (30 September 2012)
The reality for marginalized Muslim girls in the city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in India is far more complex than the one that is often constructed during discussions that view the lives of Muslim girls through a lens of repression and poverty within the patriarchal Islamic community. Based on extensive, original research, this book portrays a different and an under-represented perspective of young Muslim girls in the bustees (shanty towns) of Kolkata. Through a series of personal narratives, photos and artwork, it demonstrates that in spite of the dominant discourse surrounding their lives, the consumption and behaviour patterns of young women in these bustees challenge the monolithic representations of what it means to be a Muslim girl in Indian society. It explores the ways in which the young Muslim women live, manipulate, and resist the stereotypes of Islamic femininity by carefully negotiating the risks and performing multiple identities inspired by modernity, globalization and, most of all, Bollywood culture.
Jongmi Kim, Women In South Korea: New Feminities and Consumption (30 September 2012)
During the 1990s, Korea experienced a rapid transformation of its cultural identities as a result of globalisation, so much so that the period is remembered as an age of desire, consumption and globalisation. This rapid social and cultural change has prompted many young women to transform their identities, and in turn has resulted in new forms of social relations, which work to further transform gender identities and open up new spaces for engaging with the construction and contestation of femininities in South Korea.
This book provides a number of different ways of thinking about gender, media and culture by making a connection between the global and the local in order to show how the complexity of young women’s identities in the era of global media culture are constructed and contested within very specific times and spaces in South Korea. Data collected from interviews with groups of women, along with magazine and newspaper articles, reveal a number of key issues, including the visible transformation of experiences of plastic surgery and the development of a novel concept, the Missy, as a form of new femininities. The book presents a fresh perspective on theorising women’s identities, and is a useful contribution to media and culture studies, postcolonial studies, women and gender studies.
Axyem Eli, Women in China’s Muslim Northwest: Gender, Social Hierarchy and Ethnicity (30 September 2012)
The resurgence of Islam in China’s Northwest Xinjiang province among the Uyghurs, the largest ethnic group in the region, has been noted by numerous scholars. However, how this resurgence of Islam relates to Uyghur ethnic identity and how Uyghur women are responding to government policies and social change are questions that still need to be explored. This book focuses on Kashgar, an ancient city in south-western Xinjiang, bordering Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It examines how the Kashgar women in different social strata have expressed their ethnic and gendered identities in the context of Islamic traditions, the resurgence of Islam, and the shifting policies of the Chinese government over the last fifty years. It addresses the changing class hierarchies, family planning programmes and the re-veiling of women. The book will appeal to readers from a wide range of disciplines, including scholars of minority and gender studies in China, Central Asia, anthropology, post-socialist studies, and Islamic studies, and to those interested in Chinese political history since the 1950s.
Larissa Sandy, Women and Sex Work in Cambodia (31 October 2012)
Prostitution is strongly embedded in local cultural practices in Cambodia. Based on extensive original research, this book explores the nature of prostitution in Cambodia, providing explanations of why the phenomenon is so widely tolerated. It outlines the background of the French colonial period, with its filles malades, considers the contemporary legal framework, and analyses the motivations for sex work, examining in particular how women become locked into debt bondage. Overall the book provides significant contributions to wider debates about sex work, sex trafficking and the constrained nature of women’s choices.
NEW BOOKS
PREVIOUS VOLUMES
Gender Diversity in Indonesia : Sexuality, Islam and Queer SelvesSharyn Graham Davies |
Indonesia provides particularly interesting examples of gender diversity. Same-sex relations, transvestism and cross-gender behaviour have long been noted amongst a wide range of Indonesian peoples. This book explores the nature of gender diversity in Indonesia, and with the world’s largest Muslim population, it examines Islam in this context. Based on extensive ethnographic research, it discusses in particular calalai – female-born individuals who identify as neither woman nor man; calabai – male-born individuals who also identify as neither man nor woman; and bissu – an order of shamans who embody female and male elements. The book examines the lives and roles of these variously gendered subjectivities in everyday life, including in low-status and high-status ritual such as wedding ceremonies, fashion parades, cultural festivals, Islamic recitations and shamanistic rituals. The book analyses the place of such subjectivities in relation to theories of gender, gender diversity and sexuality.
