A repository of subversive, melancholic and existentialist themes and ideas, the rubaiyat (quatrains) that make up the collected poems attributed to the 12th century Persian astronomer Omar Khayyam have enchanted readers for centuries. In this modern translation, complete with critical introduction and epilogue, Juan Cole elegantly renders the verse for contemporary readers. Exploring such universal questions as the meaning of life, fate and how to live a good life in the face of human mortality, this translation reveals anew why this singular collection of poems has struck a chord with such a temporally and culturally diverse audience, from the wine houses of medieval Iran to the poets of Western twentieth century modernism.

The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) is one of the most enigmatic and active political forces in the Middle East. For observers in the West, the SSNP is regarded as a far-right organization, subservient to the Baathist government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which dictates its activities from Damascus. However, the SSNP's complicated history and its ideology of Pan-Syrianism has meant the party has been overlooked and forgotten by the daily output of news, analysis, studies and policy recommendations. Very little academic scholarship has been dedicated to understanding its origins, identity, and influence. Addressing the need for scholarship on the SSNP, this book is a political history from the party's foundation in 1932 to today. A comprehensive and objective study on the little known nationalist group, the author uses interviews from current members to gain insights into its everyday activities, goals, social interstices and nuances. Given the SSNP's history of violence, their own persecution, influence on other secular parties in the region, and their impact in Syria and Lebanon's politics, the book's analysis sheds light on the party's status in Lebanon and its potential role in a future post-war Syria. The SSNP is gaining popularity among regime supporters in Syria and will be one part of understanding the political developments on the ground. This book is essential reading for those wanting to understand the SSNP, its motives, and prospects.

Combining a historical approach of Chineseness and a contemporary perspective on the social construction of Chineseness, this book provides comparative insights to understand the contingent complexities of ethnic and social formations in both China and among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. This book focuses on the experiences and practices of these people, who as mobile agents are free to embrace or reject being defined as Chinese by moving across borders and reinterpreting their own histories. By historicizing the notion of Chineseness at local, regional, and global levels, the book examines intersections of authenticity, authority, culture, identity, media, power, and international relations that support or undermine different instances of Chineseness and its representations. It seeks to rescue the present from the past by presenting case studies of contingent encounters that produce the ideas, practices, and identities that become the categories nations need to justify their existence. The dynamic, fluid representations of Chineseness illustrate that it has never been an undifferentiated whole in both space and time. Through physical movements and inherited knowledge, agents of Chineseness have deployed various interpretive strategies to define and represent themselves vis-a-vis the local, regional, and global in their respective temporal experiences. This book will be relevant to students and scholars in Chinese studies and Asian studies more broadly, with a focus on identity politics, migration, popular culture, and international relations. "The Chinese overseas often saw themselves as caught between a rock and a hard place. The collection of essays here highlights the variety of experiences in Southeast Asia and China that suggest that the rock can become a huge boulder with sharp edges and the hard places can have deadly spikes. A must read for those who wonder whether Chineseness has ever been what it seems." Wang Gungwu, University Professor, National University of Singapore. "By including reflections on constructions of Chineseness in both China itself and in various Southeast Asian sites, the book shows that being Chinese is by no means necessarily intertwined with China as a geopolitical concept, while at the same time highlighting the incongruities and tensions in the escapable relationship with China that diasporic Chinese subjects variously embody, expressed in a wide range of social phenomena such as language use, popular culture, architecture and family relations. The book is a very welcome addition to the necessary ongoing conversation on Chineseness in the 21st century." Ien Ang, Distinguished Professor of Cultural Studies, Western Sydney University.

The attacks and blockade on Yemen by the Saudi-led multinational coalition have killed thousands and triggered humanitarian disaster. The longstanding conflict in the country between the Huthi rebels and (until December 2017) Salih militias on the one side and those loyal to the internationally recognized government and many other groups fighting for their interests on the other are said to have evolved into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In 2011, however, thousands of Yemenis had taken to the streets to protest for a better future for their country. When President Ali Abdullah Salih signed over power in the aftermath of these protests, there were hopes that this would signal the beginning of a new period of transition. Yemen and the Search for Stability focuses on the aspirations that inspired revolutionary action, and analyzes what went wrong in the years that followed. It examines the different groups involved in the protests - Salih supporters, Muslim Brothers, Salafis, Huthis, secessionists, women, youth, artists and intellectuals- in terms of their competing visions for the country's future as well as their internal struggles. This book traces the impact of the 2011 upheavals on these groups' ideas for a `new Yemen' and on their strategies for self-empowerment. In so doing, Yemen and the Search for Stability examines the mistakes committed in the country's post-2011 transition process but also points towards prospects for stability and positive change.

