Author: Rachel Amtzis

introduction

FASS Bookshare celebrates and showcases books authored by faculty members who have dedicated years of research into their publications.
In previous years Bookshare has highlighted ‘Books with an Asian Focus’, ’Books by our Young Scholars’, ‘Books on Asian mobility, power, and representation’. The fourth edition of Bookshare focuses on books on Indians and India published during 2014. Today three faculty members will share their research experiences and motivations, they are:
Dr. Itty Abraham
Dr. Rahul Mukherji
Dr. Rajesh Rai
Read on for more information about their books.
Pages 6-32 of this brochure cover the long list of books published by FASS Faculty from late 2013 to November 2014.

How India Became Territorial: Foreign Policy, Diaspora, Geopolitics Redwood City: Stanford University Press

Dr. Itty Abraham Associate Professor Southeast Asian Studies Dept. +6516-6896; seaai@nus.edu.sg

Why do countries go to war over disputed lands? Why do they fight even when the territories in question are economically and strategically worthless? Drawing on critical approaches to international relations, political geography, international law, and social history, and based on a close examination of the Indian experience during the 20th century, Abraham addresses these important questions and offers a new conceptualization of foreign policy as a state territorializing practice. Identifying the contested process of decolonization as the root of contemporary Asian inter-state territorial conflicts, he explores the political implications of establishing a fixed territorial homeland as a necessary starting point for both international recognition and national identity—concluding that disputed lands are important because of their intimate identification with the legitimacy of the postcolonial nation-state, rather than because of their potential for economic gains or their place in historic grievances. By treating Indian diaspora policy and geopolitical practice as exemplars of foreign policy behavior, Abraham demonstrates how their intersection offers an entirely new way of understanding India's vexed relations with Pakistan and China. This approach offers a new and productive way of thinking about foreign policy and inter-state conflicts over territory in Asia—one that is non-U.S. and non-European focused—that has a number of implications for regional security and for foreign policy practices in the contemporary postcolonial world.

Itty Abraham is trained as a political scientist but now spends more time doing STS (Science, Technology, Society) and thinking about space (the human geography kind) than performing conventional IR. He has done a number of studies of nuclear power in South Asia and is now extending that work to consider questions of risk and danger in Southeast Asia, especially the Philippines. His early training in international relations has come to focus increasingly on the 1940s and 1950s, the period of decolonization when so much seemed to be possible (and necessary) and on the paths not taken in the rush to become a territorial nation-state. His long standing interest in the postcolonial state in Asia includes the intersection of nationalism, technology and citizenship, and technology policies across different sectors, including biotechnology. Finally, he is still fascinated by borderlands and criminality, following an old project on (il)licitness with Willem van Schendel.

Globalization and Deregulation:
Ideas, Interests, and Institutional Change in India
New Delhi: Oxford University Press India
publisher

Until the early 1990s, people in India used government-owned telephone services, travelled by the national airline, and sent letters through government post offices. The dominant ideology that markets would fail if they were not state-controlled resulted in negligible foreign investments and an uncertain future for privately owned businesses in the Indian economy. This book, part of the Oxford International Relations in South Asia series, presents an analytical history of events since the mid-1960s to a phase of globalization when private companies became major players in the Indian economy after 1991. Mukherji engages institutional theory and advocates a largely state-driven ‘tipping point’ model of economic change in his study of the shift from state-led import substitution and stringent industrial regulation to riskier liberalization and deregulation. He builds a trajectory of India’s growth story: the 1966 balance of payments crisis, the economic reforms from the mid-1970s that culminated in another severe balance of payments crisis in 1991, and the subsequent economic reforms that earned India the recognition of an Asian Tiger Economy.

Dr. Rahul Mukherji Associate Professor South Asian Studies Programme +65-6516 8582, sasrm@nus.edu.sg
@nus.edu.sg

Political processes and economic change are deeply intertwined in a globalizing world and recognition of their linkages is crucial for understanding the role of any government in economic activity. This short introduction discusses the politics of India's economic growth, state welfare, and development experience, situating it within a larger framework of globalization. It outlines the complex yet inevitable dependency of public welfare on the growth process, pointing out the Indian state's successes and failures on developmental fronts. It evaluates the main political factors impacting India's nearly three-decade-old engagement with economic reforms, globalization, and development.

