Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan provides the first comprehensive account of the changing role of men and the construction of masculinity in contemporary Japan. The book moves beyond the stereotype of the Japanese white collar businessman to explore the diversity of identities and experiences found among Japanese men, including those versions of masculinity that are marginalized and subversive. By examining this diversity, the book also helps to bring the notion of 'masculinity' itself into question.
It includes discussion of transgendering men, working class men, body aesthetics, transnational marriages, domestic violence, AIDS, representations of homosexuality, fatherhood and struggles for masculine meaning in life beyond work.

During the 1980s and 1990s Asian 'developmental states' attracted much attention in political science and economics literature, but the role of law in the economic development was neglected. It was only after the Asian crisis of 1997 that many analysts began to focus on a lack of regulation and transparency as a major factor triggering the crisis. The crucial questions now are how successful the current reforms will be, and which features of the Asian approach to commercial law will be resistant to reform pressures. This book examines the prospects for commercial law reform in Asia, giving particular attention to Japan and Singapore, as frequently cited role models for Asian developmentalism, and also examining development related business laws in countries such as China, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Why did people in North India from the 5th century BC choose to leave the world and join the sect of the Buddha? This is the first book to apply the insights of social psychology in order to understand the religious motivation of the people who constituted the early Buddhist community. It also addresses the more general and theoretically controversial question of how world religions come into being, by focusing on the conversion process of the individual believer.

Why did people in North India from the 5th century BC choose to leave the world and join the sect of the Buddha? This is the first book to apply the insights of social psychology in order to understand the religious motivation of the people who constituted the early Buddhist community. It also addresses the more general and theoretically controversial question of how world religions come into being, by focusing on the conversion process of the individual believer.

This book is the first comprehensive account of the changing role of men and the construction of masculinity in contemporary Japan. The book moves beyond the stereotype of the Japanese white-collar businessman to explore the diversity of identities and experiences that may be found among men in contemporary Japan, including those versions of masculinity which are marginalized and subversive. The book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of contemporary Japanese society and identity.

Critical and radical perspectives have been central to the emergence of the sociology of sport as a discipline in its own right. This ground-breaking new book is the first to offer a comprehensive theory and method for a critical sociology of sport. It argues that class, political economy, hegemony and other concepts central to the radical tradition are essential for framing, understanding and changing social and political relations within sport and between sport and society.
The book draws upon the disciplines of politics, sociology, history and philosophy to provide a critical analysis of power relations throughout the world of sport, while offering important new case studies from such diverse sporting contexts as the Olympics, world football, boxing, cricket, tennis and windsurfing. In the process, it addresses key topics such as:
* nations and nationalism
* globalisation
* race
* gender
* political economy.
Power Games can be used as a complete introduction to the study of sport and society. And will be essential reading for any serious student of sport. At the same time, it is a provocative book that by argument and example challenges those who research and write about sport to make their work relevant to social and political reform.

This book draws upon the disciplines of politics, sociology, history and philosophy to provide a critical analysis of power relations throughout the world of sport, while offering important new case-studies from such diverse sporting contexts as the Olympics, world football, boxing, cricket, tennis and windsurfing. Power Games can be used as a complete introduction to the study of sport and society, and will be essential reading for any serious student of sport. At the same time, it is a provocative book that by argument and example challenges those who research and write about sport to make their work relevant to social and political reform.

This is the first book to comprehensively examine the context, development and results of Japanese city planning Japan is one of the world's most urbanized countries with its own traditions of urban management that are remarkably little known in the rest of the world. Japan's distinctiveness makes it an important case-study of urbanization and its management, and highlights the major urban and regional planning issues faced by other developed countries, particularly in the Asian context. This book includes up-to-date, original material not otherwise available in English.

Globalization, modernity and identity are fundamental issues in contemporary Islam and Islamic Studies. This collection of essays reflects the wide diversity that characterises contemporary Islamic Studies. The case studies cover regions stretching from China and Southeast Asia to diaspora communities in the Caribbean and Tajikistan. There is significant participation of intellectual voices from all areas concerned, providing a real contribution to the academic exchange between the Muslim and the Euro-American worlds.

By considering the practice of globalisation, these essays describe changes, variations and innovations to Chinese food in many parts of the world. The book reviews and broadens classic theories about ethnic and social identity formation through the examination of Chinese food, providing a powerful testimony to the impact of late 20th century globalisation.

An initial chapter on the history of Islamic philosophy sets the stage for sixteen articles on issues across the three traditions. The goal is to see the Islamic tradition in its own richness and complexity as the context of most Jewish intellectual work.

Offering extensive coverage, this Encyclopedia is a new reference that reflects the vibrant, diverse and evolving culture of modern Japan, spanning from the end of the Japanese Imperialist period in 1945 to the present day. Entries cover areas such as literature, film, architecture, food, health, political economy, religion and technology and they range from shorter definitions, histories or biographies to longer overview essays giving an in-depth treatment of major issues.
With over 700 alphabetically arranged entries, this Encyclopedia will be an invaluable reference tool for students of Japanese and Asian Studies, as well as providing a fascinating insight into Japanese culture for the general reader. Suggestions for further reading, a comprehensive system of cross-referencing, a thematic contents list and an extensive index all help navigate the reader around the Encyclopedia and on to further study.