After World War II, thousands of Japanese throughout Asia were put on trial for war crimes. Examination of postwar trials is now a thriving area of research, but Sharon W. Chamberlain is the first to offer an authoritative assessment of the legal proceedings convened in the Philippines. These were trials conducted by Asians, not Western powers, and centered on the abuses suffered by local inhabitants rather than by prisoners of war. Her impressively researched work reveals the challenges faced by the Philippines, as a newly independent nation, in navigating issues of justice amid domestic and international pressures. Chamberlain highlights the differing views of Filipinos and Japanese about the trials. The Philippine government aimed to show its commitment to impartial proceedings with just outcomes. In Japan, it appeared that defendants were selected arbitrarily, judges and prosecutors were biased, and lower-ranking soldiers were punished for crimes ordered by their superior officers. She analyzes the broader implications of this divergence as bilateral relations between the two nations evolved and contends that these competing narratives were reimagined in a way that, paradoxically, aided a path toward postwar reconciliation.

Japan at Nature's Edge is a timely collection of essays that explores the relationship between Japan's history, culture, and physical environment. It greatly expands the focus of previous work on Japanese modernization by examining Japan's role in global environmental transformation and how Japanese ideas have shaped bodies and landscapes over the centuries. The immediacy of Earth's environmental crisis, a predicament highlighted by Japan's March 2011 disaster, brings a sense of urgency to the study of Japan and its global connections. The work is an environmental history in the broadest sense of the term because it contains writing by environmental anthropologists, a legendary Japanese economist, and scholars of Japanese literature and culture. The editors have brought together an unparalleled assemblage of some of the finest scholars in the field who, rather than treat it in isolation or as a unique cultural community, seek to connect Japan to global environmental currents such as whaling, world fisheries, mountaineering and science, mining and industrial pollution, and relations with nonhuman animals. The contributors assert the importance of the environment in understanding Japan's history and propose a new balance between nature and culture, one weighted much more heavily on the side of natural legacies. This approach does not discount culture. Instead, it suggests that the Japanese experience of nature, like that of all human beings, is a complex and intimate negotiation between the physical and cultural worlds. Contributors: Daniel P. Aldrich, Jakobina Arch, Andrew Bernstein, Philip C. Brown, Timothy S. George, Jeffrey E. Hanes, David L. Howell, Federico Marcon, Christine L. Marran, Ian Jared Miller, Micah Muscolino, Ken'ichi Miyamoto, Sara B. Pritchard, Julia Adeney Thomas, Karen Thornber, William M. Tsutsui, Brett L. Walker, Takehiro Watanabe.

The `refugee crisis' and the recent rise of anti-immigration parties across Europe has prompted widespread debates about migration, integration and security on the continent. But the perspectives and experiences of immigrants in northern and western Europe have equal political significance for contemporary European societies. While Turkish migration to Europe has been a vital area of research, little scholarly attention has been paid to Turkish migration to specifically Sweden, which has a mix of religious and ethnic groups from Turkey and where now well over 100,000 Swedes have Turkish origins. This book examines immigration from Turkey to Sweden from its beginnings in the mid-1960s, when the recruitment of workers was needed to satisfy the expanding industrial economy. It traces the impact of Sweden's economic downturn, and the effects of the 1971 Turkish military intervention and the 1980 military coup, after which asylum seekers - mostly Assyrian Christians and Kurds - sought refuge in Sweden. Contributors explore how the patterns of labour migration and interactions with Swedish society impacted the social and political attitudes of these different communities, their sense of belonging, and diasporic activism. The book also investigates issues of integration, return migration, transnational ties, external voting and citizenship rights. Through the detailed analysis of migration to Sweden and emigration from Turkey, this book sheds new light on the situation of migrants in Europe.

This is the history of the East India Company and its enduring legacy as a corporation, dealing in exploitation and violence. The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today. This expanded edition explores how the four forces of scale, technology, finance and regulation drove its spectacular rise and fall. This story provides vital lessons on both the role of corporations in world history and the steps required to make global business accountable today.

