Asian Ethnology 76 2 2017

Asian Ethnology is dedicated to the promotion of scholarly research on the peoples and cultures of Asia. It began in China as Folklore Studies in 1942 and later moved to Japan where its name was changed to Asian Folklore Studies. It is edited and published at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan, with the cooperation of Boston University. Asian Ethnology seeks to deepen understanding and further the pursuit of knowledge about the peoples and cultures of Asia. We wish to facilitate intellectual exchange between Asia and the rest of the world, and particularly welcome submissions from scholars based in Asia. The journal presents formal essays and analyses, research reports, and critical book reviews relating to a wide range of topical categories, including narratives, performances, and other forms of cultural representation popular religious concepts vernacular approaches to health and healing local ecological/environmental knowledge collective memory and uses of the past cultural transformations in diaspora transnational flows material culture museology visual culture

Special Issue. Interpreting Sinitic Heritage: Ethnography and Identity in China and Southeast Asia

Since the British colonial period anthropology has been central to policy in India. But today, while the Indian state continues to use ethnography to govern, those who were the "objects" of study are harnessing disciplinary knowledge to redefine their communities, achieve greater prosperity, and secure political rights. In this groundbreaking study, Townsend Middleton tracks these newfound "lives" of anthropology. Offering simultaneous ethnographies of the people of Darjeeling's quest for "tribal" status and the government anthropologists handling their claims, Middleton exposes how minorities are—and are not—recognized for affirmative action and autonomy. We encounter communities putting on elaborate spectacles of sacrifice, exorcism, bows and arrows, and blood drinking to prove their "primitiveness" and "backwardness." Conversely, we see government anthropologists struggle for the ethnographic truth as communities increasingly turn academic paradigms back upon the state. The Demands of Recognition offers a compelling look at the escalating politics of tribal recognition in India. At once ethnographic and historical, it chronicles how multicultural governance has motivated the people of Darjeeling to ethnologically redefine themselves—from Gorkha to tribal and back. But as these communities now know, not all forms of difference are legible in the eyes of the state. The Gorkhas' search for recognition has only amplified these communities' anxieties about who they are—and who they must be—if they are to attain the rights, autonomy, and belonging they desire.

Asian Ethnology is dedicated to the promotion of scholarly research on the peoples and cultures of Asia. It began in China as Folklore Studies in 1942 and later moved to Japan where its name was changed to Asian Folklore Studies. It is edited and published at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan, with the cooperation of Boston University. Asian Ethnology seeks to deepen understanding and further the pursuit of knowledge about the peoples and cultures of Asia. We wish to facilitate intellectual exchange between Asia and the rest of the world, and particularly welcome submissions from scholars based in Asia. The journal presents formal essays and analyses, research reports, and critical book reviews relating to a wide range of topical categories, includingnarratives, performances, and other forms of cultural representationpopular religious conceptsvernacular approaches to health and healinglocal ecological/environmental knowledgecollective memory and uses of the pastcultural transformations in diasporatransnational flowsmaterial culturemuseologyvisual culture

Nationalism was declared to be dead too early. A postnational age was announced, and liberalism claimed to have been victorious by the end of the Cold War. At the same time postnational order was proclaimed in which transnational alliances like the European Union were supposed to become more important in international relations. But we witnessed the rise a strong nationalism during the early 21st century instead, and right wing parties are able to gain more and more votes in elections that are often characterized by nationalist agendas. This volume shows how nationalist dreams and fears alike determine politics in an age that was supposed to witness a rather peaceful coexistence by those who consider transnational ideas more valuable than national demands. It will deal with different case studies to show why and how nationalism made its way back to the common consciousness and which elements stimulated the re-establishment of the aggressive nation state. The volume will therefore look at the continuities of empire, actual and imagined, the role of "foreign-" and "otherness" for nationalist narratives, and try to explain how globalization stimulated the rise of 21st century nationalisms as well.

Bangladesh did not exist as an independent state until 1971. Willem van Schendel's state-of-the-art history navigates the extraordinary twists and turns that created modern Bangladesh through ecological disaster, colonialism, partition, a war of independence and cultural renewal. In this revised and updated edition, Van Schendel offers a fascinating and highly readable account of life in Bangladesh over the last two millennia. Based on the latest academic research and covering the numerous historical developments of the 2010s, he provides an eloquent introduction to a fascinating country and its resilient and inventive people. A perfect survey for travellers, expats, students and scholars alike.

Asian Ethnology is a semi-annual, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the promotion of scholarly research on the peoples and cultures of Asia. It began in China as Folklore Studies in 1942 and later moved to Japan where its name was changed to Asian Folklore Studies. It is currently edited and published at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. Asian Ethnology seeks to deepen understanding and further the pursuit of knowledge about the peoples and cultures of Asia. We wish to facilitate intellectual exchange between Asia and the rest of the world, and particularly welcome submissions from scholars based in Asia.

The identity politics of the householder Naths (Yogis), on the one hand, is one of the oldest and most persistent identity assertions in Bengal and Assam. On the other, for an array of reasons, the identity assertion of the householder Naths of Bengal and Assam has failed to draw academic curiosity so far. Since the late nineteenth century, a segment of the Naths, largely educated and elite, has been crafting their identity as Brahman grounded on their “origin myth”, negotiating with the British colonial administration through different census enumerations, as well as internal social reforms. One of the primary reasons for their current lagging is that the Naths never politicised their identity and demands, and did not mobilise themselves in the democratic political arena.

This study investigates the contribution made by outsiders in accumulating knowledge from the days of the East India Company until the early twentieth century, when photography became an important tool for recording information. It focuses on heterogeneous voices on the periphery, who interacted with the indigenous population to produce knowledge in original or unexpected ways that extended beyond the limits prescribed by the term ‘colonial.’ Largely unrecognized today, their endeavors to satisfy their own intellectual curiosity, or improve their material circumstances, produced a perspective on colonial life that stripped away conventions; where their ordinary everyday experiences sometimes became extraordinary, as they forged new networks throughout the subcontinent and beyond its frontiers. Their journeys and experiences offer a discursive historical construct as significant as official reports, censuses, and surveys, and contribute towards our understanding of the diverse creative processes through which intellectual histories of the colonial state were constructed.

Exploring an array of captivating topics, from hybridized Buddhist music to AI singers, this book introduces Japanese music in the modern era. The twenty-five chapters show how cultural change from the late nineteenth century to the present day has had a profound impact on the Japanese musical landscape, including the recontextualization and transformation of traditional genres, and the widespread adoption of Western musical practices ranging from classical music to hip hop. The contributors offer representative case studies within the themes of Foundations, Heritage, Institutions, and Hybridities, examining both musical styles that originated in earlier times and distinctly localized or Japanized musical forms.