Akio Tanabe

Yasuko Takezawa

Looking at a range of cases from around the Transpacific, the contributors to this book explore the complex formulations of race and racism emerging from transoceanic migrations and encounters in the region. Asia has a history of ceaseless, active, and multidirectional migration, which continues to bear multilayered and complex genetic diversity. The traditional system of rank order between groups of people in Asia consisted of multiple “invisible” differences in variegated entanglements, including descent, birthplace, occupation, and lifestyle. Transpacific migration brought about the formation of multilayered and complex racial relationships, as the physically indistinguishable yet multifacetedly racialized groups encountered the hegemonic racial order deriving from the transatlantic experience of racialization based on “visible” differences. Each chapter in this book examines a different case study, identifying their complexities and particularities while contributing to a broad view of the possibilities for solidarity and human connection in a context of domination and discrimination. These cases include the dispossession of the Ainu people, the experiences of Burakumin emigrants in America, the policing of colonial Singapore, and data governance in India. A fascinating read for sociologists, anthropologists, and historians, especially those with a particular focus on the Asian and Pacific regions.

Race and Migration in the Transpacific

Noboru Ishikawa

P. N. Abinales

As much of the world turns its attention to questions of the role and even survival of the nation-state formation in an increasingly globalized world, the authors of this interdisciplinary volume shift the focus of the debate by examining various sites of social action where the nation-state is still in a formative stage even as it is increasingly under threat. Challenges to emergent nation-building arise both from within multi-ethnic "states" as well as from without, e.g., through pressure from international human rights organizations and the global capitalist marketplace. The authors demonstrate, too, that this betwixt and between situation is neither entirely new nor unique to the globalized world system; parallel tensions already existed between locals and migrants of regional trading networks before the European colonizers arrived on the scene to further complicate matters. Including micro level ethnographies, local histories and a macro-theoretical overview of the world-system, this volume directly engages with the complexities of globalization in marginal and troubled states, complexities that are themselves typically marginalized in debates all too often obsessed with the plight of the most powerful and developed nations.

Globalization in Asia and Africa

Dislocating Nation-states

Yōko Hayami

Yumiko Tokita-Tanabe

Drawing on a wealth of ethnographic fieldwork, this anthology examines the complexities of identity formation and self-positioning in post-colonial contexts, ranging from the impact of Christian missionaries on the women of Aboriginal Australia to the re-masculinization of post-colonial subjects in Eastern India, from the negotiation of gendered spaces in Indonesia and Thailand to the ways in which Japanese popular culture "plays" with gender identities.

Perspectives from Asia and the Pacific

Gender and Modernity

Taberez Ahmed Neyazi

Shinya Ishizaka

Since the structural change in Indian society that began in the 1990s - the result of the liberalisation of the economy, devolution of power, and decentralisation of the government–an unprecedented, democratic transformation has been taking place. This has caused the emergence of unexpected coalitions and alliances across diverse castes, classes, and religious groups according to the issues involved. In this volume, we intend to understand this deepening of democracy by employing a new analytical framework of the 'vernacular public arena' where negotiations, dialogues, debates, and contestations occur among 'vernacular publics'. This reflects the profound changes in Indian democracy as diverse social groups, including dalits, adivasis, and Other Backward Classes; minorities, women; individuals from rural areas, towns, and cities; the poor and the new middle classes–the 'vernacular publics'–participate in new ways in India’s public life. This participation is not confined to electoral politics, but has extended to the public arenas in which these groups have begun to raise their voice publicly and to negotiate and engage in dialogue with each other and the wider world. Contributors demonstrate that the participation of vernacular publics has resulted in the broadening of Indian democracy itself which focuses on the ways of governance, improving people’s lives, life chances, and living environments. An original, comprehensive study that furthers our understanding of the unfolding political dynamism and the complex reshuffling and reassembling taking place in Indian society and politics, this book will be relevant to academics with an interest in South Asian Studies from a variety of disciplines, including Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies.

Akio Tanabe

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