Gender and Labour in Korea and Japan: Sexing ClassRuth Barraclough & Elyssa Faison |
Bringing together for the first time sexual and industrial labour as the means to understand gender, work and class in modern Japan and Korea, this book shows that a key feature of the industrialisation of these countries was the associated development of a modern sex labour industry. Tying industrial and sexual labour together, the book opens up a range of key questions: In what economy do we place the labour of the former "comfort women"? Why have sex workers not been part of the labour movements of Korea and Japan? Why is it difficult to be "working-class" and "feminine"? What sort of labour hierarchies operate in hostess clubs? How do financial crises translate into gender crises? This book explores how sexuality is inscribed in working-class identities and traces the ways in which sexual and labour relations have shaped the cultures of contemporary Japan and Korea. It addresses important historical episodes such as the Japanese colonial industrialisation of Korea, wartime labour mobilisation, women engaged in forced sex work for the Japanese army throughout the Asian continent, and issues of ethnicity and sex in the contemporary workplace. The case studies provide specific examples of the way gender and work have operated across a variety of contexts, including Korean shipyard unions, Japanese hostess clubs, and the autobiographical literature of Korean factory girls. Overall, this book provides a compelling account of the entanglement of sexual and industrial labour throughout the twentieth century, and shows clearly how ideas about gender have contributed in fundamental ways to conceptions of class and worker identities.
Feminist Movements in Contemporary JapanLaura Dales |
In contemporary Japan there is much ambivalence about women’s roles, and the term "feminism" is not widely recognised or considered relevant. Nonetheless, as this book shows, there is a flourishing feminist movement in contemporary Japan. The book investigates the features and effects of feminism in contemporary Japan, in non-government (NGO) women’s groups, government-run women’s centres and the individual activities of feminists Haruka Yoko and Kitahara Minori. Based on two years of fieldwork conducted in Japan and drawing on extensive interviews and ethnographic data, it argues that the work of individual activists and women’s organisations in Japan promotes real and potential change to gender roles and expectations among Japanese women. It explores the ways that feminism is created, promoted and limited among Japanese women, and advocates a broader construction of what the feminist movement is understood to be and a rethinking of the boundaries of feminist identification. It also addresses the impact of legislation, government bureaucracy, literature and the internet as avenues of feminist development, and details the ways which these promote agency – the ability to act – among Japanese women.
Women, Islam and Everyday Life: Renegotiating Polygamy in IndonesiaNina Nurmila |
This book examines Islam and women’s everyday life, focusing in particular on the highly controversial issue of polygamy. It discusses the competing interpretations of the Qur’anic verses that are at the heart of Muslim controversies over polygamy, with some groups believing that Islam enshrines polygamy as a male right, others seeing it as permitted but discouraged in favour of monogamy, and other groups arguing that Islam implicitly prohibits polygamy. Based on detailed fieldwork conducted in Indonesia, it provides an empirically-based account of women’s lived experiences in polygamous marriages, describing the different perceptions of the practice and strategies in dealing with it. It also considers the impact of changing public policy, in particular Indonesia’s 1974 Marriage Law which restricted the practice of polygamy. It shows that, in fact, this law has not resulted in widespread adherence, and considers how public policy could be modified to increase its effectiveness in affecting behaviour in everyday life. Overall, the book argues that polygamy has been a source of injustice towards women and children, that this is against Islamic teaching, and that a just Islamic law would need to call for the abolition of polygamy.
Young Women in Japan: Transitions to AdulthoodKaori Okano |
This book examines young women in Japan, focusing in particular on their transitions to adulthood, their conceptions of adulthood and relations with Japanese society more generally. Drawing on detailed primary research including a year-long observation of high schools and subsequent interviews over a 12 year period, it traces the experiences of a group of working class women from their last year of high-schooling in 1989 through to 2001 as they approached their thirties. It considers important aspects of the transition to adulthood including employment, marriage, divorce, childbirth and custody. It shows how the role and identities of young women changed over the course of the 1990s, exploring the impact of changes within Japanese society and global forces, and explains fully the implications for ordinary young people and their everyday lives. It considers to what extent young women’s perceptions of themselves and society are shifting, and how far this can be explained by external constraints and their own experiences and decisions.
