Routledge Contemporary Asian Societies – serie

Presenting the collaborative work of 13 international specialists of contemporary Chinese culture and society, this book explores the spaces of creation, production, and diffusion of "youth cultures" in China among generations born since the 1980s. Defining the concept of "youth culture" as practices and activities that catalyze self-expression and creativity, this book investigates the emergence of new physical spaces, including large avenues, parks, shopping malls, and recreation areas. Building on this, it also examines the influence of non-physical places, especially digital cultures, such as online social networks, shopping platforms, Cosplay, cyberliterature, and digital calligraphy and argues that these may in fact play a more significant role in Chinese civil society today.As an exploration of how youth can be creative even in a coercive environment, China’s Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces will be valuable to students and scholars of Chinese society, as well those working on the links between space, youth, and culture.

This book captures the dynamics of history, memory, and territorial cults in Houay Yong, a Tai Vat village situated in the multiethnic highland frontier between Laos and Vietnam. By taking seriously the experiences of the villagers, it partakes in a broader movement to reintegrate highlanders and their agency into history at large.Based on comprehensive fieldwork research and the examination of colonial archives, this book makes accessible, for an English-speaking audience, untapped French archives on Laos and early publications on territorial cults written by French ethnologists. In so doing, it provides a balanced perspective, drawing from the fields of memory studies and classical historical research. Following a chronological approach stretching from the nineteenth century to the present, it extends narrative analysis through a comparative ethnography of territorial cults, a key component of the performative and material presentification of the past.Highly interdisciplinary in nature, History, Memory and Territorial Cults in the Highlands of Laos will be useful to students and scholars of anthropology, history, and religious studies, as well as Asian culture and society.

This book assesses the political, economic and geopolitical dynamics that China’s presence has initiated throughout Latin America and the Caribbean between 2008 and 2020. Written by experts across three continents, contributions to this edited volume explore the bilateral relations that China has developed with almost all Latin American and Caribbean countries, charting both the benefits they have brought and the problems that these relations have created for local actors. The book analyses the emergence of new forms of "dependence", considers issues such as the existence of a deindustrialization phenomenon throughout Latin America and ultimately questions whether China and the United States are engaged in a zero-sum game in the region. It also investigates challenges that the densification of the web of China’s relations and exchanges with Latin America and the Caribbean countries pose; not only to the United States and European countries, as traditional partners of these states, but also to Latin American regionalism. Including an extensive set of case studies and local, regional and global-level analysis, China-Latin America and the Caribbean provides an empirically rich resource for students and scholars of Chinese foreign and economic policy, Latin America, the Caribbean and wider geopolitics.

This book assesses the political, economic and geopolitical dynamics that China’s presence has initiated throughout Latin America and the Caribbean between 2008 and 2020. Written by experts across three continents, contributions to this edited volume explore the bilateral relations that China has developed with almost all Latin American and Caribbean countries, charting both the benefits they have brought and the problems that these relations have created for local actors. The book analyses the emergence of new forms of "dependence", considers issues such as the existence of a deindustrialization phenomenon throughout Latin America and ultimately questions whether China and the United States are engaged in a zero-sum game in the region. It also investigates challenges that the densification of the web of China’s relations and exchanges with Latin America and the Caribbean countries pose; not only to the United States and European countries, as traditional partners of these states, but also to Latin American regionalism. Including an extensive set of case studies and local, regional and global-level analysis, China-Latin America and the Caribbean provides an empirically rich resource for students and scholars of Chinese foreign and economic policy, Latin America, the Caribbean and wider geopolitics.

This book captures the dynamics of history, memory, and territorial cults in Houay Yong, a Tai Vat village situated in the multiethnic highland frontier between Laos and Vietnam. By taking seriously the experiences of the villagers, it partakes in a broader movement to reintegrate highlanders and their agency into history at large.Based on comprehensive fieldwork research and the examination of colonial archives, this book makes accessible, for an English-speaking audience, untapped French archives on Laos and early publications on territorial cults written by French ethnologists. In so doing, it provides a balanced perspective, drawing from the fields of memory studies and classical historical research. Following a chronological approach stretching from the nineteenth century to the present, it extends narrative analysis through a comparative ethnography of territorial cults, a key component of the performative and material presentification of the past.Highly interdisciplinary in nature, History, Memory and Territorial Cults in the Highlands of Laos will be useful to students and scholars of anthropology, history, and religious studies, as well as Asian culture and society.

