Product Description: Book by Wong, Aline K., Meng, Ng Shui, Ng, Shui Meng

Product Description: Hill Farms and Padi Fields portrays the peoples of Southeast Asia their long, rich history and their ways of life today. Exploring the cultures of these peoples, the author, Robbins Burling, considers their varied ideas of family and community; their religions and economics; and, their languages, moral codes and social outlooks...read more

Product Description: This is a comprehensive introduction to the social and cultural anthropology of South-East Asia. It provides an overview of the major theoretical issues and themes which have emerged from the engagement of anthropologists with South-East Asian communities; a succinct historical survey and analysis of the peoples and cultures of the region...read more

This collection of ethnographic and interpretive essays fundamentally alters the debate over indigenous land claims in Southeast Asia and beyond. Based on fieldwork conducted in Malaysia and Indonesia during the 1980s and 1990s, these studies explore new terrain at the intersection of environmental justice, nature conservation, cultural performance, and the politics of making and interpreting claims.Calling for radical redefinitions of development and ownership and for new understandings of the translation of culture and rights in politically dangerous contexts—natural resource frontiers—this volume links social injustice and the degradation of Southeast Asian environments. Charles Zerner and his colleagues show how geographical areas once viewed as wild and undeveloped are actually cultural artifacts shaped by complex interactions with human societies. Drawing on richly varied sources of evidence and interpretation—from trance dances, court proceedings, tree planting patterns, marine and forest rituals, erotic poems, and codifications of customary law, Culture and the Question of Rights reveals the ironies, complexities, and histories of contemporary communities’ struggles to retain their gardens, forests, fishing territories, and graveyards. The contributors examine how these cultural activities work to both construct and to lay claim to nature. These essays open up new avenues for negotiating indigenous rights against a background of violence, proliferating markets, and global ideas of biodiversity and threatened habitat.Contributors. Jane Atkinson, Don Brenneis, Stephanie Fried, Nancy Peluso, Marina Roseman, Anna Tsing, Charles Zerner (view table of contents)

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Founders' cults throughout Southeast Asia are based on the contract between the original founder or founders of a settlement and the spirit owner or owners of territory cleared for human use. The establishment and enactment of these cults reflect relationships with founding ancestors and with neighboring polities. Founders' cults are implicated in defining both ethnic identity and interethnic relations. Changes in the cults involve the representation of identity through the enactment of traditional local custom in response to European colonialism, world religions, and the penetration of global capitalism. Here, through comparative inquiry and ethnographic case studies, ten anthropologists examine founders' cults in mainland and insular Southeast Asia.

Provides information on the history, language, culture, religion, and daily life in the countries of East, Southeast, and South Asia.

Product Description: Southeast Asia has in recent years become a crossroads of cultures with high levels of ethnic pluralism, not only between countries, sub-regions and urban areas, but also at the local levels of community and neighbourhood. Illustrated by a series of international case studies, this book demonstrates how the forces of 'postcolonialism' in their various manifestations are accelerating social change and creating new and 'imagined' communities, some of which are potentially disruptive and which may well threaten the longer term sustainability of the region...read more

Product Description: Many books have been written about the Chinese in Southeast Asia, but very few, if any, are written specifically about the multi-ethnic descendants of Chinese immigrants. Golden Dragon and Purple Phoenix is not about the diaspora per se of Chinese in Southeast Asia but about the impact of intermarriage between Chinese immigrants and the natives, that is, the intermingling of blood and the offspring from such unions -- the influence they wielded on the society and environment they chose to live in...read more

Product Description: Animism is the religious worldview that natural physical entities possess a spiritual essence. This book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon – its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change...read more