You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A groundbreaking approach to Rococo religious d?r and spirituality in Europe and South America, The Spiritual Rococo addresses three basic conundrums that impede our understanding of eighteenth-century aesthetics and culture. Why did the Rococo, ostensibly the least spiritual style in the pre-Modern canon, transform into one of the world?s most important modes for adorning sacred spaces? And why is Rococo still treated as a decadent nemesis of the Enlightenment when the two had fundamental characteristics in common? This book seeks to answer these questions by treating Rococo as a global phenomenon for the first time and by exploring its moral and spiritual dimensions through the lens of pop...
Changes in the character of the political regime in Laos after 2000, a massive influx of foreign investment, and disruptions to rural life arising from improved communications and new forms of mobility within and across the borders have produced a major transformation. Alongside these changes, a group of young scholars carried out studies that document the rise of a new social, cultural and economic order. The contributions to this volume draw on original fieldwork materials and unpublished sources, and provide fresh analyses of topics ranging from the structures of power to the politics of territoriality and new forms of sociability in emerging urban spaces.
More than a quarter of century after the end of the war in 1975, the Lao leadership is still in search for a compelling nationalist narration. Its politics of culture and representation appear to be caught between the rhetoric of preservation and the desire for modernity. Meanwhile, originating from the periphery where ethnic minorities had hitherto been symbolically, politically and administratively confined, the participation of some of their members in the Indochina Wars (1945-75) exposed these individuals to socialization and politicization processes. This rigorously researched and cogently argued book is a fine-grained analysis of substantial ethnographic material, showing the politics ...
Spirits of the Place is a rare and timely contribution to our understanding of religious culture in Laos and Southeast Asia. Most often studied as a part of Thai, Vietnamese, or Khmer history, Laos remains a terra incognita to most Westerners—and to many of the people living throughout Asia as well. John Holt’s new book brings this fascinating nation into focus. With its overview of Lao Buddhism and analysis of how shifting political power—from royalty to democracy to communism—has impacted Lao religious culture, the book offers an integrated account of the entwined political and religious history of Laos from the fourteenth century to the contemporary era. Holt advances the provocat...
According to the Chinese zodiac, 2018 was the year of the ‘earthly dog’. In the middle of the long, hot, and feverish dog days of the summer of 2018, some workers at Shenzhen Jasic Technology took their chances and attempted to form an independent union. While this action was met by the harshest repression, it also led to extraordinary demonstrations of solidarity from small groups of radical students from all over the country, which in turn were immediately and severely suppressed. China’s year of the dog was also imbued with the spirit of another canine, Cerberus—the three-headed hound of Hades—with the ravenous advance of the surveillance state and the increasing securitisation of Chinese society, starting from the northwestern region of Xinjiang. This Yearbook traces these latest developments in Chinese society through a collection of 50 original essays on labour, civil society, and human rights in China and beyond, penned by leading scholars and practitioners from around the world.
Driven by the increasing importance of discussions around 'impact' and its meaning and implications for history, The Impact of History? brings together established and new voices to raise relevant questions, issues and controversies for debate. The chapters are articulated around the themes of public history, the politics of history, the role of history in the shaping of learning and the situation of history in the changing world of education. While this subject is driven differently by the research bodies and councils of different countries, similar debates about the value and place of the academy in society are taking place in the UK, the USA and Europe as well as in other parts of the wor...
Explains how state transformation processes-the fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation of China's party-state-shape China's external relations.
This book discusses the varied geographical aspects of Southeast Asia, an area that has long been of interest to geographers and other academics. This collection identifies, organizes, and presents various scholarly publications on subjects ranging from cultural-social geography, economic geography, historical geography, physical geography, political geography, and urban geography.
Providing insights into this neglected Southeast Asian city, this interesting book interprets Vientiane’s landscape - physical as well as imagined - as a reflection of key aspects of Lao geo-political history, the nature of Lao urbanism, and its critical relation to constructions of Lao identity in the contemporary period. It is argued that the patterns of change seen through Vientiane’s past embody the key political and economic processes and transformations impacting on the people of Laos. The Lao urban past has rarely been an object of attention by scholars. Laos, in fact, is continually portrayed as a rural backwater, marginal to the dynamic trends affecting most of the Southeast Asi...