Gender, State and Social Power in CONTEMPORARY IndonesiA: Divorce and Marriage LawKate O’Shaughnessy |
This book examines gender, state and social power in Indonesia, focusing in particular on state regulation of divorce from 1965 to 2005 and its impact on women. Indonesia experienced high divorce rates in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by a remarkable decline. Already falling divorce rates were reinforced by the 1974 Marriage Law, which for the first time regulated marriage for both Muslim and non-Muslim Indonesians and restricted access to divorce. This law defined the roles of men and women in Indonesian society, vesting household leadership with husbands and the management of the household with wives. Drawing on a wide selection of primary sources, including court records, legal codes, newspaper reports, fiction, interviews and case studies, this book provides a detailed historical account of this period of important social change, exploring fully the impact and operation of state regulation of divorce, including the New Order government’s aims in enacting this legal framework, its effects in practice and how it was utilised by citizens (both men and women) to advance their own agendas. It argues that the Marriage Law was a tool of social control enacted by the New Order government in response to the social upheaval and protests experienced in the mid 1970s. However, it also shows that state power was not hegemonic: it was both contested and co-opted by citizens, with men and women enjoying different degrees of autonomy from the state. This book explores all of these issues, providing important insights on the nature of the New Order regime, social power and gender relations, both during the years of its rule and since its collapse.
Gender, Household and State in Post-Revolutionary VietnamJayne Werner |
This book examines gender in post-revolutionary Vietnam, focusing on gender relations in the family and state since the onset of economic reform in 1986. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources (including surveys, interviews, and responses to film screenings), Jayne Werner demonstrates that despite the formal institution of public gender equality in Vietnam, in practice women do not hold a great deal of power, continuing to defer to men in both the family and the wider community. Contrary to conventional analyses equating liberalisation and decentralisation with a reduced role for the state over social relations, this book argues that gender relations continued to bear the imprint of state gender policies and discourses in the post-socialist state. While the household remained a highly statist sphere, the book also shows that the unequal status of men and women in the family was based on kinship ties that provided the underlying structure of the family and (contrary to resource theory) depended less on their economic contribution than on family norms and conceptions of proper gendered behaviour. Werner’s analysis explores the ways in which the Doi Moi state utilised constructions of gender to advance its own interests, just as the communist revolutionary regime had earlier used gender as a key strategic component of post-colonial government. Thus this book makes an important and original contribution to the study of gender in post-socialist countries.
Sex, Love and Feminism in the Asia PacifiC: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF YOUNG PEOPLE'S ATTITUDESChilla Bulbeck |
‘Sex, love and feminism’ are three aspects of the rapidly changing gender relations that shape young people’s lives in the Asia Pacific region. Much has been written about rapidly changing countries in Asia, most recently China and India. With the global spread of capitalist production and neo-liberal ideologies, the claim that the rest of the world’s women are treading the path to enlightenment and development forged by women in the West has been revived. This book explores that contention through a comparative analysis of the attitudes of young middle class urbanites in ten countries: the USA, Australia, Canada, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, India, Indonesia, China and Vietnam. Drawing on detailed empirical research, the study describes and compares attitudes towards the women’s movement, sexual relations and family arrangements in the countries considered. It explores young peoples’ image of feminists and what they feel the women’s movement has achieved for women and men in their country. The book discusses young people’s attitudes to controversial gender issues such as role reversal, sharing housework, abortion rights, same sex sexual relations, nudity and pornography. Through a comparative analysis of the gender vocabularies by which young people understand gender issues, the book highlights the role of differences in history, culture, economics and political leadership. These influence attitudes to gender relations, the status of women and the political programs of the women’s movement in different countries. Whilst there are striking parallels between countries and even across the whole sample, those similarities do not fall neatly into a simple dichotomy of the ‘west versus the rest’.
