This open access book is about understanding the processes involved in the transformation of smallholder rice farming in the Lower Mekong Basin from a low-yielding subsistence activity to one producing the surpluses needed for national self-sufficiency and a high-value export industry. For centuries, farmers in the Basin have regarded rice as “white gold”, reflecting its centrality to their…
This book introduces readers to modern Thai literature through the themes of modernity, nationalism, identity and gender. In the cultural, political and social transformations that occurred in Thailand during the first half of the twentieth century, Thai literature was one of the vehicles that moved the changes. Taking seriously ‘read till it shatters’, a Thai phrase that instructs readers …
Vietnam’s shift to a market-based society has brought about profound realignments in its people’s relations with each other. As the nation continues its retreat from the legacies of war and socialism, significant social rifts have emerged that divide citizens by class, region and ethnicity. By drawing on social connections as a traditional resource, Vietnamese are able to accumulate wealth,…
An international team of leading scholars illustrate the necessity and advantages of reforming the English Literary Curriculum from specific decolonial perspectives in this book, using evidence-based arguments from classroom contexts, as well as establishing new critical agendas
This book challenges the common assumption that the predominant focus of the history of science should be the achievements of Western scientists since the so-called scientific revolution. The conceptual frameworks within which the members of earlier societies and of modern indigenous groups worked admittedly pose severe problems for our understanding. But rather than dismiss them on the grounds…
Cultural Expertise, Law and Rights introduces readers to the theory and practice of cultural expertise in the resolution of conflicts and the claim of rights in diverse societies. Combining theory and case-studies of the use of cultural expertise in real situations, and in a great variety of fields, this is the first book to offer a comprehensive examination of the field of cultural expertise: …
Our food systems have performed well in the past, but they are failing us in the face of climate change and other challenges. This book tells the story of why food system transformation is needed, how it can be achieved, and how research can be a catalyst for change. Written by a global interdisciplinary team of researchers, it brings together perspectives from multiple areas including climate,…
An international team of leading scholars illustrate the necessity and advantages of reforming the English Literary Curriculum from specific decolonial perspectives in this book, using evidence-based arguments from classroom contexts, as well as establishing new critical agendas
This open access book brings together the disciplines of childhood studies, literary studies, and the environmental humanities to focus on the figure of the child as it appears in popular culture and theory. Drawing on theoretical works by Clare Colebrook, Elizabeth Povinelli, Kathryn Yusoff, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour the book offers creative readings of sci-fi novels, short stories and fi…
This open access book applies insights from the anthropology of hospitality to illuminate ethnographic accounts of migrant reception in various parts of the Mediterranean. The contributors ground the idea and practice of hospitality in concrete ethnographic settings and challenge how the casual usage of Derridean or Kantian notions of hospitality can blur the boundaries between social scales an…
In this comprehensive open access book, written for readers from any or no religious background, Leena El-Ali does something remarkable. Never before has anyone taken on every last claim relating to Islam and women and countered it not just with Qur’anic evidence to the contrary, but with easy-to-use tools available to all. How can a woman’s testimony be worth half of a man’s? How can men…
"Han Hyung-mo was a major figure within South Korea’s Golden Age cinema. The director of Madame Freedom (1956), the most famous film of the 1950s, Han made popular films that explored women’s relationship to modernity. He was also a master stylist who introduced technological innovations and fresh ideas about film form and genre into Korean cinema. This book offers a transnational cultural …
Knowing Women is a study of same-sex desire in West Africa, which explores the lives and friendships of working-class women in southern Ghana who are intimately involved with each other. Based on in-depth research of the life histories of women in the region, Serena O. Dankwa highlights the vibrancy of everyday same-sex intimacies that have not been captured in a globally pervasive language of …
"Han Hyung-mo was a major figure within South Korea’s Golden Age cinema. The director of Madame Freedom (1956), the most famous film of the 1950s, Han made popular films that explored women’s relationship to modernity. He was also a master stylist who introduced technological innovations and fresh ideas about film form and genre into Korean cinema. This book offers a transnational cultural …
Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas explains how psychoanalytic listening practices have expanded beyond the clinical setting to influence everyday social interactions in Buenos Aires.
Suzana Sawyer traces Ecuador’s lawsuit against the Chevron corporation for the environmental devastation resulting from its oil drilling practices, showing how distinct legal truths were relationally composed of, with, and through crude oil.
Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage focuses on the importance of memory and heritage for individual and group identity, and for their sense of belonging. It aims to expose the motives and discourses related to the destruction of memory and heritage during times of war, terror, sectarian conflict and through capitalist policies. It is within these affected spheres of cultural h…
Harris Solomon takes readers into the trauma ward of one of Mumbai’s busiest public hospitals, narrating the stories of the patients, providers, families, and frontline workers who experience and treat traumatic injury from traffic .