New Books in East Asian Studies

Using diverse sources well beyond the colonial archive such as photographs, postcards, and even headstones, Dr. Kirsten L. Ziomek reveals the stories of colonial subjects in the Japanese empire in Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan’s Colonial Peoples (Harvard Asia Center, 2019). The book focuses on four groups of colonial subjects in the Japanese empire from the early 1900s to the 1970s, namely, the indigenous people of Taiwan, Micronesians, the Ainu of Hokkaido, and Okinawans. Challenging conventional narratives of Japan’s colonial history that often centered on sites of dominance and oppression, Lost Histories “reverse engineers” these narratives to focuses on the experiences of Japan’s colonial subjects, which reflected local power structures and provide different understandings of the empire. Through these varied perspectives of the colonial experiences reconstructed from materials within and beyond the colonial archives, Dr. Ziomek argues that Japan actually depended on its colonial subjects to enact its rule, and ethnoracial differences among colonial subjects were used to the advantage of both colonial administrations and colonial subjects.Daigengna Duoer is a PhD student at the Religious Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation researches on transnational/transregional networks of Buddhism centered in twentieth-century Inner Mongolia and Manchuria that connected to Republican China, Tibet, and imperial Japan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Shanghai’s role in shaping modern China and indeed the very idea of what modernity is in China can hardly be overstated. Much of this long-lasting influence can be seen in how the city itself came into being as a complex product of Chinese and colonial forces, and as Cole Roskam shows us in Improvised City: Architecture and Governance in Shanghai, 1843-1937 (University of Washington Press, 2019), it is in the very material actions of architects and town planners that this is most obvious.Accompanied by a rich array of archival photos, maps and designs, Roskam’s book takes us down to street level, showing up close how the competing influences of Chinese, British, French, American and other governance and architectural regimes interacted and shaped the urban landscape. As Shanghai has again become an arena where global markets and design innovations collide, appreciating this tangled legacy is key to understanding this metropolis and indeed China as a whole.Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Ethnic Chrysalis: China’s Orochen People and the Legacy of Qing Borderland Administration (Harvard Asia Center, 2019) is the first monograph published in English on the early modern history of the Orochen, an ethnic group that has inhabited northeast Asia for centuries. Since the seventeenth century, the Orochen has settled in the region of Manchuria that became the eastern borderland between China and Russia after the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk. In this book, Loretta E. Kim shows that the Orochen, while sandwiched between these two empires and later republics, reinforced the legal division of the territories and served as human markers that substantiated the demographic demarcation outlined in treaties and other legally binding agreements. Through detailed analysis of Qing official documents, Ethnic Chrysalis reveals that the Orochen, like Manchuria’s other natives, played important roles in the development and maintenance of the Qing borderland not just as its inhabitants but also as economic and cultural intermediaries between officials and commoners on both sides of the interstate border. What emerges is a clear agency in these indigenous people and their capacities to instigate changes that they needed in policies and institutions to preserve their economic, social, and cultural interests.Daigengna Duoer is a PhD student at the Religious Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation researches on transnational/transregional networks of Buddhism centered in twentieth-century Inner Mongolia and Manchuria that connected to Republican China, Tibet, and imperial Japan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

