This book vibrantly demonstrates how the study of music allows for identification and interpretation of the forces that form Taiwanese society, from politics and policy to reactions to and assertions of such policies.Contributors to this edited volume explore how music shapes life — and life shapes music — in Taiwan, focusing on subjects ranging from musical life under Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945) through to the contemporary creations of Indigenous musicians...

Environmental sustainability and human cultural sustainability are inextricably linked. Reversing damaging human impact on the global environment is ultimately a cultural question, and as with politics, the answers are often profoundly local. Cultural Sustainabilities presents twenty-three essays by musicologists and ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, folklorists, ethnographers, documentary filmmakers, musicians, artists, and activists, each asking a particular question or presenting a s...

Singers generating cultural identity from K-Pop to Beverly SillsAround the world and across time, singers and their songs stand at the crossroads of differing politics and perspectives. Levi S. Gibbs edits a collection built around the idea of listening as a political act that produces meaning. Contributors explore a wide range of issues by examining artists like Romani icon Esma Redžepova, Indian legend Lata Mangeshkar, and pop superstar Teresa Teng. Topics includ...

Mandarin, Guoyu or Putonghua? 'Chinese' is a language known by many names, and China is a country home to many languages. Since the turn of the twentieth century linguists and politicians have been on a mission to create a common language for China. From the radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement, to leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, all fought linguistic wars to push the boundaries of language reform. Now, Internet users take the Chinese language in new and unpredi...

South Korean masculinities have enjoyed dramatically greater influence in recent years in many realms of pan-Asian popular culture, which travels freely in part because of its hybrid trans-nationalistic appeal. This book investigates transcultural consumption of three iconic figures — the middle-aged Japanese female fandom of actor Bae Yong-Joon, the Western online cult fandom of the thriller film Oldboy, and the Singaporean fandom of the pop-star Rain. Through these three specific but hyb...

East Asian pop culture can be seen as an integrated cultural economy emerging from the rise of Japanese and Korean pop culture as an influential force in the distribution and reception networks of Chinese language pop culture embedded in the ethnic Chinese diaspora. Taking Singapore as a locus of pan-Asian Chineseness, Chua Beng Huat provides detailed analysis of the fragmented reception process of transcultural audiences and the processes of audiences’ formation and exercise of consumer p...

K-pop, described by Time Magazine in 2012 as "South Korea’s greatest export", has rapidly achieved a large worldwide audience of devoted fans largely through distribution over the Internet. This book examines the phenomenon, and discusses the reasons for its success. It considers the national and transnational conditions that have played a role in K-pop’s ascendancy, and explores how they relate to post-colonial modernisation, post-Cold War politics in East Asia, connections with the Korea...

This is the first reference book to digest this vast cultural output and make it accessible to the English-speaking world. It contains nearly 1,200 entries written by an international team of specialists, to enable readers to explore a range of diverse and fascinating cultural subjects from prisons to rock groups, underground Christian churches to TV talk shows and radio hotlines. Experimental artists with names such as 'Big-Tailed Elephants' and 'The North-Pole Group' nestle between the c...

This open access book examines the lived experiences of diasporic Korean youth in light of the transnational flows of South Korean popular culture, known as the Korean Wave, or Hallyu. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Korean Canadian youth and their engagement with the Korean Wave, the book proposes a critical understanding of the interactions between diasporic youth audiences and popular culture. By examining the Korean Wave as diasporic cultural practices rather than the diffusion of ...

As Hong Kong is integrated into the People’s Republic of China, ever fewer people in the city identify as Chinese. Two Systems, Two Countries explains why.Two Systems, Two Countries traces the origins of Hong Kong nationalism and introduces readers to its main schools of thought: city-state theory, self-determination, independence, and returnism. The idea of Hong Kong independence, Kevin Carrico shows, is more than just a provocation testing Beijing’s red lines: i...

Since the late 1990s South Korea has emerged as a new center for the production of transnational popular culture - the first instance of a major global circulation of Korean popular culture in history. Why popular (or not)? Why now? What does it mean socially, culturally and politically in a global context?This edited collection considers the Korean Wave in a global digital age and addresses the social, cultural and political implications in their complexity and paradox within the ...

The peoples of Taiwan have been influenced by many different cultures and migrations throughout the island’s history. In the 20th and early 21st centuries especially it has been a stage for cultural and ethnic conflict, not least because of the arrival of mainland Chinese fleeing the Chinese Communist Revolution. The subsequent tensions between those who see Taiwan as a natural territory of China and those who would prefer to see it remain independent have brought to the fore questions of ...