SCOTT (copy 1) From the John Holmes Library collection.

Despite the twenty-first century's often being referred to as the Asian Century-indicating hope for economic growth and the rebalancing of the global order-population aging and stagnation present an existential threat to the success of China and other territories of Pacific Asia (namely Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea). This book argues that the "population problem," rooted in low fertility, has thus far been largely considered in a linear way: low fertility leads to population stagnation and rapid aging, so fixing low fertility should correct the problem. However, a multi-dimensional lens is essential to appreciating the scale and nature of the issue-and, indeed, to determining whether it is an issue at all. Stuart Gietel-Basten examines how the issue of low fertility has been constructed, how blame has been apportioned, and why policies designed to tackle it have yielded few results. Drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources as well as examples from scholarly and popular literature, The "Population Problem" in Pacific Asia takes a comparative approach to fertility in the region and locates mainland China in its regional context. It serves as a useful resource for government workers, stakeholders, and students and scholars in sociology, demography, geography, economics, and area studies.

The Pacific Basin: An Introduction is a new textbook which provides an interdisciplinary and comparative overview of the emerging Pacific world. Interest in the Pacific Basin has increased markedly in recent years, driven largely by the rise of China as a global rival to the United States and Asian development more generally. Growth in eastern Asia, as well as in the western Americas, has led the Pacific Basin to evolve as a dynamic economic zone. To make sense of this transformation, the book: Defines the Pacific Basin, locates it in academic research, and explains its importance. Addressees the historical origins and evolution of the Pacific Basin and its sub-regions. Introduces students to the historical and contemporary relationships, continuities and differences that characterize the region. Incorporates analyses of colonialism and imperialism, migration and settlement, economic development and trade, international relations, war and memory, environmental policy, urbanization, mental and public health, gender, film, and literature. Connects the diverse peoples of this vast area, explores their common challenges and the diverse responses to these challenges, and provides a window into the lived humanity of the Pacific Basin. The Pacific Basin: An Introduction is a key textbook for undergraduate courses on the Pacific Basin, the Pacific Rim, International Studies, Geography, World History, and Globalization.

This volume brings together a set of key articles from the last 30 years pertaining to the environmental history of the Pacific basin. It aims to treat the islands and waters of the Pacific as well as the lands around the Rim, from New Zealand to Japan, to California, to Chile, and is the first work of environmental history to take this inclusive view of the Pacific basin. The focus is mainly on recent centuries but, as environmental history requires, at times the work also takes the very long view of millennia. Several of the articles seek to bring a broad Pacific perspective to bear on their subjects, while others use Pacific-basin examples to try to establish broader theoretical points of interest to all who are drawn to the study of the interactions between nature and culture. The book includes a bibliography of Pacific-basin environmental history and an introduction that aims to sketch the contours and possible future directions of the field.

This book traces the history of bird guano, demonstrating how this unique commodity helped unite the Pacific Basin with the industrialized world.

The Asia-Pacific region has not only the greatest concentration of population but is, arguably, the future economic centre of the world. Epidemiological transition in the region is occurring much faster than it did in the West and many countries face the emerging problem of chronic diseases at the same time as they continue to grapple with communicable diseases. This book explores how disease patterns and health problems in Asia and the Pacific, and collective responses to them, have been shaped over time by cultural, economic, social, demographic, environmental and political factors. With fourteen chapters, each devoted to a country in the region, the authors take a comparative and historical approach to the evolution of public health and preventive medicine, and offer a broader understanding of the links in a globalizing world between health on the one hand and culture, economy, polity and society on the other. Public Health in Asia and the Pacific presents the importance of the non-medical context in the history of human disease, as well as the significance of disease in the larger histories of the region. It will appeal to scholars and policy makers in the fields of public health, the history of medicine, and those with a wider interest in the Asia-Pacific region.