Political Economy of Reforms in India
New Delhi: Oxford UP India

Rahul Mukherji studied economics at Delhi University, international politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and pursued doctoral work in political science at Columbia University. He maintains a lively interest in the political and economic aspects of development working on India’s economic transition to globalization and market orientation, the welfare of its citizens, and the delivery of public services and South Asian regionalism. His research demonstrates that development is a political and economic process. The political and economic aspects of development are so deeply intertwined that they cannot easily be separated from each other. He has a deep interest in comparative work on South Asia, the rest of Asia, and other parts of the world. He has taught at Hunter College (City University of NY), University of Vermont (Burlington), and Jawaharlal Nehru University before joining NUS in 2008. His books include India’s Economic Transition (editor; OUP, 2007) and India Since 1980 (Columbia UP, 2011) with Sumit Ganguly. India Since 1980 was recently been translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil. He is editorially associated with journals such as India Review, Pacific Affairs and International Studies Review.

Indians in Singapore, 1819 -1945:
Diaspora in the Colonial Port City
New Delhi: Oxford University Press India

Indians in Singapore, 1819 -1945 is the first comprehensive study of the Indian diaspora in colonial Singapore. Drawing on administrative archives, intelligence reports, observer accounts, newspapers, oral testimonies, and community-based records, the book provides a meticulous historical account of the formation of the diaspora in the colonial port-city, and its socio-political, religious and cultural development from the advent of British colonial rule to the end of the Japanese occupation. Indians in Singapore examines how the conditions of living as a minority in a multi-ethnic port-city; changes in colonial ideologies, administration and economy; developments in information-communication technologies; and transnational religious and socio-political currents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, shaped Indian identity formations. What emerges is a fascinating account of how these Indian emigrants, by virtue of their unique vantage point in a frontier settlement that transformed into a metropolis of global significance, negotiated their position vis-à-vis the powers at hand and external processes in motion. In doing so, it reveals the distinct and complex nature of the historical journey of Indian migrants in the urban landscape of the colonial port-city – an aspect of diaspora studies that has received little attention in erstwhile scholarship.

Dr. Rajesh Rai Associate Professor South Asian Studies Programme +6516-3607; sasrr@nus.edu.sg

Rajesh Rai received his MA (with Distinction) and PhD from the University of Birmingham (UK), and was awarded the Neville Chamberlain Scholarship for the duration of his doctoral research. A historian, he specialises in diaspora studies, nationalism, and the postcolonial history and politics of South Asia. He has edited several books on the South Asian diaspora including the Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora (2006), for which he was the Assistant Editor. His articles have been published in premier academic journals such as Modern Asian Studies, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies ,and Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. Dr Rai currently serves on the Editorial Board of the journal, South Asian Diaspora, and is also Associate Editor of the Asian Journal of Social Science. He has a passion for teaching and has received numerous teaching awards at NUS.

Long list of FASS-authored books published in late 2013 and 2014

Department of Chinese Studies
The territory of modern Chinese literature
Jin Jin
Beijing: China Social Sciences Press
This book contains more than 20 research theses on Mainland Chinese literature, Taiwan literature, and Hong Kong literature written by the author over a span of 10 years. It attempts to conduct a dialogue between and reassessment of “modern Chinese literature” as conceived by current Mainland Chinese academics and overseas Chinese Studies (literature written in Chinese). This book emphasizes that the main body of “modern Chinese literature” should include “modern Chinese literature” as traditionally defined in academia, “contemporary Chinese literature”, and “Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao literature”, even overseas works and literary activities of mainland Chinese authors who have left China. The title, “The Territory of Modern Chinese Literature”, emphasizes that the categories, approaches, scope, field of vision, and other aspects of modern Chinese literature should be adjusted and expanded in keeping with the times so as to construct a representative oeuvre of modern Chinese literature.

