More than sixty-five years after the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, controversy about partition, its causes and its effects, continues. Yet the emphases in these debates have changed over the years, and it is perhaps time, in the wake of India's recent elections, to take stock once again of how these debates have developed in the last several decades and where they are heading. What gives these controversies particular significance is that they are not just about that singular event, but about the whole trajectory of India's modern history, as interpreted through partition's lens—engaging academic historians, even as they continue to be deeply enmeshed in ongoing political conflict in South Asia, and, indeed, in the world more broadly.

This paper analyzes the role of rumor as a mobilizing agent in communal violence. Taking as its point of departure a series of violent clashes in North Maluku in Indonesia during 1999 and 2000, it shows that rumor often took a written form. Outlining the contested origins and composite effects of a particular rumor—as it appeared on the political scene in leaflet form—I argue that these “hardcopy rumors” became social agents in the paranoid politics of the “Maluku wars.” Recent scholarship has rightly stressed the mobilizing role of rumor. This paper demonstrates how the affectivity of rumor, usually attributed to its spontaneous and anonymous nature, may in fact be boosted by the authority of writing. It suggests that “xeroxlore,” the circulation of written and photocopied rumors, may play an essential role in generating the murky political atmosphere in which sectarian violence is instigated, enacted, and justified.

The population of traditional china, from government officials to artisans and farmers, shared a wide range of religious practice and belief, including ancestor veneration, annual festivals, funeral rituals, exorcism of harmful forces, and procedures for the auspicious siting of graves and residences. The definition of popular religion is a contested issue in the current state of the field.

In 1924 a half-Taiwanese, half-Japanese man travelled from Japan to Shanghai to study French at the Jesuit Université L'Aurore. He was young, flamboyant, and rich, and eventually used his own personal funds to found two bookstores and three journals in Shanghai. Despite his ambiguous national identity and lack of formal Chinese education, he also became the founder of a Chinese modernist literary movement called new sensationism (xinganjue pai), earned substantial notoriety, and attracted a host of followers. Murdered by an unidentified assassin in 1939, in his shorr life Liu Na'ou (1900–39) mirrored the literary movement that he created and that died with him. But this was not before he had published an intriguing collection of short stories entitled Scène (his own French title, 1930a), which was in some measure to define what urban writing meant for Chinese writers in Shanghai during the Nanjing decade (1927–37), as the quotation above suggests.

Tibet is the most numerically significant society practicing Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism. The unusual features of religion in Tibetan society are often understood in terms of differences between Vajrayana and other forms of Buddhism. The author suggests here that Tibet is not a “typical” Vajrayana society compared to the Newars or the Balinese, and that what is special about religion in Tibet is related to structural differences between Tibetan society and Buddhist states elsewhere in Asia. Tibet historically has been a region where a centralized state was barely achievable, and Tibetan political structures have more in common with stateless societies than with states. Buddhism in Tibetan society has analogies with Islam in structurally similar Islamic societies.

During the fifteenth century, especially during its middle decades, “almost all parts of the then-known world [i.e., Europe, the Middle East, and the economically advanced regions of Asia] experienced a deep recession. By then, the ‘state of the world’ was at a much lower level than it had reached in the early fourteenth century. During the depression of the fifteenth century, the absolute level of inter-societal trade dropped, currencies were universally debased (a sure sign of decreased wealth and overall productivity), and the arts and crafts were degraded” (Abu-Lughod 1993, 85; see also Lopez and Miskimin 1962; Lopez, Miskimin, and Udovitch 1970; Postan 1973, 41–48; Wallerstein 1974, 21–38; Munro 1998, 38–39). In much of Eurasia, the worst years of this “depression” probably ended sometime during the 1460s or 1470s. Over the next six or seven decades, economic conditions in many parts of the world improved significantly, reflected in dramatic increases in agricultural and handicraft production; in the volume of interregional and international trade; and, except for the western hemisphere where Afro-Eurasian diseases decimated native populations during the early sixteenth century, in demographic growth.

