Women And The Media In Asia

At a time of significant change in the precarious world of female individualization, this collection explores such phenomena by critically incorporating the parameters of popular media culture into the overarching paradigm of gender relations, economics and politics of everyday life.

In examining the links between gender and the media, this volume asks questions involving the relationship between global media flows, gender and modernity in the region.

This book is an upper-level student source book for contemporary approaches to media studies in Asia, which will appeal across a wide range of social sciences and humanities subjects including media and communication studies, Asian studies, cultural studies, sociology and anthropology. Drawing on a wide range of perspectives from media and communications, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology and Asian studies, it provides an empirically rich and stimulating tour of key areas of study. The book combines theoretical perspectives with grounded case studies in one up-to-date and accessible volume, going beyond the standard Euro-American view of the evolving and complex dynamics of the media today.

"Commercializing Women is a collection of original essays intended to stimulate discussion about the depictions of women in Asian media. The authors explain how the underlying philosophical and cultural contexts that shape the life experiences of women in Asia are reflected in the media portrayals, especially in advertising. They discuss the influence of Confucianism in China, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore; the traditional Hindu beliefs that have shaped life for women in India; and finally the role of Islam in constructing social norms for women in Islamic countries like Pakistan. Together these traditional influences along with the new and emerging global cultural values inherent in the media, weave a set of conditions that create the context for images of women in Asian media. Through a sampling of countries in Asia, the authors are able to explore and compare the underlying issues that affect the commercial representation of women in the region." "By drawing on a range of methodologies this book provides scholars with an understanding of the representation of women in advertising from the point of view of message producers who view Asian women as a growing market for clothing and beauty products, as well as from the point of view of many Asian women who see these commercial messages as tools for either subjugation or empowerment."--BOOK JACKET.

This collection offers a range of cultural studies perspectives on the ways gender and modernity intersect in media produced in the Asia-Pacific region. It spans different ideas about modernity in the region, different approaches to cultural analysis, and different media forms: from Taiwanese lifestyle television to avant-garde Indian cinema, from the emergence of a Chinese youth culture in online social networks to the alienation of country girls as imagined by Australian soap opera, and from the fantastic politics of migrating bodies in Korean cinema to the masculine mimicry of fighting women in South-East Asian action movies. Together, these essays explore the ways that media both records and helps produce images and experiences of modernity and the integral role gender plays in those processes. This book was originally published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.

Singapore and Malaysia are rapidly modernising, globalising Asian states which, although being distinct nations since 1965, share common elements in the on-going struggle over the meaning of gender and sexuality in their societies. This is the first book to discuss a range of discourses around gender in these two countries. Women and the Politics of Representation in Southeast Asia: Engendering Discourse in Singapore and Malaysia seeks to give an overview of how gender and representation come together in various configurations in the history and contemporary culture of both nations. It examines the discursive construction of gender, sexuality and representation in a variety of areas, including the politics of everyday life, education, popular culture, literature, film, theatre and photography. Chapters examine a range of tropes such as the Orientalist "Sarong Party Girl," the iconic "Singapore Girl" of Singapore Airlines, and the figure of pious Muslim femininity celebrated by Malaysian NGO IMAN, all of which play important roles in delineating limitations for gender roles. The collection also draws attention to resistance to these gender boundaries in theatre, film, blogs and social media, and pedagogy. Bringing together research from a variety of humanistic and social science fields, such as film, material culture, semiotics, literature and pedagogy, the book is a comprehensive feminist survey that will be of use for students and scholars of Women’s Studies and Asian Studies, as well as on courses on gender, media and popular culture in Asia.