Why Can’t China Produce a Steve Jobs?
Shi Yuzhi
Beijing: Peking University Press
For the first time, by tracing the extraordinary life of Steve Jobs and the tumultuous history of Apple’s establishment, this book offers an in-depth analysis of China’s cultural education and various problems of life in Chinese society. To educators and parents, it provides a new perspective on children’s individuality: geniuses have always developed in the wild, not in protected spaces, and hence it is imperative to let children develop freely. To corporate managers, this book offers a new outlook on misfits in the companies: innovation stems from Jobs’ unwavering passion throughout his life. To social administrators, this book presents a novel way of contemplating the Sinosphere: why is there always a lack of innovation and is this problem solely systemic in nature?
One Hundred Years' History of the Nanyang Confucian Association
Koh, K H and C W Ong
Singapore: Nanyang Confucian Association, 2014
This book traces the hundred years’ history of Nanyang Confucian Association in Singapore since its establishment in 1914 by leaders of the Chinese community such as Lim Boon Keng. This book is divided into two parts, with the first focusing on the history of the Association from 1914 to 1949 when it was still called “Straits Confucian Association” and the second on the history of the Association after it assumed the current name in 1949. The first part highlights the historical background with which the Association was set up, its pioneering vision, its efforts in promoting Confucian values and also the key members involved and the beliefs that they hold. The second part explores the changing significance of Confucian values to the Chinese community in post-war Singapore and also presented the key milestones of the Association through the years, including the changes in its leadership.

Department of Communications and New Media
Reducing Health Disparities:
Communication Interventions
Edited by Mohan J Dutta and Gary L Kreps
New York: Peter Lang
Over the last five decades, the gap between the haves and have-nots has consistently increased in the realm of access to healthcare services among different sectors of society: from quality of healthcare services, access to health supplies, technologies, and usage of health information and health prevention services, to vulnerability to certain types of diseases and health outcomes. Against this backdrop this edited collection - the first of its kind - uses the framework of communication in order to understand the underlying dimensions of health disparities and the communicative processes, policies, methodologies, and messages that are
deployed with the goal of increasing access, improving quality, and
addressing the underlying causes.

Department of Economics
The Global Financial Crisis and the Korean Economy
Jang-Sup Shin
London: Routledge
The world economy fell into a global financial crisis in 2008/9 and is still jittered by its aftershocks. Like other financial crises happened in the world economy, it came as a surprise. In historical perspective, financial crises should be understood as a natural fact of life in the world economy and a more pertinent question that should be posed would be why people so easily forget and do not learn from the historical experience.
This book deals with the question in two ways. First, it investigates the frame of mind that distances people from the reality of life. At the heart of it, it argues that there are wrong perceptions on the working of the world economy, in particular, the international financial market. It summarizes them as ‘the five conventional wisdoms’ in the international financial market and, by critically examining them, it draws on ‘the five financial theorems’, which would provide intellectual pillars for a more realistic understanding of the global financial market. Second, the book examines in detail the case of an emerging market economy that fell into a financial crisis twice in the recent decade. South Korea provides us with an interesting case of emerging market financial crises that came as ‘surprises’: it faced a financial crisis in 1997/98 after it had been acclaimed as one of ‘East Asian miracle economies’ and it was again befallen to a crisis during the global financial crisis in 2008/2009 after it was widely regarded as a country that had recovered from the crisis with one of the most successful implementations of the IMF-sponsored reforms.
The book attempts to provide the readers with a realistic understanding of emerging market financial crises by interpreting the recent global financial crisis and the Korean crises with some general concepts manifested in ‘the five financial theorems’. It also tries to draw more general implications for policy management of emerging market economies.

Department of English Language and Literature
Little Women on Their Own
Jane Nardin
Berkshire: New Dawn Publishers
Reunited after the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the four May girls are restless. Catherine goes to work as a governess on a remote tea plantation, where she discovers that her employer has murdered an Indian worker. Timid Fanny comes out of her shell to play a star role in the sensational trial that follows. Meanwhile, Jane and Elizabeth travel to England, where they must resist the Victorian belief that motherhood is every woman's destiny, without giving up on love. This hilarious and exciting sequel to the acclaimed Little Women in India sees the sisters balancing the claims of romance, ambition, and conscience...in an unjust world.
The Routledge Handbook of Syntax
Edited by Andrew Carnie, Yosuke Sato and Dan Siddiqi
London: Routledge
The study of syntax over the last half century has seen a remarkable expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge about the structure of natural language. The Routledge Handbook of Syntax presents a comprehensive survey of the major theoretical and empirical advances in the dynamically evolving field of syntax from a variety of perspectives, both within the dominant generative paradigm and between syntacticians working within generative grammar and those working in functionalist and related approaches. The handbook covers key issues within the field that include: core areas of syntactic empirical investigation; contemporary approaches to syntactic theory; interfaces of syntax with other components of the human language system; experimental and computational approaches to syntax.

