Anthropologist Ann Anagnost explores the fashioning and refashioning of modern Chinese subjectivity as it relates to the body of the nation. Using interviews and participant observation as well as close readings of official documents and propaganda materials, and popular media, Anagnost notes discontinuities in the nation's self-description--as though redefined at critical junctures in recent history. Photos.
For Peter Fox, being a bowling alley proprietor was a calling. Right from the beginning, the Upstate New York village of Koopersville embraced Peters glistening new bowling alley with its modern automatic pinsetters, and Koopersville Bowl quickly became the heart and soul of the village. Peters dream business opened in 1962, and year after year, the bowling alley was the place where the trials and tribulations of growing up in a small New England town were transformed into the dreams and hopes of the future. Anything was possible at Koopersville Bowl. But one day Peter Fox died, and the village stopped breathing. The moral fabric of the entire community broke, yet Peters extended family tried to adjust to their loss. As Peters eldest son, Paul Fox knew it was his duty to help his mother carry on; whats more, it was what his father would have wanted. And thats exactly what he did. Even so, sometimes unexpected things do happen. In the game of bowling there is only one way to salvage your score, and that is to throw strikes. Perfect games are hard to come by. But in life, as Paul soon finds out, there are always new beginnings, new games to be played, and old memories that can never be taken away.
From Policemen to Revolutionaries uncovers the less-known story of Sikh emigrants in Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yin Cao argues that the cross-border circulation of personnel and knowledge across the British colonial and the Sikh diasporic networks, facilitated the formation of the Sikh community in Shanghai, eventually making this Chinese city one of the overseas hubs of the Indian nationalist struggle. By adopting a translocal approach, this study elaborates on how the flow of Sikh emigrants, largely regarded as subalterns, initially strengthened but eventually unhinged British colonial rule in East and Southeast Asia.
As climate change becomes an increasingly important part of public discourse, the relationship between time in nature and history is changing. Nature can no longer be considered a slow and immobile background to human history, and the future can no longer be viewed as open and detached from the past. Times of History, Times of Nature engages with this historical shift in temporal sensibilities through a combination of detailed case studies and synthesizing efforts. Focusing on the history of knowledge, media theory, and environmental humanities, this volume explores the rich and nuanced notions of time and temporality that have emerged in response to climate change.