Using reproduced inscription data the present study examines two social facets of the Chinese in nineteenth-century Singapore. The first facet pertains to group participation (economic and social) and it was found that the average amount of donations made by the Hokkiens to their subcommunal organizations was much higher than that given by the Cantonese and Hakkas.

On the other hand, more Cantonese and Hakka people contributed to their subcommunal organizations. The interplay of differential economic status and organizational objectives is heuristic in explaining this discrepancy.

The second facet is about leadership cohesiveness of the respective subcommunal leaders, and it is derived from percentage of deviant donors which comprises mean percentage of non donors and of cross line donors. The findings show that the Hakka subcommunal leaders were least cohesive, while those of the Chang-Ch'uan Hokkiens most among the four dialect groups being studied. Differential exposure to secret society influence is given as an important explanatory factor. Nepotism prevailing at the leadership hierarchy is also suggested as a crucial factor.

Thailand has a long, well-established practice of publishing books to commemorate events and personages. Among these are volumes commemorating deceased persons which are distributed to participants at cremation ceremonies. They contain obituaries written by the deceased's superiors, peers, and subordinates as well as relatives. Commemorative books are also published by government agencies, private companies, schools and individuals. While most are published in the Thai language, Chinese communities in Thailand also produce a large number of such books in Chinese. There has been no slackening of the practice; rather the publication of commemorative books has been gaining strength over the past decades.

Filipino political leaders have been addressing themselves to the issue of municipal reform since the dawn of the twentieth century, but discussion of the issue never reached a high intensity until the then Institute of Public Administration of the University of the Philippines (established in 1954 under the aegis of American technical assistance) defined the issues more clearly. The thrust of this renewed enthusiasm in local government reform included greater local powers, lesser national supervision over local administrative activities, and lesser legislative meddling in municipal affairs. Being a highly centralized political system under which local and national officials (both elected and appointed) have created a civic culture consisting of national review of some local administrative decisions and local dependence upon congressional pork barrels for the financing of municipal projects, any advocacy of local autonomy had to come from the top of the Philippine political totem pole and any legitimation of municipal reform policy must take place in Congress.

Landless labourers often cultivate relations of patronage as part of survival strategies even though such relations severely curtail the scope for their emancipationin the long run. In the past decennia, however, the possibilities to maintain relations of patronage or get into new ones have been dwindling fast (Breman 1974). New forms of dependency, such as political clientelism, have proven to be relevant to only a selected minority. To which strategies for survival does the mass of the landless take resort in this situation? Are these more conducive to their emancipation than patronage relations?

The British Empire's colonial possession of India for many decades of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century largely determined the Empire's economic and political pattern. Numerous books and articles on this subject have been written and still more speeches have been delivered, but the most clear-cut and all-round assessment of the significance for Britain of all-out exploitation of the Indian subcontinent and its population was given by Lord Curzon.

‘[P]ower of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas…. The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.’ (John Maynard Keynes, 1964[1936], 383)

Central Luzon is a fertile plain directly to the north of metropolitan Manila. This region, thoroughly colonized and densely populated, has been a centre of agrarian unrest for decades. In the forties and fifties Central Luzon formed the nucleus of a peasant movement which produced the strongest anti-Japanese guerilla-army in the whole Southeast Asia, the Hukbalahap (an abbreviation of Anti-Japanese People's Army) or in short Huks. The strength of this army came primarily from the fact that the struggle against the national enemy could be combined with the pre-war conflict between the peasants and the landowners.The latter, together with the Constabulary, sided for the most part with the Japanese. At the time of the liberation in 1945 most of the local and provincial administration was in the hands of the Huks. However,having quickly regained the top positions, the political elite, who feared having quickly regained the top positions, the political elite, who feared to this. When this elite first refused to allow the radical people's represen-tatives delegated from Central Luzon to take their seats in parliament,and then attempted to recapture political mastery in Central Luzon by means of force, the Huk movement was compelled to adopt an ever more militant attitude.In the process,the leadership of the popular front set up by the Hukbalahap moved more and more towards the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The result was no less than a complete incorporation of all guerillas into the CPP in 1950. It had already been decided in 1948 that the policy of a parliamentary and legal conflict which had hitherto been pursued was not adiquate,and that force would have to play a decisive role. The Anti-Japanese People's Army was re-christened the People's Liberation Army(HMB).i

From 1945 to 1947 the Communist Party led the impoverished Warli tribals of Bombay's Thana District in a movement for fair wages and freedom from forced labor and landlord violence. The immediate targets of the action were the local landed interests and moneylenders who dominated the region and held the tribals (known as ‘adivasis’) in virtual slavery. The longer range goal, however, was to build the Communist Party and challenge Congress dominance.