Consumption, Cities and States:
Comparing Singapore with Asian and Western Cities
Ann Brooks and Lionel Wee
London: Anthem Press
In Consumption, Cities and States: Comparing Singapore with Asian and Western Cities, Ann Brooks and Lionel Wee focus on the interrelationship of consumption, citizenship and the state in the context of globalization, calling for greater emphasis to be placed on the citizen as consumer. While it is widely recognized that citizenship is increasingly defined by ‘gradations of esteem’, where different kinds of rights and responsibilities accrue to different categories and subcategories of ‘citizens’, not enough analytical focus has been given to how the status of being a citizen impacts the individual’s consumption. The interface between citizen status and consumer activity is a crucial point of analysis in light of the neoliberal assertion that individuals and institutions perform at their best within a free market economy, and because of the state’s expectations regarding citizens’ rights and responsibilities as consumers not just as producers. In this remarkable comparative study, the authors examine these relationships across a number of cities in both Asia and the West.

Japanese Horror Films and their American Remakes:
Translating Fear, Adapting Culture
Valerie Wee
New York: Routledge
The Ring (2002)—Hollywood’s remake of the Japanese cult success Ringu (1998)—marked the beginning of a significant trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s of American adaptations of Asian horror films. This book explores this complex process of adaptation, paying particular attention to the various transformations that occur when texts cross cultural boundaries. Through close readings of a range of Japanese horror films and their Hollywood remakes, this study addresses the social, cultural, aesthetic and generic features of each national cinema’s approach to and representation of horror, within the subgenre of the ghost story, tracing convergences and divergences in the films’ narrative trajectories, aesthetic style, thematic focus and ideological content. In comparing contemporary Japanese horror films with their American adaptations, this book advances existing studies of both the Japanese and American cinematic traditions, by illustrating the ways in which each tradition responds to developments in its social, cultural and ideological milieu; and, examining Japanese horror films and their American remakes through a lens that highlights cross-cultural exchange and bilateral influence.

Buddhism and American Cinema Edited by John Whalen-Bridge and Gary Storhoff Albany: SUNY Press
In 1989, the same year the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a decade-long boom of films dedicated to Buddhist people, history, and culture began. Offering the first scholarly treatment of Buddhism and cinema, the editors advise that there are two kinds of Buddhist film: those that are about Buddhists and those that are not. Focusing on contemporary American offerings, the contributors extend a two-pronged approach, discussing how Buddhism has been captured by directors and presenting Buddhist-oriented critiques of the worlds represented in films that would seem to have no connection with Buddhism. Films discussed range from those set in Tibet, such as Kundun and Lost Horizon, to those set well outside of any Buddhist milieu, such as Groundhog Day and The Matrix. The contributors explain the Buddhist theoretical concepts that emerge in these works, including karma, the bardo, and reincarnation, and consider them in relation to interpretive strategies that include feminism, postcolonialism, and contemplative psychological approaches.

Buddhism, Modernity, and the State in Asia: Forms of Engagement Edited by John Whalen-Bridge and Pattana Kitiarsa (Southeast Asian Studies) New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Buddhism, Modernity, and the State in Asia explores the relationships between Buddhism and various nations in South, Southeast, and East Asia. Rather than promulgating a "Buddhist exceptionalism" in which Buddhist actors and institutions transcend politics, Pattana Kitiarsa and John Whalen-Bridge have assembled a collection of essays that closely examine the ways in which Buddhism and Asian Modernities are constantly interacting with and conditioning each other. Instead of presenting a monolithic vision of Buddhism, this volume treats particular situations in Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam to demonstrate the wide variety of forms and influences that Buddhism has taken in its many consequential roles in Asian political history.

Department of Geography
Dynamic Environments of Singapore Daniel A Friess and Grahame Oliver Singapore: McGraw Hill
This book provides a comprehensive overview of the diverse biophysical environments found in Singapore. It describes Singapore’s coastal, terrestrial and aquatic environments and links the long-term geological processes with the ever-changing terrain of Singapore. Dynamic Environments of Singapore allows readers to understand the importance of the biophysical environment of Singapore in urban development, future land-use decisions and climate change adaptations.