Gender, Islam and Democracy in IndonesiaKathryn Robinson |
This book explores the relationship between gender, religion and political action in Indonesia, examining the patterns of gender orders that have prevailed in recent history, and demonstrating the different forms of social power this has afforded to women. It sets out the part played by women in the nationalist movement, and the role of the women’s movement in the structuring of the independent Indonesian state, the politics of the immediate post-independence period and the transition to the authoritarian New Order. It analyses in detail the gender relations of the New Order regime, focused around the unitary family form supposed by the family system expounded in the New Order ideology and the contradictory implications of the opening up of the economy to foreign capital and ideas, for gender relations. It examines the forms of political activism that were possible for the women’s movement under the New Order, and the role it played in the fall of Suharto and the transition to democracy. The relationship between Islam and women in Indonesia is also addressed, with particular focus on the way in which Islam became a critical focus for political dissent in the late New Order period. Overall, this book provides a thorough investigation of the relationship between gender, religion and democracy in Indonesia, and is a vital resource for students of gender studies and Indonesian affairs.
Women and Work in IndonesiaMichele Ford and Lyn Parker (eds) |
This book examines the meaning of work for women in contemporary Indonesia. It takes a broad definition of work in order to interrogate assumptions about work and economic activity, focusing on what women themselves see as their work, which includes not only paid employment, home life and child care, but also activities surrounding ritual, healing and religious life. It analyses the key issues, including the contrasts between ‘new’ and ‘old’ forms of work, the relationship between experiences of migration and work, and the ways in which religion – especially Islam - shapes perceptions and practice of work. It discusses women’s work in a range of different settings, both rural and urban, and in different locations, covering Sumatra, Bali, Lombok, Java, Sulawesi and Kalimantan. A wide range of types of employment are considered: agricultural labour, industrial work and new forms of work in the tertiary sector such as media and tourism, demonstrating how capitalism, globalization and local culture together produce gendered patterns of work with particular statuses and identities. It address the question of the meaning and valuing of women’s ‘traditional’ work, be it agricultural labour, domestic work or other kinds of reproductive labour, challenging assumptions of women as ‘only’ mothers and housewives, and demonstrating how women can negotiate new definitions of ‘housewife’ by mobilizing kinship and village relations to transcend conventional categories such as wage labour and the domestic sphere. Overall, this book is an important study of the meaning of work for women in Indonesia.
Women and labour organizing in Asia: diversity, autonomy and activismKaye Broadbent and Michele Ford (eds) |
This book investigates the role of women and labour activism in Asia, demonstrating that women have been active in union and non union based campaigns throughout the region. Although focusing primarily on women, the contributions to this book address issues that affect all workers. Chapters on China, India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Bangladesh examine the part that female labour activism has played inside, and outside, formal union movements. Whilst documenting the peculiar factors characterising individual national contexts, the book emphasises the similarities in women’s experiences of union and labour activism and the barriers women labour activists have faced. It considers the relationships between women union members and activists and male officials and union members, links with other social movements – particularly the broader women’s movement – and the details of specific labour campaigns and struggles. In doing so, it provides a full account of the role of women in union activism in Asia, covering all the major economies of the region, and successfully challenging the prevailing conception of Asian women workers as passive and uninterested in industrial issues.
Abortion, Sin and the State in Thailand
Andrea WhittakerJuly 2004, 208 pages 0-415-33652-X
This book discusses abortion in Thailand. Although abortion is illegal between 200,000 and 300,000 abortions are performed each year. Based on extensive original fieldwork the book explores the real-life dilemmas facing women, situational ethics, popular representations of abortion in the media and the politics of the abortion debate in Thailand.