South Asian scholars have long viewed communal competition in terms of majority-minority struggle, of Hindu versus Muslim, leading to the final partition of the British Raj into two antagonistic states. Punjab history offers a dramatic case of religious competitiveness between two minority communities, concerned more with their own sense of identity than with questions of power and dominance. Attempts among Punjabi Hindus to create a new, modernized and respectable religious tradition could not be contained within their community but inevitably altered existing relations with all other religions in Punjab, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian. As newly anglicized elites came into existence, they provided a growing class of alienated and marginal men. Unable to relate to the orthodox world around them, they sought to redefine that world, and in so doing created new ideological systems encompassing a reinterpretation of the past and present, plus a new vision of the future. Elaboration, defense, and dissemination of these ideologies produced both group consciousness and a heightened awareness of separation, of distance between those who accepted the new beliefs and all others. This process of identity reformation created in late nineteenth century Punjab a period of intense dynamism, of ideological and religious conflict amidst an increasingly polemical atmosphere, as each group within a given religious community, Hindu, Sikh, or Muslim, sought to project its own concepts and in the process struggled with others within their own community and beyond. This process of questioning, and its resultant answers permanently altered relations among Punjabi religious communities and, at a more fundamental level, the conceptualizations undergirding many of the groups within them.

One of the more serious obstacles to economic progress and human betterment in many of the less developed countries is the dense settlement of the present cultivated land, coupled with a rapidly increasing population. In much of southern and eastern Asia where most of the good land has been occupied by relatively dense agricultural populations for centuries and where rapidly declining mortality has sharply increased the rate of population growth, heavy land pressure is both chronic and acute. A rapidly increasing population is particularly characteristic of the Philippines where crude birth rates have remained more or less stable at about 50 per thousand since 1900 and where death rates have dropped progressively and are now about 20 per thousand. The present rate of natural increase, approximately three per cent per year, is not only higher than in most Asian countries, but is also higher than in most countries of the world. If this rate of population growth continues unabated, and the evidence suggests that it is more likely to accelerate rather than diminish in the near future, the population of the Philippines will double well before the end of the present century.

Burma/Myanmar's postcolonial elites have established a military-state with hybrid-imperial structures, characterized by high despotic but low infrastructural modes of power, and fueled by rent-extraction. Given the resulting evisceration of opposition political groups, citizens understand explicit politics as dangerous. That said, cleavages between state and the polity afford vast space for “civil society” groups (CS) to form and operate. CS stabilize the political economy by managing citizen needs; conversely, CS stand as a wedge between state and masses, (potentially) constructing spaces to coordinate and magnify potential demands. Yet CS currently err toward managing needs. Opposition must politicize Burmese masses and CS through idioms that interface with CS's material tasks—a “politics of the daily”—encouraging them to make, collectively, a multiplicity of non-adversarial demands. This may compel the state to pivot and seek new bargains, at which point elite advocacy-oriented CS can provide progressive policy reforms. The paper will examine recent inchoate social-political movements in Burma for models of this politics.

Cities and towns first developed in the Philippines as a product of Spanish rule and Roman Catholic mission activity. In this context a new three tiered hierarchy of settlements was established above the preexisting village level. Elements of social and spatial segregation derived from Mexico were imposed in these settlements. Due to a lack of economic base, the towns set up to serve as regional centers soon declined. Substantial provincial urbanism appeared only with the rise of commerce and commercial agriculture during the nineteenth century. Manila achieved early predominance as a combined result of its ecclesiastical-administrative position and its role as the principal entrepot in the trade of Mexican silver for Chinese goods. Despite the collapse of that trade, Manila retained its primate position by becoming the chief point of import and distribution for Western manufacturers as well as a major collecting area for the export of agricultural commodities

On December 9, 2016, South Korea's National Assembly voted to impeach the country's president, Park Geun-hye, over abuse of power among other charges. Three months later, the Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment and she was dismissed from office—the first South Korean president to be removed this way. New elections were called. Park was then made the subject of a criminal investigation and jailed for the trial. The allegations center on Park's relationship with an old family friend, Ch'oe Sun-sil, who became involved in official decision-making and used her influence to extract funds from businesses, but the scandal widened to involve more individuals.

Focusing on colonial Calcutta in the later decades of the nineteenth century, this essay explores the evolution of a particular festival, the Durga Puja, to explore the ways in which religion negotiated its place in the ideological determinants of modernity. The essay surveys the evolution of the goddess Durga from premodern times and shows why and how the perception of both the deity (in gender terms) and the festival (in historical terms) had to be recalibrated following the imperatives of new classes and new discursive parameters. While the essay interrogates the development of new particular categories introduced by modernity, such as urban spatiality and the rhetoric of individual rights in colonial Calcutta, it also aligns these developments to answer the general paradigmatic question of the actual relationship between religion/faith and the modern moment.