Department of History
Nature Contained: Environmental Histories of Singapore
Timothy Barnard (Author, Editor)
Singapore: NUS Press
How has Singapore's environment - and location in a zone of extraordinary biodiversity - influenced the economic, political, social and intellectual history of the island since the early 19th century? What are the antecedents to Singapore's image of itself as a City in a Garden? Grounding the story of Singapore within an understanding of its environment opens the way to an account of the past that is more than a story of trade, immigration and nation building. Each of the chapters in this volume - focusing on topics ranging from tigers and plantations to trade in exotic animals and the greening of the city, and written by botanists, historians, anthropologists, and naturalists - examines how humans have interacted with and understood the natural environment on a small island in Southeast Asia over the past 200 years, and conversely how this environment has influenced humans. Between the chapters are traveler's accounts and primary documents that provide eyewitness descriptions of the events examined in the text. In this regard, 'Nature Contained: Environmental Histories of Singapore' provides new insights into the Singaporean past, and reflects much of the diversity, and dynamism, of environmental history globally.

Diaspora Engagement and Development in South Asia Edited by Tan Tai Yong and Md Mizanur Rahman Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
The global South Asian diaspora is over 50 million strong. Many of its members maintain strong social, economic and cultural connections to their countries of origin. They also engage in various causes and institutions that directly benefit their countries and people in South Asia. A global cast of contributors aim to document the various forms of diaspora engagement between global South Asian diasporas and their origin countries, deepening understanding of the opportunity that these diaspora communities are hoarding for development, and providing insight on how to tap the development potential of diaspora engagement for countries in South Asia.

Security, Diplomacy and Commerce in 16th and 17th Century Southeast Asia: Journals, Memorials and Letters of Cornelis Matelieff De Jonge
Edited by Peter Borschberg
Singapore: NUS Press
Admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge was a Director in the Rotterdam chamber of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) for three decades in the early 17th century. In May 1605 he set sail from the Dutch Republic with a fleet of 11 ships, and in the following year launched an unsuccessful attack on Portuguese Melaka. After visiting various locations in the region and signing landmark treaties with the rulers of Johor (1606) and Ternate (1607), he returned to the Netherlands in 1608. There he wrote a series of epistolary reports and memoranda that were carefully studied by leading policy makers in the Republic, among them the renowned jurist Hugo Grotius, and the politician and diplomat Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Early VOC policy for south-eastern Asia drew heavily on Matelieff’s submissions, and the materials reproduced in this volume provide candid insights into key elements of VOC strategy, trade, security and regional diplomacy, as well as Dutch relations with Spain and Portugal.
Proselytizing and the Limits of Religious Pluralism in Contemporary Asia
Edited by Juliana Finucane and Michael Feener Singapore: Springer
This volume brings together a range of critical studies that explore diverse ways in which processes of globalization pose new challenges and offer new opportunities for religious groups to propagate their beliefs in contemporary Asian contexts. Proselytizing tests the limits of religious pluralism, as it is a practice that exists on the border of tolerance and intolerance. The practice of proselytizing presupposes not only that people are freely-choosing agents and that religion itself is an issue of individual preference. At the same time, however, it also raises fraught questions about belonging to particular communities and heightens the moral stakes in involved in such choices. In many contemporary Asian societies, questions about the limits of acceptable proselytic behavior have taken on added urgency in the current era of globalization. Recognizing this, the studies brought together here serve to develop our understandings of current developments as it critically explores the complex ways in which contemporary contexts of religious pluralism in Asia both enable, and are threatened by, projects of proselytization.

Department of Philosophy
A Critical Introduction to Testimony
Axel Gelfert
London: Bloomsbury
The epistemology of testimony is a rapidly developing area in contemporary analytic philosophy. In this first thorough survey of the recent debate on the subject, Axel Gelfert provides an in-depth introduction to what has become one of the liveliest debates in contemporary epistemology. Covering existing literature and major debates, A Critical Introduction to Testimony discusses the epistemic status of testimony-based beliefs, relates changes to relevant developments in other areas and offers a critical perspective on current and future research trends. Devoting space to both the applications of social epistemology and the larger conceptual issues of knowledge, Gelfert not only introduces the epistemology of testimony; he offers an up-to-date introduction to epistemology. Equipped with a mix of study questions, examples, and suggestions for further reading, students of contemporary epistemology will find this a reliable guide to studying testimony as a source of knowledge.

