This book critically engages with the idea of decentralization as empowering cities and their residents to act innovatively and creatively. The contributions thus highlight how the term ‘empowerment’ in the context of decentralization regimes masks a competing array of intentions and agendas. Who and what are ‘empowered’, given a ‘voice’ and allowed to ‘participate’ via …
Beyond Swat addresses Fredrik Barth’s seminal work, Political Leadership Among Swat Pathans and its reception in relation to contemporary developments in Swat and the larger Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Swat is a Pakistani district located near the Afghan-Pakistan border. This volume explores the relevance of Barth’s work and the debates it has generated in scholarship on the …
Beyond Swat: History, Society and Economy Along the Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier Read More »
This pioneering study of the fate of Buddhism during the communist period in Cambodia puts a human face on a dark period in Cambodia’s history. It is the first sustained analysis of the widely held assumption that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot had a centralized plan to liquidate the entire monastic order. Based on …
Buddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks Under Pol Pot Read More »
The aim of this paper is to provide a brief but comprehensive overview of population trends in Southeast Asia over the past half century, examining the dynamics of mortality, fertility and migration, and emphasizing contrasting national patterns. It shows the way population momentum has carried, and will continue to carry, population growth forward despite replacement …
Chiang Mai is a city of culture. This slogan is broadcast by banners hanging over the highway, coffee shops specializing in northern Thai Arabica blends, architectural conferences and seminars, art galleries, et cetera. It is claimed in English and in Thai [meuang haeng watthanatham] Anthropological studies of such culture-saturated sites have often focused upon its …
Asia, the location of the world’s fastest-growing economies, is also home to some of the fastest rates of urbanization humanity has ever seen, a process whose speed renders long-term outcomes highly unpredictable. This volume contrasts with much published work on the rural/urban divide, which has tended to focus on single case studies. It provides empirical …
Cleavage, Connection and Conflict in Rural, Urban and Contemporary Asia Read More »
MESSAGE FROM CHAIR OF MANAGEMENT BOARD Prof Chong Chi Tat The year 2012 for ARI ended on an introspective note with a major institutional review by an External Review Committee chaired by Professor Tommy Koh and with Professors Takashi Shiraishi, Srirupa Roy and Ho Eng Seng as members. The Committee commended the impressive achievements of …
In Indonesia, the rapid emergence of early childhood programming aimed at the empowered self-directed learner seems to be just the kind of phenomenon described by assemblage. Emergent networks of care appear to represent something new and innovative, including center and circle time and optimal brain development. Yet, their delivery simultaneously intensifies longstanding modes of social …
WPS 194 Durable Assemblage: Early Childhood Education in Indonesia Read More »
This series of interventions speak to the wider literature on interrelations between state territorialization processes and border-crossing urban linkages. Focusing on cases in Asia, we seek to bring into view a greater diversity of transborder urban political geographies than are visible in metageographical imaginings of city networks spanning state boundaries. Specifically, the interventions address four main areas that …
WPS 193 Interventions in the Political Geography of Asia’s Transborder Urban Networks Read More »
Modern sports were introduced to Asia in the late nineteenth century as an innovation from the West, and the diffusion and rise of modern sports in Asia overlapped with the development of modern society in Asia. I In the process of introduction and diffusion,sports are inextricably intertwined with Asian experiences of colonial occupation andsubsequent post-colonial …
