Lyn Parker - Contestations Over Gender in Asia

This book brings together the work of scholars from around the world in a consideration of how gender is contested in various parts of Asia in China, India, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines. Part I of this collection explores notions of agency in relation to womens domestic and everyday lives. While agency is one of the key terms in contemporary social science, scholarship on women in Asia recently has focussed on womens political activism. Womens private lives have been neglected in this new scholarship. This volume has a special focus on womens relational and emotional lives, domestic practices, marriage, singlehood and maternity. Papers consider how women negotiate enhanced space and reputations and challenge negative representations and entrenched models of intra-family and intimate relations. There is also a warning about too free feminist expectations of agency and the repercussions of the exercise of agency. The three essays in Part II examine the historical construction of masculinities in colonial and postcolonial South and Southeast Asia, and the ways that manhood is interpreted, experienced and performed in daily life in the past and in the present. They highlight the centrality and continued relevance of masculinity to analyses of empire and nation and underscore the highly gendered and (hetero)sexualized nature of political, military and economic institutions. Collectively, the essays explore a wide range of competing articulations and experiences of gender within Asia, emphasizing the historical and contemporary plurality and variability of femininity and masculinity, and the dynamic and intersectional nature of gender identities and relations. This book was published as a special issue of Asian Studies Review.

Lyn Parker is a Professor in Asian Studies, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. She is a social and cultural anthropologist who specializes in Indonesia.

Laura Dales is Assistant Professor in Asian Studies, School of Social Sciences at The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. She researches contemporary Japanese society, with a particular focus on gender.

Chie Ikeya is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. Her research concerns the social and cultural histories of modern Southeast Asia, with a focus on women and gender, race, colonialism and nationalism in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Burma (Myanmar).

Edited by

Lyn Parker, Laura Dales and Chie Ikeya

First published 2015

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2015 Asian Studies Association of Australia

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-90682-2

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Publishers Note

The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen during the conversion of this book from journal articles to book chapters, namely the possible inclusion of journal terminology.

Disclaimer

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.

Part I: Everyday Agency of Women in Asia

Part II: Masculinities in Asia

The chapters in this book were originally published in the Asian Studies Review, volume 38, issue 2 (June 2014). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Everyday Agency of Women in Asia

Lyn Parker and Laura Dales

Asian Studies Review, volume 38, issue 2 (June 2014) pp. 164167

Chapter 2

Northern Girls: Cultural Politics of Agency and South Chinas Migrant Literature

Wanning Sun

Asian Studies Review, volume 38, issue 2 (June 2014) pp. 168185

Chapter 3

Left-behind and Vulnerable? Conceptualising Development and Older Womens Agency in Rural China

Tamara Jacka

Asian Studies Review, volume 38, issue 2 (June 2014) pp. 186204

Chapter 4

Problematic Conjugations: Womens Agency, Marriage and Domestic Violence in Indonesia

Siti Aisyah and Lyn Parker

Asian Studies Review, volume 38, issue 2 (June 2014) pp. 205223

Chapter 5

Ohitorisama, Singlehood and Agency in Japan

Laura Dales

Asian Studies Review, volume 38, issue 2 (June 2014) pp. 224242

Chapter 6

Masculinities in Asia: A Review Essay

Chie Ikeya

Asian Studies Review, volume 38, issue 2 (June 2014) pp. 243252

Chapter 7

A Collision of Masculinities: Men, Modernity and Urban Transportation in American-Colonial Manila

Michael D. Pante

Asian Studies Review, volume 38, issue 2 (June 2014) pp. 253273

Chapter 8

Obscenity, Moral Contagion and Masculinity: Hijras in Public Space in Colonial North India

Jessica Hinchy

Asian Studies Review, volume 38, issue 2 (June 2014) pp. 274294

Please direct any queries you may have about the citations to clsuk.permissions@cengage.com

Siti Aisyah is a Lecturer and Director of Gender Mainstreaming and Childrens Studies at the Alauddin State Islamic University of Makassar, Indonesia. Her research focus is on gender and Islam, particularly in the Muhammadan Tradition (Hadith). Her research projects have included domestic violence in Makassar, Indonesia; trafficking and local wisdom in South Sulawesi, Indonesia; gender bias in Islamic schools curricula in South Sulawesi; and Muslim understanding of Islamic teaching on gender relations. She is the author of Rereading of Quranic Understanding on Domestic Violence: In Search of Domestic Violence in Makassar Indonesia (2012).

Laura Dales is Assistant Professor in the Discipline of Asian Studies at The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Her research interests include womens groups, feminism, sexuality, singlehood and marriage in Japan and Asia. She is the author of the monograph