Resemblance and Representation:
An Essay in the Philosophy of Pictures
Ben Blumson
Cambridge: Open Book Publishers
It’s a platitude – which only a philosopher would dream of denying – that whereas words are connected to what they represent merely by arbitrary conventions, pictures are connected to what they represent by resemblance. The most important difference between my portrait and my name, for example, is that whereas my portrait and I are connected by my portrait’s resemblance to me, my name and I are connected merely by an arbitrary convention. The first aim of this book is to defend this platitude from the apparently compelling objections raised against it, by analysing depiction in a way which reveals how it is mediated by resemblance.
It’s natural to contrast the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance, which emphasises the differences between depictive and descriptive representation, with an extremely close analogy between depiction and description, which emphasises the similarities between depictive and descriptive representation. Whereas the platitude emphasises that the connection between my portrait and me is natural in a way the connection between my name and me is not, the analogy emphasises the contingency of the connection between my portrait and me. Nevertheless, the second aim of this book is to defend an extremely close analogy between depiction and description.
The strategy of the book is to argue that the apparently compelling objections raised against the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance are manifestations of more general problems, which are familiar from the philosophy of language. These problems, it argues, can be resolved by answers analogous to their counterparts in the philosophy of language, without rejecting the platitude. So the combination of the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance with a close analogy between depiction and description turns out to be a compelling theory of depiction, which combines the virtues of common sense with the insights of its detractors.

Department of Political Science
Tantangan Orang Rohingya Myanmar (In Bahasa Indonesia; translation: Challenges of the Rohingya Myanmar People)
Bilveer Singh
Jogjakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press
Meskipun Myanmar didominasi oleh hampir 70 persen penganut Buddha, juga ada satu minoritas Muslim yang cukup besar. Sementara banyak orang Muslim sudah berintegrasi ke dalam masyarakat arus utama Myanmar, orang Rohingya, yang merupakan mayoritas Muslim, merupakan perkecualian. Kebanyakan berasal dari negara tetangga Bengali yang sekarang Bangladesh, mereka sudah bermigrasi ke wilayah Arakan sejak abad ke-18. Relasi antara Rohingya Muslim dan Arakan Buddhis pada umumnya ramah dan ini berubah dramatis selama Perang Dunia Kedua. Sejak itu, hubungan antara mayoritas Arakan Buddhis di Negara Bagian Rakhine dan orang Rohingya, dan bahkan Pemerintah Myanmar secara keseluruhan, telah menciptakan satu situasi konflik dengan implikasi tidak hanya untuk Myanmar tetapi juga di luarnya. Sementara ketegangan-ketegangan cenderung terbatas pada Negara Bagian Rakhine di mana kebanyakan orang Rohingya berdiam, dengan meningkatnya demokratisasi, ketegangan Muslim-Buddhis telah menyebar ke bagian lain negeri itu. Ini juga sudah menimbulkan pertanyaan tentang meningkatnya radikalisasi orang Rohingya, terutama karena di satu pihak mereka menemukan diri mereka sendiri dianiaya tak berdaya, dan di lain pihak terbuka kepada ideologi radikal dan kemungkinan terorisme. Juga timbul pertanyaan apakah orang Rohingya akan menjadi “Orang Pattani” atau “Orang Moro” dari Asia Tenggara selanjutnya, mirip dengan minoritas Muslim dari Thailand Selatan dan Philipina Selatan. Ini belum dibantu oleh internasionalisasi bertahap dari masalah Rohingya karena banyak dari mereka bukan hanya tak bernegara tetapi juga tinggal di banyak negara Asia Tenggara dan Asia Selatan serta Timur Tengah. Di sepanjang tahun 2012 dan 2013, masalah Rohingya, penganiayaan dan potensi untuk radikalisasi telah muncul sebagai keprihatinan tombol-panas dan pada akhirnya akan kemana ini bergerak dan bagaimana itu bisa diselesaikan akan dibicarakan dalam studi ini.

The Lovers’ Quarrel:
The Two Foundings & American Political Development
Elvin Lim
New York: Oxford University Press
The United States has experienced Two Foundings, not one. The framers of the second Constitution, the Federalists, were not operating in an ideational or institutional vacuum; rather, the document they drafted and ratified was designed to remedy the perceived flaws of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. To decouple the Two Foundings is to appreciate that there is no 'original meaning,' only original dissent. Because, on the insistence of the Anti-Federalists, prior and democratically sanctioned understandings of federalism and union had to be negotiated and partially grafted onto the new Constitution, the Constitution's Articles and the Bill of Rights do not cohere as well together as have conventionally been understood. Rather, they represent two antithetical orientations toward power, liberty, and republicanism. The Anti-Federalist and Federalist altercation over the necessity of the Second Founding generated coherent and self-contained philosophies that would become the indigenous core of American political thought that has been reproduced and transmitted across two centuries. The Second Founding, or the 'founding' we have come to know as the only one we had, would become a template for the unique species of politics and political debate that is prototypically American. American political development has occurred only after the political entrepreneurs of each generation locked horns in a Lovers' Quarrel about the relative priority of the principles of one of the Two Foundings, and succeeded in justifying and forging a durable expansion or contraction of federal authority.