The magical girl, a popular genre of Japanese television animation, has provided female ideals for young girls since the 1960s. Three waves in the genre history are outlined, with a focus on how female hero figures reflect the shifting ideas of gender roles in society. It is argued that the genre developed in close connection to the culture of shōjo (female adolescence) as an antithesis to adulthood, in which women are expected to undertake domestic duties. The paper then incorporates contexts for male-oriented fan culture of shōjo and anime aesthetics that emerged in the 1980s. The recent tendencies for gender bending and genre crossing raise critical questions about the spread of the magical girl trope as cute power. It is concluded that the magical girl genre encompasses contesting values of gender, and thus the genre's empowerment fantasy has developed symbiotically with traditional gender norms in society.

Indonesians, like other Southeast Asians, have been extensive users of mild narcotic analgesics throughout history. Until a century ago the most widespread narcotic was the chewed quid of betel, comprising the areca nut, betel leaves, lime, and sundry optional additives. Europeans introduced both tobacco and opium around 1600, and Indonesians quickly took up the growing of tobacco. Initially smoked by a relatively small elite, tobacco became used almost universally as part of the betel chew by the end of the eighteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth century cigarette-smoking for men became associated with the transformation to “modern” attitudes, and it rapidly replaced betel-chewing. Today virtually all Indonesian men smoke and virtually none chew betel. Among women betel-chewing has no such substitute and is disappearing more slowly.

Tobacco has relaxant and sedative effects similar to betel. Whereas the betel ingredients were very cheap, tobacco now consumes about 5 percent of the incomes of Indonesian families, including the poorest. Although betel-chewing provided protection against tooth decay, intestinal parasites, and bacteria, tobacco-smoking is injurious to health in a variety of ways.

Competition over grain supplies produced conflict when the people controlling large stores of grain failed to sell or lend grain at prices and in quantities demanded by the people needing grain. These conflicts, known generally as food riots, took place within a general political economy of grain circulation that spanned a wide variety of local situations. A brief sketch of different types of grain circulation and forms of food rioting establishes the setting for case studies that show the range of possible food riot situations and official reactions to the problems posed by food riots. Materials from the case studies are then drawn on to address the general questions of why rioters acted as they did, why their actions became a common type of conflict in the Qing dynasty, and why food riots persisted through periods of political strength and weakness.

The legal debate in india over the worship and glorification of sati (widow burning, previously spelled “suttee”) stands unresolved at present. After several years of controversy, the practice of worshipping sati was made illegal in 1987 after the death of a young Rajput woman named Roop Kanwar. At that time the Indian government revised the colonial legislation banning widow immolation to include sati glorification and thereby outlawed ceremonies, processions, or functions that eulogize any historical person who has committed sati. The law furthermore prohibited the creation of trusts or fundraising to preserve the memory of such persons. This legal debate over sati worship provides the context in which this essay examines the cultural politics of how Calcutta Marwaris, a wealthy business community, have been among the most vehement defenders of sati worship in the last several decades.

Both the population and agricultural production of the Dongting Lake region in Hunan and Hubei provinces developed rapidly from the late Ming period through the mid-Qing period. During this period, the interests of local dike builders in clearing more land increasingly came into conflict with the efforts of Qing officials to prevent floods by supervising dike repairs and preventing overbuilding of dikes. Although local landowners accepted state subsidies to restore damaged dikes in the early Qing period, their power to resist state authority over water control increased through the eighteenth century. By the early nineteenth century, official prohibitions on dike building were ignored, and a series of disastrous floods occurred.

The author questions the assumptions of an “Asian school of scarcity and risk,” of which James C. Scott is the principal exponent, using Bengali peasant history as a case in point. He argues that it is more likely that the subsistence traditions of Bengal derive from locally generated values of abundance and indulgence than from a universal “moral economy” and suggests that detailed accounts of subsistence traditions in other parts of Asia will confound attempts to prove that European experience is a reliable guide to Asian practices.

This article explores factors contributing to a boom in Buddhist temple construction in contemporary mainland China. In contrast to recent studies focusing on struggles between religious believers and the state over the revival of local temples and churches, this article examines the culture of merit making and morality building that leads clergy and lay practitioners to form translocal networks with the aim of constructing temples in rural areas where they have few or any cultural ties. The author explores how temple building is driven by differing moral visions within the urban Buddhist community, but with little consideration for the culture and history of the people in the localities where the temples are constructed.

This essay examines the importance of Chinese nation-building in the contemporary era. Defining nation-building in terms of processes that help to bridge local differences especially but not only when also distinguishing China from the rest the world, I argue that a focus on globalization has masked the importance of Chinese nation-building to contemporary social change. I analyze three very different societal arenas in which national forms of commonality are being constructed: the consolidation of the education system, the expansion of the urban built environment, and the spread of the Chinese Internet. Though each arena illustrates a very different aspect of the nation-building process, they all result in an increased degree of commonality in lived experience and communicative practice across China.