Asia, Modernity, and the Pursuit of the Sacred examines a large number of Europeans who, disillusioned with western culture and religion after World War I, and anticipating the spiritual seekers of the counterculture, turned to the religious traditions of Asia for inspiration.

This book reveals how everyday experiences of being ‘modern’ (c. 1920s-70s) indexed continuity and change in the transition from colonialism to independence and after in Southeast Asia. In the Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume recover modern times at the intersection of public and private domains, encompassing sex, religion, art, film, literature and urban space. The authors examine the conditions and representations of modernity, as shaped by elites and the governed, by actors, artists, novelists and non-fiction writers. Plural encounters in cities, through spiritual communities, art, high and popular culture saw Southeast Asians fashioning modern times in dialogue with global capitalism, consumer culture and second-wave feminism.

As a continent lying to the east of Europe, Asia has been malleable to different spatial and temporal imaginations and politics. Recent scholarship has highlighted how the seemingly self-contained regional configurations of West and Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and East Asia carved by the Area Studies paradigm reflect changing (geo)political and economic interests than historical or cultural roots. This volume advances the question as to what Asia is, and as to whether there existed one or many Asia(s). It seeks to explore Asian societies as interconnected formations through trajectories/networks of circulation of people, ideas, and objects in the longue durée. Moving beyond the divides of Area Studies scholarship and the arbitrary borders set by late colonial empires and the rise of post-colonial nation-states, this volume maps critically the configuration of contact zones in which mobile bodies, minds, and cultures interact to foster new images, identities, and imaginations of Asia.

This book presents new perspectives on Southeast Asia using cases from a range of ethnic groups, cultures and histories, written by scholars from different ethnicities, generations, disciplines and scientific traditions. It examines various research trajectories, engaging with epistemological debates on the ‘global’ and ‘local’, on ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and the role played by personal experiences in the collection and analysis of empirical data. The volume provides subjects for debate rarely addressed in formal approaches to data gathering and analysis. Rather than grappling with the usual methodological building blocks of research training, it focuses on neglected issues in the research experience including chance, error, coincidence, mishap, dead ends, silence, secrets, improvisation, remembering, digital challenges and shifting tracks. Fieldwork and the Self is relevant to academics and researchers from universities and international organisations who are engaged in teaching and learning in area studies and social science research methods. “A rich and compelling set of writings about fieldwork in, and beyond, Southeast Asia”. — Lyn Parker, Emeritus Professor, University of Western Australia “A must-read for all, especially emerging scholars on Southeast Asia, and a refreshing read for critical ‘old hands’ on the region”. — Abdul Rahman Embong, Emeritus Professor, Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia “An impressive collection of essays by two academics who have devoted their academic life to anthropological fieldwork in Southeast Asia”. — Shamsul A.B., Distinguished Professor and UNESCO Chair, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia “The contributors share an unquenchable and passionate curiosity for Southeast Asia. They have survived the uncertainties and disillusionment of their fieldwork and remained first-grade scholars”. — Marie-Sybille de Vienne, Professor, National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations, Paris “A penetrating reflection on current social science research on Southeast Asia”. — Hans-Dieter Evers, Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow, University of Bonn

What would world literature look like, if we stopped referring to the “West”? Starting with the provocative premise that the “‘West’ is ten percent of the planet”, World Literature Decentered is the first book to decenter Eurocentric discourses of global literature and global history – not just by deconstructing or historicizing them, but by actively providing an alternative. Looking at a series of themes across three literatures (Mexico, Turkey and Bengal), the book examines hotels, melancholy, orientalism, femicide and the ghost story in a series of literary traditions outside the “West”. The non-West, the book argues, is no fringe group or token minority in need of attention – on the contrary, it constitutes the overwhelming majority of this world.

In this novel and lucid work, Christopher Houston clarifies a particular modern style and practice of politics that he calls anthropocracy. In the name of popular sovereignty, anthropocracies de-legitimize the rule of God(s) even as they re-deploy it to stabilize the rule of the representatives of the people, all the while obfuscating their political conscription of the divine. In distinguishing anthropocracy from varieties of other secular and laicist political arrangements, as well as from theocracy, this book also gives readers a brilliant solution to what it calls the Turkish puzzle, the dilemma over how to best describe and analyze state-religion and state-society relations in the Turkish Republic. This work convincingly undermines two orthodox presumptions about Turkish politics: the claim that Turkish modernity should be considered an example of secularity; and the accusation that the current AKP government should be interpreted as Islamic. On the contrary, it argues that both Kemalism and the AKP continue to institute an anthropocratic Republic.

