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Bookstores in Chinese cities are stocked with dozens of
Chinese-language books on how Jews conduct business, manage the
world, and raise their children. At least ten universities
throughout China offer popular Jewish Studies programs, some with
advanced degrees. Yet there are virtually no Jews in China. The
Chinese are constructing an identity for a people that the large
majority of them will never meet. This edited volume critically
examines the image of Jews from the contemporary perspective of
ordinary Chinese citizens. It includes chapters on Chinese Jewish
Studies programs, popular Chinese books and blogs about Jews,
China's relations with Israel, and innovative examinations of the
ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng.
While prejudice against Jews is a real and ongoing category in
Western culture, little attention has been paid to the myths of the
Jews' and their impact in countries outside the West. This work
draws on a wide variety of source materials from the past two
centuries to examine the images of the Jews' as constructed in
China. However, the interest here does not lie in the determination
of the boundary between the real and fictional aspects of these
images. Rather, it lies in the implications associated with the
Jew' as an other', which remains a distant mirror in the
construction of the self' amongst various social groups in modern
China. Although it has been noted by a few scholars that the use of
the Jews' as a category was important to many thinkers of modern
China in the construction of their nationalistic and socio-
political ideologies, this is the first systematic study in the
field to be published. This book is also more than a historical
book on China in that it opens a new arena for modern Jewish
studies from a unique angle.
Recent academic and medical initiatives have highlighted the
benefits of studying culturally embedded healing traditions that
incorporate religious and philosophical viewpoints to better
understand local and global healing phenomena. Capitalising on this
trend, the present volume looks at the diverse models of healing
that interplay with culture and religion in Asia. Cutting across
several Asian regions from Hong Kong to mainland China, Tibet,
India, and Japan, the book addresses healing from a broader
perspective and reflects a fresh new outlook on the complexities of
Asian societies and their approaches to health. In exploring the
convergences and collisions a society must negotiate, it shows the
emerging urgency in promoting multidisciplinary and
interdisciplinary research on disease, religion and healing in
Asia. Drawing on original fieldwork, contributors present their
latest research on diverse local models of healing that occur when
disease and religion meet in South and East Asian cultures.
Revealing the symbiotic relationship of disease, religion and
healing and their colliding values in Asia often undetected in
healthcare research, the book draws attention to religious,
political and social dynamics, issues of identity and ethics,
practical and epistemological transformations, and analogous
cultural patterns. It challenges the reader to rethink
predominantly long-held Western interpretations of disease
management and religion. Making a significant contribution to the
field of transcultural medicine, religious studies in Asia as well
as to a better understanding of public health in Asia as a whole,
it will be of interest to students and scholars of Health Studies,
Asian Religions and Philosophy.
Argues that prejudice against the 'Jews' is not only a western phenomenon, but also exists in Eastern countries such as China, where representations of 'Jews' and Judaism are very complex. The book also opens a field for general discussions on the subject of the 'Other'. Its thoroughness and wide-reaching scope makes it a must for every scholar concerned with Jewish or Chinese studies.
Recent academic and medical initiatives have highlighted the
benefits of studying culturally embedded healing traditions that
incorporate religious and philosophical viewpoints to better
understand local and global healing phenomena. Capitalising on this
trend, the present volume looks at the diverse models of healing
that interplay with culture and religion in Asia. Cutting across
several Asian regions from Hong Kong to mainland China, Tibet,
India, and Japan, the book addresses healing from a broader
perspective and reflects a fresh new outlook on the complexities of
Asian societies and their approaches to health. In exploring the
convergences and collisions a society must negotiate, it shows the
emerging urgency in promoting multidisciplinary and
interdisciplinary research on disease, religion and healing in
Asia. Drawing on original fieldwork, contributors present their
latest research on diverse local models of healing that occur when
disease and religion meet in South and East Asian cultures.
Revealing the symbiotic relationship of disease, religion and
healing and their colliding values in Asia often undetected in
healthcare research, the book draws attention to religious,
political and social dynamics, issues of identity and ethics,
practical and epistemological transformations, and analogous
cultural patterns. It challenges the reader to rethink
predominantly long-held Western interpretations of disease
management and religion. Making a significant contribution to the
field of transcultural medicine, religious studies in Asia as well
as to a better understanding of public health in Asia as a whole,
it will be of interest to students and scholars of Health Studies,
Asian Religions and Philosophy.
This book explores prejudice towards groups who are thought to have
caused and spread the COVID-19 virus. The book examines four cases
around the world: the residents of Wuhan, China; Ultra-Orthodox
Jewish communities in the USA, Britain and Israel;
African-Americans in the United States and Black/Asian/Mixed Ethnic
communities in Britain; and 'White' right-wing groups in American
and Europe. The book examines stereotyping and the false
attribution of blame towards these groups, as well as what happens
when a collective is actually at fault, and how the community deals
with these conflicting issues. This is a timely, cogent examination
of blame and xenophobia, which have been brought to the surface by
the COVID-19 pandemic.
To this day, the perception persists that China was a civilisation
defeated by imperialist Britain's most desirable trade commodity,
opium - a drug that turned the Chinese into cadaverous addicts in
the iron grip of dependence. But, as this new edition of Narcotic
Culture brilliantly shows, the real scandal in Chinese history was
not the expansion of the drug trade by Britain in the early
nineteenth century, but rather the failure of the British to grasp
the consequences of prohibition. They reveal that opium actually
had few harmful effects on either health or longevity; in fact, it
was prepared and appreciated in highly complex rituals with inbuilt
constraints preventing excessive use. Opium was even used as a
medicinal panacea in China before the availability of aspirin and
penicillin. But as a result of the British effort to eradicate
opium, the Chinese turned from the relatively benign use of that
drug to heroin, morphine, cocaine, and countless other psychoactive
substances. The transition from a tolerated opium culture to a
system of prohibition produced a 'cure' that was far worse than the
disease. Delving into a history of drugs and their abuses, Narcotic
Culture is part revisionist history of imperial and
twentieth-century Britain and part sobering portrait of the dangers
of prohibition.
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