The Body in Asia / Edition 1

by Bryan S. Turner, Zheng Yangwen

Overview

The past few decades have seen growing interest in the study of the body. However, the increasing number of exciting and influential publications has primarily, if not exclusively, focused on the body in Western cultures. The various works produced by Asian scholars remain largely unknown to Western academic debates even though Asia is home to a host of rich body cultures and religions. The peoples of Asia have experienced colonization, decolonization, and now globalization, all of which make the ‘body in Asia’ a rewarding field of research. This unique volume brings together a number of scholars who work on East, Southeast and South Asia and presents original and cutting edge research on the body in various Asian cultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845455507
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	11/01/2009
Series:	Asia-Pacific Studies: Past and Present , #3
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Bryan S. Turner is the Alona Evans Distinguished Visiting Professor of Sociology, Wellesley College, USA (2009–2011) and Professor of Social and Political Thought and Director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He has published Weber and Islam (1974), Marx and the End of Orientalism (1978), and edited Religious Diversity and Civil Society (2007). With Mike Featherstone he founded the journal Body & Society and his book The Body and Society went into its third edition in 2008. He is currently editing the New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion.

Zheng Yangwen received her PhD from the University of Cambridge (King’s College). She taught and researched at the University of Pennsylvania (2002–04) and the National University of Singapore (2004–06) before joining the University of Manchester in 2007. She is the author of The Social Life of Opium in China (2005). She co-edited Negotiating Asymmetry: China’s Place in Asia with Anthony Reid (2009) and Personal Names in Asia: History, Culture and Identity with Charles J-H Macdonald (2009).

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Piety, Politics and Philosophy: Asia and the Global Body
Bryan S. Turner and Zheng Yangwen

Chapter 1. The Global Body Cannot Ignore Asia
Susan Brownell

PART I: THE BODY AND RELIGION

Chapter 2. Saint or Serpent? Engendering the Female Body in Medieval Japanese Buddhist Narratives
Monika Dix

Chapter 3. Creating Religious Bodies: Fasting Rituals in West Java
Jörgen Hellman

Chapter 4. Formations of Public Piety: New Veiling, the Body, and the Citizen-Subject in Contemporary Indonesia
Sonja van Wichelen

PART II: THE BODY AND CULTURE

Chapter 5. Westernized Body or Japanized Western Body: The Desirable Female Body in Contemporary Japanese Women’s Magazines
Junko Ishiguro

Chapter 6. Fatness and Well-being: Bodies and the Generation Gap in Contemporary China
Anna Lora-Wainwright

PART III: THE BODY AND THE STATE

Chapter 7. Seki Jūrōji and the Japanese Body: Martial Arts, Kokutai, and Citizen–State Relations in Meiji Japan
Denis Gainty

Chapter 8. The Sacred and the Sanitary: The Colonial ‘Medicalization’ of the Filipino Body
Julius Bautista with Ma. Mercedes Planta

Chapter 9. State and Religion Contestations over the Body: Hook Swinging and the Production of New Human Subjects
R. Santhosh

Chapter 10. Women’s Revolution and Liberation Embodied in Mao Zedong Era Ballet
Zheng Yangwen

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The volume provides a welcome summary of the fast growing literature and introduces a wealth of Asian empirical, ethnographic, and historic data throughout the chapters…the book challenges readers to rethink their own body and the bodies around them in everyday life and provides an excellent introduction into the sociology of the body and the anthropology of embodiment.”  ·  Pacific Asia Inquiry

From the Publisher