Indispensable for the student or researcher studying women's history, this book draws upon a wide array of cultural settings and time periods in which women displayed agency by carrying out their daily economic, familial, artistic, and religious obligations. Since record keeping began, history has been written by a relatively few elite men. Insights into women's history are left to be gleaned by scholars who undertake careful readings of ancient literature, examine archaeological artifacts, and study popular culture, such as folktales, musical traditions, and art. For some historical periods and geographic regions, this is the only way to develop some sense of what daily life might have been like for women in a particular time and place. This reference explores the daily life of women across civilizations. The work is organized in sections on different civilizations from around the world, arranged chronologically. Within each society, the encyclopedia highlights the roles of women within five broad thematic categories: the arts, economics and work, family and community life, recreation and social customs, and religious life. Included are numerous sidebars containing additional information, document excerpts, images, and suggestions for further reading.

The pursuit and acquisition of health and wealth are part of the worldview that drives Singaporean society. It encompasses a strong work ethic in the pursuit to modernise and be a key player in the global economy. Health and wealth are defined in terms of an individuals well-being in the sense of good health and a continued assurance of material provision and security. This worldview stems from a syncretism with non-Christian religions that have reconceptualised themselves with the socioeconomic and political goals of Singaporean society. Subsequently they continue to be the authentic expression of the noblest longings of people that have become symbiotic with their daily expressions shaping their history and culture. The book attempts to show that while Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity have played a significant role in the growth of contemporary Singaporean churches, it has inadvertently presented a gospel that appeals to the deeply embedded dominant religious secular worldview of its society in the context of health and wealth.

Retelling Time challenges the hegemony of colonial modernity over academic disciplines and over ways in which we think about something as fundamental as time. It reclaims a bouquet of alternative practices of time from premodern South Asia, which stem from worldviews that have been marginalized. These practices relate to a range of classical and vernacular genres including alaṃkāra, theravāda, yoga, rāmakathā, tasawwuf, āyāraṃga, purāṇa, trikā-tantra, navya-nyāya, pratyabhijñā, carita, kūṭīyāṭṭam and maṅgala kāvya. These represent multiple languages such as Sanskrit, Persian, Pali, Prakrit, Awadhi, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali, as well as diverse streams, from Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sufi Islam to logic, yoga, tantra, theatre, and poetics. Retelling Time questions the modern Eurocentric belief in an empty, homogenous, abbreviated, secular and irreversible time. It proposes instead that that premodern South Asia invested time with cultural function and value, which ranged from the contingent to the transcendent, the quotidian to the cosmic, the fleeting to the eternal, and the social to the spiritual. Accordingly, time was reworked --- stretched, melded, collapsed, recursed, rolled over, and even extinguished. Sacred, social, aesthetic, scientific, fictional, historical, and performative South Asian traditions are seen here in conversation with one other, mediated by an ethical paradigm. Their collective challenge is to decolonize our ways of knowing and being. This book will be of interest to scholars of South Asian history, philosophy of history, anthropology, literature, Sanskrit, post colonial studies, cultural studies, studies of temporality and of the Global South.

This book is concerned with how the pursuit of national economic competitiveness by states has come to be intertwined with a globalised gender agenda—one in which women and the household economy are seen as ‘untapped’ resources. In many East and Southeast Asian economies, competitiveness and the dangers of the middle-income trap dominate economic policy agendas: states’ commitments to gender equality goals are frequently framed around ‘business case’ logics in which women’s empowerment and women’s increased engagement in the productive economy is linked to the national economic project of building and enhancing competitiveness. This book looks to the case of Malaysia in order to assess how the increasingly dominant view that gender equality is ‘smart economics’ plays out in practice. Drawing upon extensive case study research and interview data, the book hones in on the complex gender politics that are at work within government initiatives that seek to enhance competitiveness via increasing women’s labour force participation, efforts to strengthen marriage and family life, and attempts to boost women’s entrepreneurialism and status within the corporate world. Providing an account of the gender politics at work within ongoing processes of state transformation in Asia, this book will appeal to researchers and students in gender studies, Southeast Asian studies, International Political Economy and public policy.