Asian Values Modernization

This book discusses and identifies the modernizing trends, which have changed Southeast Asian countries in varying ways. After an overview of current concepts of modernity, the following chapters introduce issues of education, citizenship and ethnicity, religion, the emergence of the middle class, and mass consumption in Southeast Asia. This book concludes by profiling the characteristics of Southeast Asian modernity.

This book opens with an examination of values themselves, grappling with western assertions of individual human rights and the eastern emphasis on duties, and analysing selected Asian philosophical and religious traditions. Several case studies follow, on countries the Philippines, Japan, China, Malaysia and Thailand. The purpose of the book is to help westerners in particular to understand and appreciate better the changes taking place in Asia, to handle relations more sensitively, and thereby to help bring Europe and Asia together.

Asian Traditions and Modernization studies various aspects of change in Singapore and explores the ways in which tradition has shaped and moderated the process of modernization. Employing a multi-faceted approach that covers history, religion, science, ethnic relations and language, the book looks in depth at a country which has witnessed rapid modernization and yet at the same time desires to preserve cultural values. Because tradition and modernization are relative and open-ended concepts, traditional values can be modern in their orientation and conversely, modern societies can be traditional in their practices. The focal concern of the book is how these terms can be best and fully understood. This reissue features a new preface by the author.

Confucianism and Reflexive Modernity criticizes the paradigm of Asian Value Debate and defends a balance between individual empowerment and flourishing community for human rights in the context of global risk society from an enlightened post-Confucianism perspective.

The revised edition of Southeast Asia provides a grounded account of how people in the region are responding to - and being affected by - the changes sweeping through the region.