The book highlights women's subjective experiences and perceptions of abortion, and places these 'women's stories' in the context of broader conflicts over religion, nationalism, modernity and the global politics of reproductive health
Chinese Women: Living and Working
Anne E. McLaren (ed)February 2004, 234X156 256 pages hbk 0-415-31217-5
This book provides an overview of the current position of women in the People's Republic of China--both at work and more widely--by examining the role of women in a wide range of different situations--including as entrepreneurs, teachers, and sex workers and in politics and as homemakers. The book presents significant new findings on new domains of employment for women in China's burgeoning market economy.
Sexual Violence and the Law in Japan
Catherine BurnsNovember 2004, 234X156: 224 pages hdbk 0-415-33651-1 OR eBook 0-203-42943-5
This book provides a detailed examination of judicial decision-making in Japanese cases involving sexual violence. It describes a culture of 'eroticised violence' in Japan which sees the feminine body as culpable, and the legal system which encourages homogenity and conformity in decision-making. It shows how the legal restraints confronting women claiming sexual assaults are enormous. It includes an analysis of specific case studies and a discussion of recent moves to address the problem.
The Women's Movement in Postcolonial Indonesia: Gender and Nation in a New Democracy
Elizabeth MartynNovember 2004, 234X156: 272 pages 0-415-30838-0
This book examines women's activism in the early years of independent Indonesia when new attitudes to gender, nationalism, citizenship and democratization were forming. It questions the meaning of democratization for women and their relationship to national sovereignity within the new Indonesian state. It discusses women's organisations and their activities, women's cultural and economic roles and the different cultural, regional and ethnic attitudes towards women.
Violence against Women in Asia: Gender Inequality and Technologies of Violence
Lenore Manderson and Linda Bennett (eds)February 2003, 194 pages hbk 0-7007-1741-2 and pbk 0-7007-1742-0
Violence against women is both a violation of women's human rights and a priority public health issue, and is endemic worldwide. While has been much written about it in industrialized societies, there has been relatively little attention to such violence in Asian societies. The collection of papers in this volume address the structural and interpersonal violences to which women are subject, under conditions of conflict and disruption, and where civil society is relatively ordered.
Authors explore sexual violence and coercion, domestic violence, and violence within the broader community and the state, avoiding sensationalised accounts of so-called "cultural" practices in favour of nuanced explorations of violences as experienced in Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Bangladesh and India.
Women, Islam and Modernity: Single Women, Sexuality and Reproductive Health in Contemporary Indonesia
Linda Rae BennettDecember 2004, 234X156: 208 pages 0-415-33652-X
In popular debates about reproductive and sexual rights, formal religions, especially Islam, are seen as barriers providing institutional and ideological resistance to women's realisation of reproductive and social autonomy. This book challenges this view of Islam. Based on original fieldwork in Eastern indonesia, the book explores the complex factors that affect how young Indonesian women form their sexual subjectivities.
Women's Employment in Japan: The Experience of Part-time Workers
Kaye BroadbentFebruary 2003, 168 pages hbk 978-0-7007-1743-9
The low status accorded to part-time workers in Japan has resulted in huge inequalities in the workplace. This book, based on extensive original research, including case study investigations in Japanese workplaces, examines the problem in depth, and hows the extent of inequality. It shows how many part-time workers, most of whom are women, are concentrated in low paid, low skill, poorly unionised service sector jobs. Part-time workers in Japan work hours equivalent to, or greater than, full-time workers but receive lower financial and welfare benefits than their full-time colleagues. Overall, the book demonstrates that the way part-time work is constructed in Japan re-inforces and institutionalises the sexual division of labour.
Women in Asia: Tradition, Modernity and Globalisation
Louise Edwards and Mina Roces (eds)September 2000, 344pp ISBN 1-86508-318-6 paperback
Women in Asia: Tradition, Modernity and Globalisation surveys the transformation in the status of women over three decades from 1970 in a diverse range of nations from the Asian region: Malaysia, China, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, India, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Burma. Within these 13 national case studies, the book presents new arguments about being women, being Asian and being modern in contemporary Asia.
Contributors to the volume include Maila Stivens, Jasmine Chan, Elise Tipton, Esta Ungar, Kathryn Robinson, Bhassorn Limanonda, Catherine Tang, W.T. Au, Y.P. Chung and H. Y. Ngo, Nora Chiang, Sasha Hampson, Janelle Mills, Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, Louise Edwards and Mina Roces.
