Over the past few decades, Daoism has become a recognizable part of Western “alternative” spiritual life. Now, that Westernized version of Daoism is going full circle, traveling back from America and Europe to influence Daoism in China. Dream Trippers draws on more than a decade of ethnographic work with Daoist monks and Western seekers to trace …

Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality Read More »

Until its recent political thaw, Burma was closed to most foreign researchers, and fieldwork-based research was rare. In The Traffic in Hierarchy, one of the few such works to appear in recent years, author Ward Keeler combines close ethnographic attention to life in a Buddhist monastery with a broad analysis of Burman gender ideology. The result is …

The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma Read More »

Zhang Yimou is one of the most famous filmmakers of China, as well as one of the most controversial. Long the object of intense discussion and critique in China, Zhang’s approach can express a highly stylized and crafted aesthetics, a documentary, daily-life feel, or a historically rich sense of tragedy and sometimes comedy. The director …

Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture Read More »

This book employs a broad analysis of Chinese patriliny to propose a distinctive theoretical conceptualization of the role of desire in culture. It utilizes a unique synthesis of Marxian and psychoanalytic insights in arguing that Chinese patriliny is best understood as, simultaneously, “a mode of production of desire” and as “instituted fantasy.” The argument advances …

Filial Obsessions: Chinese Patriliny and Its Discontents Read More »

What is the impact of a constant flow of people and capital in one of the most globalised cities in the world? In this collection of essays, the authors pursue an ethnographic approach to globalization, and while they were informed by official statistics and social theory, they relied mostly on first-hand observations of life and …

Local Encounters in a Global City: Singapore Stories Read More »

Singapore is a mythic nation, where our ‘reality’ and ‘common sense’ are conditioned by a group of influential myths. Our main myths are examined in this collection of essays and thoughts on the social ramifications of myth-making: The Singapore Story (that our nation has a singular story), From Third World to First (our story of …

Living with Myths in Singapore Read More »

Marriage is central to Indonesia’s social fabric and critical in defining socially legitimate relationships. This book offers a rich anthropological account of Muslim Indonesian women’s experiences of courtship, love, marital discord and separation, polygamy, divorce and remarriage. By applying a new approach to theorising marital experiences as playing out across a dynamic marital continuum, it …

Marriage, Gender and Islam in Indonesia: Women Negotiating Informal Marriage, Divorce and Desire Read More »

Ever since Singapore became an independent nation in 1965, its government has been intent on transforming the island’s environment. This has led to a nearly constant overhaul of the landscape, whether still natural or already manmade. Not only are the shape and dimensions of the main island and its subsidiary ones constantly modified so are …

Singapore’s Permanent Territorial Revolution: Fifty Years in Fifty Maps Read More »