In the twenty-first century, East Asia has been increasingly marked both by tensions at a government level and a chauvinistic mood among the polity. While China’s rise is in one respect the proximate driver of these changes in tone, it draws on a range of unresolved grievances among the respective historical narratives of Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and the Koreas. These conflicting views of the region’s past are a crucial barrier to its cohesive and stable future. This book brings together East Asian scholars from a range of academic disciplines, including China historians, political historians and political scientists to illuminate the interconnectedness of East Asia and discuss how a shared historical narrative might be constructed. Their contributions are organised into 3 parts focusing respectively on historical narratives of China, historical narratives of East Asia, and reconciling historical narratives. The book will appeal to researcher interested in the historical narratives of international relations in East Asia.

In the twenty-first century, East Asia has been increasingly marked both by tensions at a government level and a chauvinistic mood among the polity. While China's rise is in one respect the proximate driver of these changes in tone, it draws on a range of unresolved grievances among the respective historical narratives of Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and the Koreas. These conflicting views of the region's past are a crucial barrier to its cohesive and stable future. This book brings together East Asian scholars from a range of academic disciplines, including China historians, political historians and political scientists to illuminate the interconnectedness of East Asia and discuss how a shared historical narrative might be constructed. Their contributions are organised into 3 parts focusing respectively on historical narratives of China, historical narratives of East Asia, and reconciling historical narratives. The book will appeal to researcher interested in the historical narratives of international relations in East Asia.

This volume contributes to the discussion of narratives as a research method by bringing together studies that illuminate the connection between narratives and social and political practices. The scholars from diverse fields and backgrounds offer their perspectives on the theoretical and empirical approaches to using narratives as research method.

This book makes a unique and timely contribution to world/global historical studies and related fields. It places essential world historical frameworks by top scholars in the field today in clear, direct relation to and conversation with one other, offering them opportunity to enrich, elucidate and, at times, challenge one another. It thereby aims to: (1) offer world historians opportunity to critically reflect upon and refine their essential interpretational frameworks, (2) facilitate more effective and nuanced teaching and learning in and beyond the classroom, (3) provide accessible world historical contexts for specialized areas of historical as well as other fields of research in the humanities, social sciences and sciences, and (4) promote comparative historiographical critique which (a) helps identify continuing research questions for the field of world history in particular, as well as (b) further global peace and dialogue in relation to varying views of our ever-increasingly interconnected, interdependent, multicultural, and globalized world and its shared though diverse and sometimes contested history.

Focusing on Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Mainland China, the contributors to this book analyze various cases of air pollution within East Asia. Air pollution in East Asia is a major health risk, which also has damaging impacts on the environment leading to impacts on society, economic growth, and welfare. While existing laws and policies have made progress in alleviating air pollution in each country in the region, the protection of favorable environments and the resolution of transboundary air pollution problems have become major targets of regional cooperation. Combining perspectives from social sciences and science, technology, and society studies, the contributors to this book examine both the technical and socioeconomic-political aspects of these challenges through a range of case studies from around the region. The book is a valuable read for researchers and policymakers looking at air pollution and transboundary governance challenges within and beyond East Asia.

David C. Kang tells an often overlooked story about East Asia's 'comprehensive security', arguing that American policy towards Asia should be based on economic and diplomatic initiatives rather than military strength.

An exploration of the roles that pro- and anti-government militias, private armed groups, vigilantes, and gangs play in local communities in the new democracies of Southeast Asia. Scholars have typically characterized irregular forces as spoilers and infiltrators in post-conflict peacebuilding processes. The contributors to this book challenge this conventional understanding of irregular forces in Southeast Asia, demonstrating that they often attract solid support from civilians and can be major contributors to the building of local security — a process by which local residents, in the absence of an effective police force, develop, partner or are at least included in the management of community crimes and other violence. They analyze irregular forces’ dealings with political actors at the community level, explaining why and how forces are incorporated in and collaborate with legitimate institutions without using violence against them. Offering a new approach to dealing with irregular forces in Southeast Asia, contributors explore new theoretical frameworks that are better suited for evaluating irregular forces’ relationship to different security providers and the political environments in the region. Specifically, they examine case studies from Indonesia, Timor-Leste, the Philippines, and Thailand. A valuable resource for researchers, students and practitioners in the areas of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, and security governance, especially those with a focus on Southeast Asia. This book will also be of great interest to scholars of the sociology and anthropology of the region.

This book examines the meanings, uses, and agency of voice, noise, sound, and sound technologies across Asia. Including a series of wide-ranging and interdisciplinary case studies, the book reveals sound as central to the experience of modernity in Asia and as essential to the understanding of the historical processes of cultural, social, political, and economic transformation throughout the long twentieth century. Presenting a broad range of topics – from the changing sounds of the Kyoto kimono making industry to radio in late colonial India – the book explores how the study of Asian sound cultures offers greater insight into historical accounts of local and global transformation. Challenging us to rethink and reassemble important categories in sound studies, this book will be a vital resource for students and scholars of sound studies, Asian studies, history, postcolonial studies, and media studies.

This book represents a pioneering interdisciplinary effort to analyze Asian civil society under authoritarianism, a regime type that is re-appearing or deepening after several decades of increased political liberalization. By organizing its approach into four main themes, this volume succinctly reveals the challenges facing civil society in authoritarian regimes, including: actions under political repression, transitions to democracy, uncivil society, political capture and legal control. It features in-depth analyses of a variety of Asian nations, from ‘hard’ authoritarian regimes, like China, to ‘electoral’ authoritarian regimes, like Cambodia, whilst also addressing countries experiencing democratic regression, such as the Philippines. By highlighting concrete responses and initiatives taken by civil society under authoritarianism, it advances the intellectual mandate of redefining Asia as a dynamic and interconnected formation and, moreover, as a space for the production of new theoretical insight. Contributing to our understanding of the tensions, dynamics, and potentialities that animate state-society relations in authoritarian regimes, this will be essential reading for students and scholars of civil society, authoritarianism, and Asian politics more generally.

This book draws attention to the issues of Indigenous justice and reconciliation in Taiwan, exploring how Indigenous actors affirm their rights through explicitly political and legal strategies, but also through subtle forms of justice work in films, language instruction, museums, and handicraft production. Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples have been colonized by successive external regimes, mobilized into war for Imperial Japan, stigmatized as primitive “mountain compatriots” in need of modernization, and instrumentalized as proof of Taiwan’s unique identity vis-à-vis China. Taiwan’s government now encapsulates them in democratic institutions of indigeneity. This volume emphasizes that there is new hope for real justice in an era in which states and Indigenous peoples seek meaningful forms of reconciliation at all levels and arenas of social life. The chapters, written by leading Indigenous, Taiwanese, and international scholars in their respective fields, examine concrete situations in which Indigenous peoples seek justice and decolonization from the perspectives of territory and sovereignty, social work and justice. Illustrating that there is new hope for real justice in an era in which states and Indigenous peoples seek meaningful forms of reconciliation, this book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Taiwan Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Social Justice Studies.