China Books

There is always something to celebrate, somewhere, in the Philippines. In this engaging, informative account, the sounds, sights, and flavours of Filipino festivals introduce children to the complex history and culture of the beautiful islands. Young readers discover why farmers honour the carabao, why people on Mindanao observe Ramadan, and why the poinsettia symbolises Christmas. There are recipes for popular Filipino dishes like adobo, a description of the sipa - a children?s game, and explanations of why mangoes are the national fruit and December 30 is a holiday.The author offers a concise overview of Philippine history starting with the origins of the first Filipinos and the beginning of rice culture. She introduces the Islamic culture of the south, brought by Arab traders more than 1,000 years. The legacy of Spanish colonialism is also included. There are folk tales, songs, and much more to do and to think about. The artist?s vivid and detailed illustrations, reflecting her intimate knowledge of the Philippines, bring the celebrations and the celebrants to life. For children from 8 to 13, but enjoyable for all ages. (For this item please quote stock ID 8951) ISBN: 9781881896159

In this anthology of essays about Philippine cinema, geopolitics takes off from the post-World War II détente foreign policy of the United States to illuminate issues of transparency of power and power relations. It lays bare the geopolitics of the visible in order to render the almost invisible working operation that makes both visibility and invisibility possible. Geopolitics then refers to a transnational cultural politics that effects the implementation of globalising forces in the local national landscape, and demonstrates how the local might become a trope for situating past and ongoing globalisation drives. (For this item please quote stock ID 15999) ISBN: 9789715503587

'Deprivation, suggests our author, manifests itself not in sterile, faceless economic categories, but in the multidimensional aspects of poverty. These encompass not only lack of access to food, health, education, . . . but also the psychological consequences of social exclusion, powerlessness, loss of dignity, insecurity, and lack of control over one?s future . . . Dr. Ortigas insists that the cycle of poverty itself can be broken by applying social psychological concepts to the problem . . . Fortunately, the author goes beyond definitions and exhortations to give empirical evidence as to how this can be done. She does so by describing an actual case of organisational and personal change carried out in Negros Occidental in the late 1980s and early 1990s. . . .An admirable book.? - from the Foreword (For this item please quote stock ID 16001) ISBN: 9789715503501

This volume contains a great variety of perspectives and approaches relevant to the social construction of Filipino communities. The chapters analyse a range of old ties and new forces linked to the ever-expanding global communication, new means to attain social goals and effect individual strategies. The conceptual grid used by scholars in this book refers not only to the more traditional categories of ethnic groups and the national community of diachronic history but also to a whole new range of communities - professional, religious, and local. (For this item please quote stock ID 16002) ISBN: 9789715503518

[Indent] Angeles Monrayo (1912-2000) began her diary on January 10, 1924, a few months before she and her father and older brother moved from a sugar plantation in Waipahu to Pablo Manlapit's strike camp in Honolulu. Here for the first time is a young Filipino girl's view of life in Hawai`i and central California in the first decades of the 20th century - a significant and often turbulent period for immigrant and migrant labor in both settings. (For this item please quote stock ID 20733) ISBN: 9780824826888

[Indent] (For this item please quote stock ID 21255) ISBN: 9789715504171

[Indent] (For this item please quote stock ID 21256) ISBN: 9789715504164

[Indent] (For this item please quote stock ID 21257) ISBN: 9789715504225

[Indent] (For this item please quote stock ID 21258) ISBN: 9789715504188

[Indent] (For this item please quote stock ID 21259) ISBN: 9789715504348

[Indent] (For this item please quote stock ID 21260) ISBN: 9789719094043

What is the politics of civil society? Focusing on the Philippines - home to the mother of all election-watch movements, the original People Power revolt, and one of the largest and most diverse NGO populations in the world - Eva-Lotta Hedman offers a critique that goes against the grain of much other current scholarship. Her highly original work challenges celebratory and universalist accounts that tend to reify 'civil society' as a unified and coherent entity, and to ascribe a single meaning and automatic trajectory to its role in democratisation. She shows how mobilisation in the name of civil society is contingent on the intercession of citizens and performative displays of citizenship - as opposed to other appeals and articulations of identity, such as class. In short, Hedman argues, the very definitions of 'civil' and 'society' are at stake. Based on extensive research spanning the course of a decade (1991-2001), this study offers a powerful analysis of Philippine politics and society inspired by the writings of Antonio Gramsci. It draws on a rich collection of sources from archives, interviews, newspapers, and participant-observation. It identifies a cycle of recurring 'crises of authority,' involving mounting threats - from above and below - to oligarchical democracy in the Philippines. Tracing the trajectory of Gramscian 'dominant bloc' of social forces, Hedman shows how each such crisis in the Philippines promotes a counter mobilisation by the 'intellectuals' of the dominant bloc: the capitalist class, the Catholic Church, and the U.S. government. In documenting the capacity of so-called 'secondary associations' (business, lay, professional) to project moral and intellectual leadership in each of these crises, this study sheds new light on the forces and dynamics of change and continuity in Philippine politics and society. Eva-Lotta Hedman is senior research fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. (For this item please quote stock ID 25242) ISBN: 9780824829216