It provides a comprehensive analysis of the change of women's status with regards to a range of key indicators including education, health, population, politics, law, employment, violence against women, and militarism. In addition the volume unravels the complexities for women presented by globalisation and modernisation and also the specific contributions of women to national development.
Each chapter explores how women across the Asian region are refiguring feminism within their diverse range of distinct cultures. Divergent narratives circulating about the modern Asian woman are explored in relation to powerful discourses of the imagined traditional Asian woman.
Intimate Knowledge: Women and their health in North-East Thailand
Andrea WhittakerAugust 2000, 224pp ISBN 1-86508-216-3 paperback
Intimate Knowledge provides a vivid and original study of what it means to be a woman in a village in rural Thailand. As a study on health this book concentrates upon the intimacies of women's bodies while simultaneously exploring how experiences of health and illness are shaped by the wider context of the developing Thai state.
The book addresses the broad forces impacting on women's health, discussing gender relations in Thai society, migration and work, the effects of poverty and uneven development. Women's voices feature throughout the book, telling us of the intimacies of their lives and bringing to life the ramifications of broader social forces and policies in Thai society.
Matriliny & Modernity
Maila Stivens1995, 240pp ISBN 186373-892 4 paperback
This volume explores the links between gender, matrilineal customary law and development in the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the author shows that though tradition has survived colonialism and the spectacular unfolding of Malaysian modernity over the last century, the future of matrilineal customary law is under increasing threat.
Mukkuvar Women: gender, hegemony and capitalist transformation in a South Indian fishing community
Kalpana Ram1991, 266pp ISBN 1-86373-014-1 paperback [out of print]
Mukkuvar Women covers questions of gender and migration, capitalist development, goddess worship, healing and the consciousness of minorities in a South Indian fishing community. These issues are discussed through a variety of critical approaches. In her analysis, Ram draws on Marxist, feminist and anthropological methodologies, while evaluating blind spots in each canon.
Masters & Managers: A study of gender relations in urban Java
Norma Sullivan1995, 206pp ISBN 1-86373-756-1 paperback [out of print]
Sullivan clarifies certain misconceptions about women's status and position in Javanese society, including the view that women's control of the household pursestrings gives them exceptionally high status, strengthened by their central role in the matrifocal pattern of the Javanese bilateral kinship system. Such myths, which have roots in older Javanese ideas and stereotypes about women, are recreated and transmitted through contemporary media.
Madonnas & Martyrs
Anne-Marie Hildson1995, 240pp ISBN 1-86373-890-8 paperback [out of print]
Drawing on the author's extensive interviews with Filipino women, Madonnas and Martrys examines the relationship between women and militarism in the Philippines. In particular, the author looks at women recruits in the armed forces, women anti-government guerrilla fighters, and women victims of military violence.
Purity & Communal Boundaries: Women and Social Change in a Bangladeshi Village
Santi Rozario1992, 200pp ISBN 1-86373-039-7 paperback [out of print]
This volume explores the rich complexities of a central Bangladeshi village, populated by Muslims, Hindus and Christians. Through a carefully constructed theoretical framework Santi Rozario demonstrates the ways in which class and communal domination reinforce gender inequality. The position of women is analysed in terms of linkages between religious values, sexuality, economics and politics.
A World of Difference
Julie Marcus1992, 104pp ISBN 1-873219-5 paperback [out of print]
In this challenging and provocative book, Julie Marcus examines the ways in which popular genres, like the novel and travel literature, shape the narrative structures of anthropology. Beginning with an analysis of the ways in which popular dreams of the orient lead the anthropologist toward the east, the author explores the possibility of producing more accurate descriptions of both the similarities and differences that can be located in Christian and Islamic approaches to women's bodies.
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Special Prices for ASAA members
ASAA Members may purchase the books in the Series direct from Routledge at a special price discounted by 20% from the standard retail price. To get this discount please send your orders directly Ms Stephanie Rogers at Routledge.