Department of Psychology
Emotion
Annett Schirmer
Los Angeles: Sage
Emotion is a comprehensive text that integrates traditional psychological theories and cutting-edge neuroscience research to explain the nature and role of emotions in human functioning. Written in an engaging style, the book explores emotions at the behavioral, physiological, mental, and neurofunctional (i.e., chemical, metabolic, and structural) levels, and examines each in a broad context, touching on different theoretical perspectives, regulatory processes, development, and culture, among others. Providing greater insight and depth than existing texts, the book offers a holistic view of the field, giving students a broader understanding of the mechanisms underlying emotions and enabling them to appreciate the role emotions play in their lives. In dedicated chapters, the text covers past and current theories of emotion, individual emotions and their bodily representation, the role of emotions for behavior and cognition, as well as interindividual differences.

Meaning in mind: Semantic richness effects in language processing Edited by Penny M. Pexman, Paul D. Siakaluk, and Melvin J. Yap Lausanne: Frontiers Media SA (ebook)
To the skilled reader, the process by which meaning is extracted from print feels almost effortless. This feeling, however, is misleading, because the process is actually quite complex. As skilled readers we have little conscious insight about this process, so in order to study it researchers must devise careful experiments, and make use of all the tools available to modern Cognitive Science. The contributions in this book represent one such approach: the study of semantic richness effects provides important clues about how readers generate meaning from words. Semantic richness refers to natural variability that exists in the meaning information associated with different words, and semantic richness effects are the behavioral and neural consequences of that variability. The contributions in this book illustrate that semantic richness can be defined in many different ways, as a function of every extant model of word meaning, and that semantic processing can be examined with varied behavioral, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological paradigms. As such, these contributions test current models and provide new answers to the complex question of how word meaning is understood.

Department of Sociology
Applying Ibn Khaldūn:
The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Historical Sociology
Syed Farid Alatas
London: Routledge
The writings of Ibn Khaldūn, particularly the Muqaddimah (Prolegomenon) have rightly been regarded as being sociological in nature. For this reason, Ibn Khaldūn has been widely regarded as the founder of sociology, or at least a precursor of modern sociology. While he was given this recognition, however, few works went beyond proclaiming him as a founder or precursor to the systematic application of his theoretical perspective to specific historical and contemporary aspects of Muslim societies in North Africa and the Middle East. The continuing presence of Eurocentrism in the social sciences has not helped in this regard: it often stands in the way of the consideration of non-Western sources of theories and concepts. This book provides an overview of Ibn Khaldūn and his sociology, discusses reasons for his marginality, and suggests ways to bring Ibn Khaldūn into the mainstream through the systematic application of his theory. It moves beyond works that simply state that Ibn Khaldūn was a founder of sociology or provide descriptive accounts of his works. Instead it systematically applies Khaldūn’s theoretical perspective to specific historical aspects of Muslim societies in North Africa and the Middle East, successfully integrating concepts and frameworks from Khaldūnian sociology into modern social science theories. Applying Ibn Khaldūn will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology and social theory.

Remembering the Samsui Women:
Migration and Social Memory in Singapore and China
Kelvin E.Y. Low
Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press
In the early twentieth century, thousands of women from the Samsui area of Guangdong, China migrated to Singapore during a period of economic and natural calamity, leaving their families behind. In their new country, many found work in the construction industry, with others working in households or factories where they were called hong tou jin, translated literally as "red-head-scarf," after the headgear that protected them from the sun. In Singapore, the women have been celebrated as pioneering figures for their hard work and resilience, and in China for the sacrifices they made for their families. Kelvin Low explores the lives and legacy of the Samsui women, both through media and state representations and through the oral histories of the women themselves. Thus, his work sheds light on issues of their identity, both publicly constructed and self-defined, and explores why they undertook their difficult migration. Remembering the Samsui Women is an illuminating study of the connection between memory and nation, including the politics of what is remembered and what is forgotten.