Taiwanese society is in the midst of an immense, exciting effort to define itself, seeking to erect a contemporary identity upon the foundation of a highly distinctive history. This book provides a thorough overview of Taiwanese cultural life. The introduction familiarizes students and interested readers with the island's key geographical and demographic features, and provides a chronological summary of Taiwanese history. In the following chapters, Davison and Reed reveal the uniqueness of Taiwan, and do not present it simply as the laboratory of traditional Chinese culture that some anthropologists of the 1950s through the 1970s sought when mainland China was not accessible. The authors examine how religious devotion in Taiwan is different from China in that the selected deities are those most relevant to the needs of the Taiwanese people. Literature and art, particularly of the 20th century, reflect the Taiwanese quest for identity more than the grand Chinese tradition. The Taiwanese architecture, festivals and leisure activities, music and dance, cuisine and fashion, are also highlighted topics. The final chapter presents the most recent information regarding children and education, and explores the importance of the Taiwanese family in the context of meaningful relationships amongst acquaintances, friends, and institutions that make up the social universe of the Taiwanese. This text is a lively treatment of one of the world's most dynamic societies.

This book looks at the case study of Hachioji as a major transit hub with a world-class public transportation system in Japan. It tracks how Tokyo slowly expands into its suburban, rural or sub-rural districts. It also wants to profile the multiple identities of a city that is simultaneously an ecological asset, a heritage locale in addition to a logistics hub. The volume is probably the first of its kind to analyze the western sector of the largest city in the world.

Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire examines the role of mercenary figures in negotiating relations between the United States and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Mercenaries are often treated as historical footnotes, yet their encounters with the Ottoman world contributed to US culture and the impressions they left behind continue to influence US approaches to Africa and the Middle East. The book's analysis of these mercenary encounters and their legacies begins with the Battle of Derna in 1805-in which the US flag was raised above a battlefield for the first time outside of North America with the help of a mercenary army-and concludes with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882-which was witnessed and criticized by many of the US Civil War veterans who worked for the Egyptian government in the 1870s and 1880s. By focusing these mercenary encounters through the lenses of memory, sovereignty, literature, geography, and diplomacy, Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire reveals the ways in which mercenary force, while marginal in terms of its frequency and scope, produced important knowledge about the Ottoman world and helped to establish the complicated relationship of intimacy and mastery that exists between Americans in the United States and people in Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, South Sudan, and Turkey.

What does it mean to be a conservative in Republican China? Challenging the widely held view that Chinese conservatism set out to preserve traditional culture and was mainly a cultural movement, this book proposes a new framework with which to analyze modern Chinese conservatism. It identifies late Qing culturalist nationalism, which incorporates traditional culture into concrete political reforms inspired by modern Western politics, as the origin of conservatism in the Republican era. During the May Fourth period, New Culture activists belittled any attempts to reintegrate traditional culture with modern politics as conservative. What conservatives in Republican China stood for was essentially this late Qing culturalist nationalism that rejected squarely the museumification of traditional culture. Adopting a typological approach in order to distinguish different types of conservatism by differentiating various political implications of traditional culture, this book divides the Chinese conservatism of the Republican era into four typologies: liberal conservatism, antimodern conservatism, philosophical conservatism, and authoritarian conservatism. As such, this book captures - for the first time - how Chinese conservatism was in constant evolution, while also showing how its emblematic figures reacted differently to historical circumstances.

This book explores and comparatively assesses how Armenians as minorities have been represented in modern Turkey from the twentieth century through to the present day, with a particular focus on the period since the first electoral victory of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in 2002. It examines how social movements led by intellectuals and activists have challenged the Turkish state and called for democratization, and explores key issues related to Armenian identity. Drawing on new social movements theory, this book sheds light on the dynamics of minority identity politics in contemporary Turkey and highlights the importance of political protest.

Reforms in Myanmar (formerly Burma) have eased restrictions on citizens' political activities. Yet for most Burmese, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung shows, eking out a living from day to day leaves little time for civic engagement. Citizens have coped with extreme hardship through great resourcefulness. But by making bad situations more tolerable in the short term, these coping strategies may hinder the emergence of the democratic values needed to sustain the country's transition to a more open political environment. Thawnghmung conducted in-depth interviews and surveys of 372 individuals from all walks of life and across geographical locations in Myanmar between 2008 and 2015. To frame her analysis, she provides context from countries with comparable political and economic situations. Her findings will be welcomed by political scientists and policy analysts, as well by journalists and humanitarian activists looking for substantive, reliable information about everyday life in a country that remains largely in the shadows.