Among the extremely limited English language literature on the Chinese resistance movement in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation, this book is unique in making use of documents from the United States National Archives, supplemented by memorials and articles recently published in China and the Philippines. While the reliability of these original sources is questionable, the difficulty of interpreting these sources is dealt with openly and effort has been made to compare contradictory accounts objectively. Meanwhile, the characteristics of the Chinese resistance movement are summarized in its historical social context, and the long-term effect of the resistance movement on the Chinese community in the Philippines is addressed. The book thus fills an important gap in Philippine historiography on the Second World War and in the understanding of the Philippine Chinese community and the effect of Japanese occupation upon it. The book is based on a research by Yung Li Yuk-wai in the Department of History, the University of Hong Kong. (For this item please quote stock ID 26260) ISBN: 9789622093737

[Indent] 'The reader familiar with the writings of Rizal and Marcelo del Pilar will notice in some of the writings of Burgos reproduced in this volume the nationalist intellectual heritage on which they drew. Although the struggle for the rights of the Filipino clergy suffered an eclipse with the death of three priests in 1872, the concern of Burgos for the equality of Filipino with Spaniard and for justice to all remained at the core of the nationalist aspirations and representations.' - from the Introduction (For this item please quote stock ID 12386) ISBN: 9789715503013

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'Complex and imaginative' - Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32 (2001) 'This book is truly a fabulous tale in all senses of the word.... Aguilar combines innovation and sound scholarship to provide insights into another dimension of the Filipino past and substantially expands our conceptualization of "history from below"' - American Historical Review, October 2000 'In addition to being a talented researcher, Aguilar writes with ease and grace. His book is particularly insightful, albeit a definite downer' - Journal of Asian Studies, August 2000 'This is a world-class original work in which the author, Filomeno Aguilar, combines the skills of a historian, political scientist, anthropologist, and even a bit of an economist in a fascinating inquiry on the history of the island of Negros ... A delightful book' - Pilipinas (For this item please quote stock ID 25100) ISBN: 9780824820824

Winner, 1986 Masayoshi Ohira Book Prize 'Perhaps the single most important monograph to have appeared in modern Philippine history' - David Joel Steinberg, editor of In Search of Southeast Asia Reynaldo C. Ileto is co-ordinator of Southeast Asian Studies Program at the National University of Singapore. (For this item please quote stock ID 25101) ISBN: 9789715502320

Southern Mindanao became the battleground of two major rebellions in the 1970s. Standard explanations of these rebellions point to the explosive combination of historic ethnic disputes, massive demographic changes accompanying the closure of the frontier, rising class inequalities, the entry of transnational capital, and the militarisation of southern Mindanao. While not denying explanatory value of these arguments, this book rejects ethnicity and political economy as the dominant causes. Making Mindanao argues that colonial construction of the state and its subsequent transformation from the colonial to the postcolonial period largely shaped Mindanao?s political landscape. (For this item please quote stock ID 16000) ISBN: 9789715503495

[Indent] (For this item please quote stock ID 18081) ISBN: 9780824825614

Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory Since the early 1980s, approximately ten million people have turned to charismatic businessman-turned-preacher 'Brother Mike' and his Catholic 'prosperity' movement, El Shaddai DWXI Prayer Partners Foundation International, Inc. Investing in Miracles offers an in-depth look at this unique indigenous movement, characterised by its effective use of mass media and its huge, emotion-filled outdoor rallies. The book investigates the sociocultural, political, and economic contexts of El Shaddai's popularity among the Filipino urban poor and aspiring middle classes and explores its significance for its followers, which reaches well beyond promises of appliances, salary raises, jobs abroad, and healing. Katharine Wiegele argues that Shaddai's theology directly engages and affirms desires for the material signs of modernity in ways that the mainstream Philippine Roman Catholic Church and Filipino leftist movements do not. At stake for its many adherents are their place and identity within the broader society; the meaning of their experiences of poverty, suffering, and oppression; and the relevance of their very notions of God, Christian community, and Christian life. Wiegele evocatively captures the religious and everyday experiences of her informants' lives in poor squatter neighbourhoods of Manila. She is particularly sensitive to El Shaddai's delicate and often contorted relationship with the Catholic Church, which accepts the movement reluctantly, fearful of losing the loyalty of millions of faithful Catholics. While anchored in the local realities of the Philippines, Investing in Miracles will be of great interest to readers elsewhere for its exploration of religious seduction and interpretation, the interface between religion and politics, and the relevance of religion for the urban disenfranchised. Katharine Wiegele is adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois. (For this item please quote stock ID 23296) ISBN: 9780824828615

Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory Since the early 1980s, approximately ten million people have turned to charismatic businessman-turned-preacher 'Brother Mike' and his Catholic 'prosperity' movement, El Shaddai DWXI Prayer Partners Foundation International, Inc. Investing in Miracles offers an in-depth look at this unique indigenous movement, characterised by its effective use of mass media and its huge, emotion-filled outdoor rallies. The book investigates the sociocultural, political, and economic contexts of El Shaddai's popularity among the Filipino urban poor and aspiring middle classes and explores its significance for its followers, which reaches well beyond promises of appliances, salary raises, jobs abroad, and healing. Katharine Wiegele argues that Shaddai's theology directly engages and affirms desires for the material signs of modernity in ways that the mainstream Philippine Roman Catholic Church and Filipino leftist movements do not. At stake for its many adherents are their place and identity within the broader society; the meaning of their experiences of poverty, suffering, and oppression; and the relevance of their very notions of God, Christian community, and Christian life. (For this item please quote stock ID 23297) ISBN: 9780824827953