Global Modernity: A Conceptual Sketch
Volker Schmidt
Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan
This study introduces and systematizes the concept of global modernity as a paradigm for the analysis of the contemporary era. Building on Parson's distinction between social, cultural, personal and organismic systems, it presents a four-dimensional scheme that aims to identify modernity's key structural components. Each dimension is explored in turn, highlighting different aspects of the modern condition. While focusing on universal features, the scheme leaves ample room for capturing cross-regional diversity. The book's key argument is that we have entered a new phase of global, polycentric modernity which brings to a close several centuries of Western world domination and gives rise to a new world order.

Encyclopedia for Quality of Life Research, vol. 1
Edited by Jean Yeung
New York: Springer
The aim of this encyclopedia is to provide a comprehensive reference work on scientific and other scholarly research on the quality of life, including health-related quality of life research or also called patient-reported outcomes research.
Since the 1960s two overlapping but fairly distinct research communities and traditions have developed concerning ideas about the quality of life, individually and collectively, one with a fairly narrow focus on health-related issues and one with a quite broad focus. In many ways, the central issues of these fields have roots extending to the observations and speculations of ancient philosophers, creating a continuous exploration by diverse explorers in diverse historic and cultural circumstances over several centuries of the qualities of human existence. What we have not had so far is a single, multidimensional reference work connecting the most salient and important contributions to the relevant fields.
Entries are organized alphabetically and cover basic concepts, relatively well established facts, lawlike and causal relations, theories, methods, standardized tests, biographic entries on significant figures, organizational profiles, indicators and indexes of qualities of individuals and of communities of diverse sizes, including rural areas, towns, cities, counties, provinces, states, regions, countries and groups of countries.

Southeast Asian Studies Department
The “Bare Life” of Thai Migrant Workmen in Singapore Pattana Kitiarsa Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books
Transnational labor migration often begins with the dream of securing a more stable and prosperous future, a chance to survive. The lure of “global cities” as a place to attain that dream looms large within the context of rural-urban migration flows. This book reveals some of the complex phenomena and processes that strip bare the lives and dreams of migrant workers living abroad, whose life experiences are overwhelmingly dominated by stress and suffering and diminished gendered roles.
The book illuminates the intimate aspects of how Thai male migrants have transcended their harsh reality while living under Singapore’s strict regulations governing foreign workers. Stripped bare of the powerful sociocultural, economic, and legal processes that govern their existence at home, these men must recraft their gendered selfhoods, identities, and sensibilities.
Using personal and interpretive ethnography, the book explores how popular music, sports, religious beliefs, cultural traditions, sexual desire, and intimacy are refashioned by appropriating cultural and symbolic capital into new cultural experiences. It also provides an extensive look at the sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS) among young healthy Thai construction workers in Singapore. The author’s in-depth analyses of migrant social life and male migrant gendered identity negotiating processes provide an invaluable contribution to our understanding of labor transnationalism in the Southeast Asian context.

South Asian Studies Programme
Religion and Identity in the South Asian Diaspora
Edited by Rajesh Rai and Chitra Sankaran (ELL)
New York: Routledge
Religious identity constitutes a key element in the formation, development and sustenance of South Asian diasporic communities. Through studies of South Asian communities situated in multiple locales, this book explores the role of religious identity in the social and political organization of the diaspora. It accounts for the factors that underlie the modification of ritual practice in the process of resettlement, and considers how multicultural policies in the adopted state, trans-generational changes and the proliferation of transnational media has impacted the development of these identities in the diaspora. Also crucial is the gender dimension, in terms of how religion and caste affect women’s roles in the South Asian diaspora. What emerges then from the way separate communities in the diaspora negotiate religion are diverse patterns that are strategic and contingent. Yet, paradoxically, the dynamic and evolving relationship between religion and diaspora becomes necessary, even imperative, for sustaining a cohesive collective identity in these communities.

Centre for Language Studies
Phuut Thai 2: Podcast-Based Workbook Sasiwimol Klayklueng Singapore: NUS Press

A man will turn over half a library to make one book
-Samuel Johnson

For future Bookshare information please contact: fasbox42@nus.edu.sg / 6516 7328 / AS7 Level 6, Research Division.
With thanks to the authors, Janvin Teo, Lin Yuhui, and Pooja TR.

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