To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Singapore’s Independence, the Institute of Policy Studies and Straits Times Press are jointly launching the Singapore Chronicles series in 2015. This 50-volume series seeks to record, explain and offer insights into what makes Singapore, Singapore. Each volume in this series will serve as a primer on the subject. RELIGION …
In this introduction, we outline our approach to the two main themes this interdisciplinary special issue brings together – language and globalization, and South and Central Asian spaces. Arguing for the importance of exploring these topics from multiple, complementary disciplinary angles (sociolinguistic, anthropological and historical), we delineate a conceptualization of language and globalization which both …
Making liquor isn’t rocket science: some raw materials, a stove, and a few jury-rigged pots are all that’s really needed. So when the colonial regime in turn-of-the-century French Indochina banned homemade rice liquor, replacing it with heavily taxed, tasteless alcohol from French-owned factories, widespread clandestine distilling was the inevitable result. The state’s deeply unpopular alcohol …
Imperial Intoxication: Alcohol and the Making of Colonial Indochina Read More »
Multinational Maids offers an in-depth investigation into the international migrations of Filipino and Indonesian migrant domestic workers. The author taps on her rigorous study of more than 1,200 subjects’ migration trajectories to reveal how these migrants work in a series of overseas countries to improve their lives and, in some cases, seek permanent residence in …
Multinational Maids: Stepwise Migration in a Global Labor Market Read More »
Free markets alone do not work effectively to solve certain kinds of human problems, such as education, old age care, or disaster relief. Nor have markets ever been the sole solution to the psychological challenges of death, suffering, or injustice. Instead, we find a major role for the non-market institutions of society – the family, …
Religion and Charity: The Social Life of Goodness in Chinese Societies Read More »
International medical travel may be viewed as an ‘assemblage’ of various components such as infrastructure, hospitals, finance, transport, technologies, staff, facilitators and patients. In this paper, we focus on the articulations of medical travel facilitators (MTFs) and private hospitals in producing international medical travel in the context of the neoliberalising processes that had led to …
Asia Pacific Viewpoint – Special Issue: International Medical Travel (Vol 58, Issue 2) Read More »
Since 1995 most mainland migrants to Hong Kong have been the wives or non-adult children of Hong Kong men of lower socio-economic status. The majority of immigrants are women, who throughout the past two decades have accounted for more than 60% of immigration. The profile of immigrants has been changing and they are significantly more …
This article explores the development of public health in George Town, Penang. It argues that the extreme weather of the tropical climate led to a unique set of challenges for George Town’s urban governors, as the town grew from a small British base, to a multi-cultural and thriving port. Penang was the earliest British colony …
In studies of academic resilience, researchers seek to identify factors that protect against adverse effects caused by risk and stress, and which ultimately assist students to be academically successful. However, because relatively few studies are conducted in Asian settings, Western-based research may have limited application for policy and prevention in the Asian context. It is …
