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Amidst the unevenness and unpredictability of change in the Asia-Pacific region, women's lives are being transformed. This volume takes up the challenge of exploring the ways in which women are active players, collaborators, participants, leaders and resistors in the politics of change in the region.
The editors focus attention on the politics of gender as a mobilizing centre for identities, and the ways in which individualized identity politics may be linked to larger collective emancipatory projects based on shared interests, practical needs, or common threats. Collectively, the chapters illustrate the complexity of women's strategies, the diversity of sites for action, and the flexibility of their alliances as they carve out niches for themselves in what are still largely patriarchal worlds.
This book will be of vital interest to scholars in a range of subjects, including gender studies, human geography, women's studies, Asian studies, sociology and anthropology.
List of contents
1. Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Peggy Teo and Shirlena Huang Introduction: Women's Agencies and Activisms in the Asia-Pacific Region2. Lily Phua and Brenda S. A. Yeoh Nine Months: Women's Agency and the Pregnant Body in Singapore3. Tatjana Haque Body Politics in Bangladesh4. Rita S. Gallin The Politics of Resistance: Working-class Women in Rural Taiwan5. Rebecca Elmhirst Negotiating Land and Livelihood: Agency and Identities in Indonesia's Transmigration Programme6. Nobue Suzuki Gendered Surveillance and Sexual Violence in Filipina Pre-migration Experiences to Japan7. G. G. Weix Resisting History: Indonesian Labour Activism in the 1990s and the 'Marsinah' Case8. Ruth Liepins Contradictory Identities and Political Choices: 'Women in Agriculture' in Australia9. Jacqueline Leckie The Complexities of Women's Agency in Fiji10. Vera Mackie 'Asia' in Everyday Life: Dealing with Difference in Contemporary Japan11. Lisa Law Sites of Transnational Activism: Filipino Non-Government Organizations in Hong Kong
About the author
Brenda S.A. Yeoh is Professor (Provost’s Chair), Department of Geography, as well as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. She is also the Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, NUS, and coordinates the Asian MetaCentre for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis. Her research interests include the politics of space in colonial and post-colonial cities; and gender, migration and transnational communities. She has published over a dozen books ranging from Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore (Oxford University Press, 1996; reissued Singapore University Press, 2003) to more recently Migration and Diversity in Asian Contexts (ISEAS press, 2012, with Lai Ah Eng and Francis Collins).
Peggy Teo was formerly Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore.
Shirlena Huang is an Associate Professor of Geography and a Vice Dean at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on issues at the intersection of transnational migration and gender (particularly labour migration and transnational families within the Asia-Pacific region), as well as urban redevelopment and heritage conservation.
Summary
This volume takes up the challenge of exploring the ways in which women are active players, collaborators, participants, leaders and resistors in the politics of change in the Asia-Pacific region.