Presenting the collaborative work of 13 international specialists of contemporary Chinese culture and society, this book explores the spaces of creation, production, and diffusion of "youth cultures" in China among generations born since the 1980s. Defining the concept of "youth culture" as practices and activities that catalyze self-expression and creativity, this book investigates the emergence of new physical spaces, including large avenues, parks, shopping malls, and recreation areas. Building on this, it also examines the influence of non-physical places, especially digital cultures, such as online social networks, shopping platforms, Cosplay, cyberliterature, and digital calligraphy and argues that these may in fact play a more significant role in Chinese civil society today.As an exploration of how youth can be creative even in a coercive environment, China’s Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces will be valuable to students and scholars of Chinese society, as well those working on the links between space, youth, and culture.

Despite contrasting approaches, democratic and authoritarian governments all underline the fact that environmental protection is crucial and inevitable—and China’s enthusiasm in stepping up its efforts to protect the environment has not gone unnoticed. This book highlights how the consensual orchestration of sustainability in China’s biggest city, Shanghai, affects non-state actors’ ways of perceiving, acting, and organizing around environmental issues.China’s Green Consensus examines grassroots realities as they intersect with events of everyday life, offering insights into areas that far transcend debates over coercive forms of environmentalism and exploring the “soft” and “green” facets of President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian approach to governance. The importance of environmental protection in people’s lives serves as a lens to analyze and understand authoritarian adaptations to environmental global phenomena. Arantes highlights how, through mobilization and (de)politicization, a “green” consensus leads to the displacement of state responsibilities and the cultivation of civil society in its own image. In so doing, she opens up new ways of thinking about the complexities of environmental governance, consensus politics, subject making, and citizenship in authoritarian contexts.This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese society and politics, environmental politics, political ecology, international relations, and urbanization in Asia, as well as all others interested in the rising appeal of authoritarianism around the globe.

Despite contrasting approaches, democratic and authoritarian governments all underline the fact that environmental protection is crucial and inevitable—and China’s enthusiasm in stepping up its efforts to protect the environment has not gone unnoticed. This book highlights how the consensual orchestration of sustainability in China’s biggest city, Shanghai, affects non-state actors’ ways of perceiving, acting, and organizing around environmental issues.China’s Green Consensus examines grassroots realities as they intersect with events of everyday life, offering insights into areas that far transcend debates over coercive forms of environmentalism and exploring the “soft” and “green” facets of President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian approach to governance. The importance of environmental protection in people’s lives serves as a lens to analyze and understand authoritarian adaptations to environmental global phenomena. Arantes highlights how, through mobilization and (de)politicization, a “green” consensus leads to the displacement of state responsibilities and the cultivation of civil society in its own image. In so doing, she opens up new ways of thinking about the complexities of environmental governance, consensus politics, subject making, and citizenship in authoritarian contexts.This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese society and politics, environmental politics, political ecology, international relations, and urbanization in Asia, as well as all others interested in the rising appeal of authoritarianism around the globe.

This book examines how the young in Northeast Asia engage with the political, especially in terms of the production, reformulation, or contestation of their national identities. Through case studies covering China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and Taiwan, the contributions provide a study of the online spaces where youth engage with current debates regarding national identities. The book also unpacks the distinctive forms of expression and negotiation of national identities favoured by younger generations across Northeast Asia and asks questions specifically raised by their political mobilisation. For example, how their public mobilisation for a given cause has forced them to rethink their place in national and global communities.This book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of East Asian culture and politics, media studies and youth studies. The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book examines how the young in Northeast Asia engage with the political, especially in terms of the production, reformulation, or contestation of their national identities. Through case studies covering China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and Taiwan, the contributions provide a study of the online spaces where youth engage with current debates regarding national identities. The book also unpacks the distinctive forms of expression and negotiation of national identities favoured by younger generations across Northeast Asia and asks questions specifically raised by their political mobilisation. For example, how their public mobilisation for a given cause has forced them to rethink their place in national and global communities.This book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of East Asian culture and politics, media studies and youth studies. The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book elucidates state-society relations in East Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic from a comparative perspective.Based on the findings of cross-national surveys in Japan, South Korea, and China, the book scrutinizes the dynamics of the state–society relationships in each country, examining trends of change in this relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic. Citizens’ attitudes toward individual freedom, the state’s anti-pandemic policies, vaccine hesitancy, and income redistribution policies across the three countries are compared revealing how public opinion in Japan, South Korea, and China during the COVID-19 pandemic provides a basis for understanding the complex relationship between state and society in East Asia.Transcending national boundaries and uncovering citizens’ evaluations of their domestic and neighboring countries’ pandemic responses in East Asia, this book will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in East Asian society and politics.