The discipline of folkloristics in the People’s Republic of China is robust and well-funded. With thousands of scholars across the country, it is surprising then that there is relatively little understanding of the research and contributions of Chinese folklorists to the discipline. This despite the fact that Chinese folklorists are well-acquainted with many of the latest advances in folkloristics research globally. As the first English language attempt to discuss the historical development, current situation, and theoretical contributions of Chinese Folklore studies to the discipline of folklore more broadly, Chinese Folklore Studies Today: Discourse and Practice (Indiana University Press, 2020), edited by Lijun Zhang and Ziying You, attempts to rectify this situation. The volume’s five essays point out different issues relevant to folklore studies, including urban folklore studies, studies of women’s folklore, folksong, myth and belief, and intangible cultural heritage. This unique contribution not only introduces folklore of China, but also will certainly prove vital in encouraging and framing future international collaborations.Timothy Thurston is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds. His research examines language at the nexus of tradition and modernity in China’s Tibet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McMaster University, provides a unique sociological analysis of how critics confront the different types of uncertainty associated with their practice. The book explores how reviewers get matched to books, the ethics and etiquette of negative reviews and ‘punching up’, along with professional identities and the future of criticism. The book is packed with interview material, coupled with accessible and easy to follow theoretical interventions, creating a text that will be of interest to social sciences, humanities, and general readers alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Rebgong, in the Northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau (China’s Qinghai Province), is in the midst of a ‘Battle for Fortune.’ That is, a battle to both accumulate as much fortune, but also a battle to decide which definitions of fortune are going to dominate Tibetan society: a material fortune based in ‘authoritarian capitalism’ or a Buddhist form of ‘counterdevelopment’ based in traditional ideas about language, landscapes, and compassion.In The Battle for Fortune: State-led Development, Personhood, and Power among Tibetans in China (Cornell University Press, 2018), Charlene Makley, Professor of anthropology at Reed College, intermixes these tensions while also exploring her own experience attempting to conduct fieldwork immediately before and after a series of demonstrations rocked Tibet in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Using a form of multi-sited, ‘dialogic ethnography’ from linguistic anthropology, Charlene Makley considers Tibetans’ encounters with development projects as a historically situated interpretive politics, in which people negotiate the presence or absence of moral and authoritative persons and their associated jurisdictions and powers. Because most Tibetans view the active presence of deities and other invisible and autochthonous beings as the ground of power, causation, and fertile or fortunate landscapes, Makley also takes divine beings as some of the important interlocutors for Tibetans. The Battle for Fortune, therefore challenges readers to grasp the unique reality of Tibetans’ values and fears in the face of their marginalization in China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Tocqueville and Putnam insist that civil society helps individuals flourish and resist authority, but Daniel C. Mattingly’s decade of research in rural China leads him to conclude that civil society offers officials leverage over citizens that strengthens the state’s coercive capacity. In his book The Art of Political Control in China (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Mattingly argues that civil society can encourage contributions to public goods like roads, schools, and charities, civil associations increase the prestige and authority of local elites who can help insure political compliance. Civil society groups help officials in rural China tamp down protest, requisite land, and enforce mandatory birth quotas. Instead of focusing on oppressive formal institutions such secret police or the military, Mattingly looks to the ways in which civic associations may be used to apply hidden pressure on citizens through informal institutions.Mattingly’s extensive field work, experiments embedded in face-to-face surveys, and datasets from villages point to three ways in which the state uses civil society to coerce. First, the state collects information and tracks behavior – such that the presence of a temple or lineage associations leads to more land requisitions and few protests. Second, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) coopts local elites by including them in political bodies. These local officials understand which citzens have grievances and are the most likely to mobilize against the state. Last, the state creates infiltrating institutions with street level agents are able to spy, coax, or snitch. This rich book combines detailed qualitative case studies with clear prose. Mattingly provides details for those well-versed in Chinese political systems and translates for political scientists seeking a more nuanced understanding of authoritarianism and civil society.Mattingly is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years working on a PhD, or if you’re a faculty member whose career has basically consisted of higher ed, switching isn’t so easy. PhD holders are mostly trained to work as professors, and making easy connections to other careers is no mean feat. Because the people you know were generally trained to do the same sorts of things, an easy source of advice might not be there for you.Thankfully, for anybody who wishes there was a guidebook that would just break all of this down, that book has now been written. Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers (Stylus Publishing, 2020) by Kathryn E. Linder, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas J. Tobin offers practical advice and step-by-step instructions on how to decide if you want to leave behind academia and how to start searching for a new career. If a lot of career advice is too vague or too ambiguous, this book corrects that by outlining not just how to figure out what you might want to do, but critically, how you might go about accomplishing that.Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Following the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, two antipodal ideologies vied for control of China's military. The first, advanced by Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), maintained that the military was little more than an organ of the KMT party apparatus. As such, the Chinese army was a "party-army," beholden to the KMT's will, and subservient to KMT demands. Opposing the "party-army" ideology was a cadre of nationalistic, cosmopolitan Chinese officers, who sought to fashion the army into a professional, technically proficient, and independent institution, loyal not to any one party, but to the Chinese nation. The dynamic of this previously unexamined struggle is the subject of Eric Setzekorn's erudite study, The Rise and Fall of an Officer Corps: The Republic of China Military, 1942-1955 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018).Between 1942 and 1955, Setzekorn argues, professionally-minded officers within the KMT leveraged their military partnership with the United States to build China's first truly national army. Exemplified by General Sun Li-jen, these officers promulgated and defined a professional identity and ethos, forged technological and intellectual bonds with the armed forces of the United States, and nurtured Chinese aspirations to great power status. The "party-army" concept reached its nadir during this period, but it was not forgotten. Defeat at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, combined with a substantive shift in Sino-American security arrangements, allowed "party-army" adherents to reassert control. From 1949 to 1954, Setzekorn observes, KMT leaders began the process of re-politicizing the army; a process that culminated with a purge of key professional officers in 1955.Informed by a wealth of Chinese-language sources, military journals, and previously unavailable archival materials, Setzerkorn offers valuable insight into the cultural and professional development of China's officer corps in the Republican era. At the same time, Setzerkorn's work adds to our understanding of the United States's post-Second World War "army-building" program in east Asia. The Republic of China army, Setzerkorn argues, provided the blueprint for subsequent Cold War military partnerships with Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

The term ‘Manchuria’ conjures up all manner of evocative associations for people interested in East Asian and world history, from the Manchu founders of China’s last imperial dynasty, to Russian railroads and Japanese empire on the Asian mainland. Up to now, however, there hasn’t really been a particularly obvious place to look for a satisfying source of information about these and other aspects of the region’s fascinating past and present.Mark Gamsa’s Manchuria: A Concise History (I. B. Tauris, 2020) therefore meets a significant need, deftly weaving together the many diffuse strands which make up the history of what we now call northeast China. Conveniently broken down into easily digestible chunks, each dealing with a key historic juncture and the parties involved, the book sheds light on both known and overlooked aspects of Manchurian life.Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies