Bøger udgivet af NORDIC INST OF ASIAN STUDIES

King Norodom's Head deals with sights in and about Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city that are rarely - if at all - dealt with in guidebooks and other works about the city. This is not, therefore, a guidebook with walking tours of the town. The reader will find no detailed descriptions of the Royal Palace, the National Museum, or the Khmer Rouge's infamous S-21 detention-cum-torture centre, though all these places make appearances in the book. Rather, the reader will learn among other things like the whereabouts of the gold of King Ang Duong and of Madame Chum's infamous opium den, the story behind the mysterious Frenchman buried on Wat Phnom's hill, and the secret reason behind Jackie Kennedy's 1967 trip to Cambodia. Each chapter centres on a site that can be visited, someplace or something that can be seen and often touched. The hope is that together these chapters will give the reader an appreciation of a number of the more obscure or little reported places in the city and of the stories and history associated with them. If this book encourages visitors to spend an extra day or so in the city and if it inspires residents to stroll their city's streets more than they normally would, it will have achieved its purpose.200+ maps/illustrationsFor sale only in the U.S., its dependencies, Canada, and Mexico

This innovative and visually engaging study presents a legend from Borneo in which the Kelabit hero Tuked Rini ventures out into the cosmos to do battle in remote spirit-laden places, returning to his wife with the heads of his enemies. Accompanied by audio material and additional resources that will be developed on a companion website, the work uses the legend to explore Kelabit ideas about life and cosmology--ideas of power or life force, the world of women centred on rice-growing and the relationship of men with the wild. Especially innovative is the way it brings together an orally told legend and a highly visually-oriented exploration of the way of life of the people who tell it. The book will be of interest to academics studying the culture, language and stories of Borneo but will also--with its striking illustrations--appeal to a wider audience.

Is there a pre-Weibo and post-Weibo era in Chinese Internet history? Are hackerspaces in China the same as in the West? How can the censorship of an Internet novel end up "producing" it? How is Lu Xun's passive and ignorant spectator turned into an activist on the Internet? What are the multiple ways of being political online? Such intriguing questions are the subject of this captivating new book. Its ten chapters combine first-hand research with multi-disciplinary perspectives to offer original insights on the fast-changing landscape of the Chinese Internet. Other topics studied include online political consultation, ethnic identity and racial contestation in cyberspace, and the Southern Weekly protest in 2013. In addition, the editor's introduction highlights the importance of understanding the depth of people's experiences and institutional practices with a historical sensibility.

Hot Science, High Water explores the work of different generations of Vietnamese scientists as they engage with local and international efforts to conserve nature, address climate change, and carry out scientific research. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in universities, government offices, and foreign embassies, as well as the muddy intertidal zones of coastal Vietnam, the study reveals scientists engaged in a politics of nature that is local and global, contemporary and historical, and natural and social. More generally, this book is an ethnography of science in a developing country grappling with the local implications of global networks of knowledge production, and shifting trends in international development policy.

This volume examines the careers and intellectual positions of three prominent Japanese "dissidents" in the later Imperial period--Minobe Tatsukichi, Sakai Toshihiko, and Saitō Takao--as individual responses to the new forms of authority that appeared after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The principles to which each adhered--the rule of law, socialist egalitarianism, and representative government--contributed to the new ideas about authority and the individual in post-Restoration Japan. They also remain fundamental (at least in theory) in today's Japanese polity and society. The study reaffirms the serious limitations of the pre-war Japanese political system, its structural and institutional problems, and deep-rooted ambivalence about democratic change.

This book explores the "invention" of specific breeds of horse in the context of imperial design and colonial trade routes. Divided into two sections, it deals respectively with the introduction, invention, and use of the horse in the Philippines, Thailand, and southern Africa, as well as examining its roots and evolution within Indonesia. The study is supplemented by a discussion of the colonial trade in horses within the Indian Ocean and by introductory and concluding sections that discuss the historiographical and methodological problems associated with writing a more species- or horse-centric history.

This remarkable and timely ethnography explores how fishing communities living on the fringe of the South China Sea in central Vietnam interact with state and religious authorities as well as their farmer neighbors - even while handling new geopolitical challenges. The focus is mainly on marginal people and their navigation between competing forces over the decades of massive change since their incorporation into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1975. The sea, however, plays a major role in this study as does the location: a once-peripheral area now at the center of a global struggle for sovereignty, influence and control in the South China Sea. The coastal fishing communities at the heart of this study are peripheral not so much because of geographical remoteness as their presumed social 'backwardness'; they only partially fit into the social imaginary of Vietnam's territory and nation. The state thus tries to incorporate them through various cultural agendas while religious reformers seek to purify their religious practices. Yet, recently, these communities have also come to be seen as guardians of an ancient fishing culture, important in Vietnam's resistance to Chinese claims over the South China Sea. The fishers have responded to their situation with a blend of conformity, co-option and subtle indiscipline. A complex, triadic relationship is at play here. Within it are various shifting binaries - e.g. secular/religious, fishers/farmers, local ritual/Buddhist doctrine, etc. - and different protagonists (state officials, religious figures, fishermen and -women) who construct, enact, and deconstruct these relations in shifting alliances and changing contexts. Fishers, Monks and Cadres is a significant new work. Its vivid portrait of local beliefs and practices makes a powerful argument for looking beyond monolithic religious traditions. Its triadic analysis and subtle use of binaries offer startlingly fresh ways to view Vietnamese society and local political power. The book demonstrates Vietnam is more than urban and agrarian society in the Red River Basin and Mekong Delta. Finally, the author builds on intensive, long-term research to portray a region at the forefront of geopolitical struggle, offering insights that will be fascinating and revealing to a much broader readership.