Quality assurance has been a major issue in Higher Education discourse during the past decade. Evaluations, accreditations and assessments have almost become standard procedures within the framework of translation studies. This quest for quality has not only to integrate market needs and new market requirements, but also novel strategies in training - whereby training learners and trainers has to be given equal attention. Translation quality has become a key issue in the interlinguistic and intercultural communication market as well as in the translator education environment. It has to be looked upon as a multifaceted issue to which all major players have to contribute: institutes of higher education, labor market and individual translators. Within the framework of the CIUTI FORUM 2008, the speakers emphasized the different aspects of quality from the point of view of the trainer, the professional and the market. This volume tries to highlight all those quality issues from an international, interdisciplinary and multifaceted perspective.

The International Relations of Japan and South East Asia asks three main questions: how and when has a new South East Asian regionalism been set in motion? what is the nature of Japanese leadership and networking in maintaining and promoting that new regionalism?; and, given the current economic and political crisis, what will happen to regionalism in the future?
This work is an invaluable resource for students and scholars as it gives a complete overview of Japanese foreign policy and Japan-South East Asian relations.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203166884

This book gathers accounts of the two poets from her precocious childhood to his death in Venice. Comments from contemporaries (including Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, Tennyson, and Henry James) and from the poets themselves give a range of perspective on their politics, relationships, religious beliefs, ambitions, working habits, and personal appearances. Persistent images--Barrett Browning the frail recluse or Browning the loud and trivial talker who has no apparent connection with Browning the poet--can be seen both establishing themselves and being qualified, rejected, or complicated.

In Queering the Moderns, Anne Herrmann revisits the narrative of literary modernism and the historical uses of the term “queer” to explore the emergence of identities specific to modernism. "Queer" in the modernist period (1910-1945) means "strange, odd, out of sorts" and although it begins to refer to those who are queer sexually, it does not yet police a hetero-homosexual divide. It means crossing boundaries in unexpected directions, across the Atlantic, across the color line, across literary conventions that dictate autobiographies can't be written by someone else. Six memoirs that rely on cross-gender and cross-racial identifications are discussed within their specific cultural contexts so that female aviators (Amelia Earhart and Beryl Markham), "lesbian" auto/biographers (Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein) and male auto-ethnographers (James Weldon Johnson and Earl Lind--Ralph Werther) begin to "queer" the traditional spaces of modernism.

Series Information:
Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies/RoutledgeCurzon

Series Information:
Critical Geographies

How do the Japanese and Okinawans remember Occupation? How is memory constructed and transmitted? Michael Molasky explores these questions through careful, sensitive readings of literature from mainland Japan and Okinawa. This book sheds light on difficult issues of war, violence, prostitution, colonialism and post-colonialism in the context of the Occupations of Japan and Okinawa.

Timespace undermines the old certainties of time and space by arguing that these dimensions do not exist singly, but only as a hybrid process term. The issue of space has perhaps been over-emphasised and it is essential that processes of everyday existence, such as globalisation and environmental issues and also notions such as gender, race and ethnicity, are looked at with a balanced time-space analysis.
The social and cultural consequences of this move are traced through a series of studies which deploy different perspectives - structural, phenomenological and even Buddhist - in order to make things meet up. The contributors provide an overview of the history of time and introduce the concepts of time and space together, across a range of disciplines. The themes discussed are of importance for cultural geography, sociology, anthropology, cultural and media studies, and psychology.

A resource for students and supervisors alike, the topics covered are related to the management of postgraduate research studies: the development of a successful research proposal (with examples); research resource management; research ethics and more.

This is the first book in the English language to examine the tangled web of relationships linking newspaper owners, editors and reporters, with leading politicians and power-holders. Duncan McCargo has been granted unique access to the editorial meetings of Thailand's leading newspapers, and drawing on this, the book uncovers the contradictions and dichotomies which underlie political coverage in the Thai press.

At the end of the 1970s, China was a poor country with a huge population, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. The domestic economy was organized through direct administrative instructions and was isolated from the international economy. After a quarter of a century, China has been transformed beyond imagination. In the course of this transformation, China's policymakers have faced enormous challenges.

The essays in this book address different aspects of those challenges. The 'development' challenge involved devising policies that would raise the mass of the Chinese people out of poverty and avoid the disasters that had, in the worst cases, caused millions of deaths through famine. The 'transition' challenge involved, firstly, resolving the relationship between changes in the economic and political systems; and secondly, finding the correct sequence and nature of reforms necessary to improve economic performance. The 'globalization' challenge involved identifying the best way in which to integrate China's economic system with the international economy at a time of revolutionary change in the global business system. These essays seek both to enhance understanding of China's immense success in meeting these challenges in the past and to provide an indication of the challenges that still lie ahead. China's system reforms have been described as 'groping for stones to cross the river'. The journey across the river is far from over, and the other bank is only dimly visible.

Looks at the wide range of contrasting images of the gay male body in Japanese popular culture, both mainstream and gay, and relate these images to the experience of an interview sample of Japanese gay men.