Emiko Ochiai - Böcker

Asia’s New Mothers, through a focus on childcare, offers a comparative regional analysis unique in English-language sources of changing gender roles in East and Southeast Asia. Taking into consideration the historical and cultural differences and similarities among the societies in the region, the authors employ indepth researches of people’s everyday experiences. The research was conducted between 2001 and 2003 in six societies in East and Southeast Asia – Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore. While each makes its own unique contributions, most of the essays are informed by two theoretical focal points: modernization and gender and globalization and gender.

Is the Asian stem family different from its European counterpart? This question is a central issue in this collection of essays assembled by two historians of the family in Eurasian perspective. The stem family is characterized by the residential rule that only one married child remains with the parents. This rule has a direct effect upon household structure. In short, the stem family is a domestic unit of production and reproduction that persists over generations, handing down the patrimony through non-egalitarian inheritance. In spite of its ambiguous status in current family typology as something lurking in the valley between the nuclear family and the joint family, the stem family was an important family form in pre-industrial Western Europe and has been a focus of the European family history since Frédéric Le Play and more recently Peter Laslett. However, the encounter with Asian family history has revealed that many areas in Asia also had and still have a considerable proportion of households with a stem-family structure. The stem family debate has entered a new stage. In this book, some studies that benefited from recently created large databases present micro-level analyses of dynamic aspects of family systems, while others discuss more broadly the rise and fall of family systems, past and present. A main concern of this book is whether the family type in a society is ethno-culturally determined and resistant to changes or created by socio-economic conditions. Such a comparison that includes Asian countries activates a new phase of the discussion on the stem family and family systems in a global perspective.

Winner of the 2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title AwardAsian women are often labelled with biased stereotypical images, ranging from “subordinate housewife” to “migrant domestic maid,” and “overseas bride.” Asian women, in fact, are being constructed as “women among women.” These feminine roles are related to the various activities that women perform for others in intimate relationships both within and outside the family. This book comprises contributions from a distinguished group of international researchers who examine the historical development of “new women" and “good wife, wise mother,” women’s roles in socialist and transitional modernity and the transnational migration of domestic and sex workers as well as wives.

This volume, the first major study in its field, offers an invaluable stepping-stone to a more informed understanding of the fundamental social changes taking place in Asia – defined as ‘a reconstruction of the intimate and public spheres’. Such changes are being observed worldwide, but previous studies relating to this phenomenon are largely based on Western experiences dating back to the 1970s. Developments in Asia, however, are manifesting both similarities and differences between the two regions. The book’s strongest appeal, therefore, lies in its theoretical orientation, seeking to define frameworks that are most relevant to the Asian reality. These frameworks include compressed and semi-compressed modernity, familialism, familialization policy, unsustainable society, the second demographic dividend, care diamonds, and the transnational public sphere. Such concepts are seen as essential in any discussion concerning the intimate and public spheres of contemporary Asia. Accordingly, Transformation of the Intimate and the Public in Asian Modernity can be seen as a valuable text as well as a work of reference and will be welcomed by social scientists and cultural anthropologists alike.The book comprises an in-depth introduction and ten chapters contributed by scholars from Japan, Korea, Thailand and Canada covering topics ranging from low fertility, changing life course, increasing non-regular employment, care provision, migrant workers, social policies, and family law, to the activities of transnational NGOs, with a special focus on distinctive features of Asian experiences.

Asian women are often labelled with biased stereotypical images, ranging from “subordinate housewife” to “migrant domestic maid,” and “overseas bride.” Asian women, in fact, are being constructed as “women among women.” These feminine roles are related to the various activities that women perform for others in intimate relationships both within and outside the family. This book comprises contributions from a distinguished group of international researchers who examine the historical development of “new women" and “good wife, wise mother,” women’s roles in socialist and transitional modernity and the transnational migration of domestic and sex workers as well as wives.