The weakest hold of the Indian National Congress in the colonial period was in the province of Punjab. The strength and domination of the National Unionist Party and the limited support and response afforded to the various nationalist movements highlight the weakness of the Congress especially in its southeast region, now known, after being carved out as a separate state on the 1st of November 1966, as Haryana.

It has frequently been asserted that the Chinese revolutionaries and the 1898 reformers, after making several unsuccessful attempts at cooperation, divided into enemy camps after the failure of their respective risings in 1900. This would suggest that by 1901, the lines between reform and revolution were clearly drawn. It has further been assumed that the decision not to cooperate was a result of the reformers' permanent rejection of the principle of seizing power in China through means of an armed uprising, and that all vestiges of sympathy for republicanism had by 1900 or soon afterwards been replaced by a decisive commitment to constitutional monarchy on the part of even the most radical reformers. Furthermore, although some evidence to the contrary has been pointed out, it has often been said that the reformers, both before and after 1900, looked down on Sun Yat-sen's well-known contacts with Christians, and his close association with secret societies. This implies that the reformers, themselves, were not interested in actively soliciting the support of Chinese Christians, and that apart from T'ang Ts'ai-ch'ang's 1900 involvement with the Ko-lao Hui, of which K'ang and Liang presumably either disapproved at the time, or came to oppose immediately after T'ang's failure, the reformers kept themselves free of secret society entanglements and operated on a higher plane. Finally, it has frequently been assumed that the secret societies themselves were practically devoid of any true, revolutionary spirit, and while at times anti-Manchu, were still ‘primitive rebels.’

Literary journals and newspapers aiming to reform the religious beliefs and domestic habits of women were common in early twentieth-century North India. Although most readings have focused on how these texts reflected male legislation of women's behaviour, we should look at Muslim reformist literature to understand male experiences; this investigation offers new insights into an emergent middle-class identity defined more by manners than birth. Readings of a previously little-researched Urdu newspaper, Madinah, and its women's section offer new insights on male experiences of reformism, characterized by profound ambivalence. Playfulness emerged in some reformist descriptions of women's voices, channelling the influence of rekhti. Ultimately Madinah cultivated pride in Islam's strict division of gender roles and conversely threatened men with shame for failing to regulate uneducated women. Descriptions of powerful, Ottoman women warriors were framed to incite men to acts of bravery, using reports from Europe as cautionary examples of the over-indulgence of women. While the newspaper offered outlets for men to express curiosity about women's experiences, ultimately reformist literature limited expressions of pleasure. Male ambivalence regarding the implications of the reformist project remained embedded in writing about women.

Everyday technologies of the nineteenth century—mass-produced items that were small, sturdy, and affordable—transformed the daily lives of working people in Asian colonies. There is already a large literature on colonial technology transfer and a specialist literature on the sewing-machine, which draws on Singer archives, production figures, sales techniques, and advertising to establish uptake by households from North America to the Philippines, India, China, and Egypt. Still, documentation of how and why imported objects such as the sewing-machine were appropriated is difficult to find because, unlike elites, ordinary people left few records of their own. Here a visual archive is investigated to complement existing studies. Photographs and early moving pictures from the former Dutch East Indies show that ordinary Indonesians sought and appropriated imported goods such as the sewing-machine. The colonial camera's visual record of sewing-machine operators displaces attention from the more impersonal trade and productivity statistics. It brings the silent user into the history of technological uptake and allows us to consider the repercussions across a wide social band and period. Indigenous tailors and seamstresses expanded their own work options. Through the Singer they fitted out and launched their compatriots into modern jobs and lifestyles in the Dutch colony. The sewing-machine changed habits, manners, and expectations; machine operators influenced senses of propriety, fashion, and status. Appropriation of mundane technology demonstrates that modernization was not only a process trickling down to the masses from Westernizing elites; it also bubbled up from below.

Recently we have seen an increasing number of publications, mostly of an ethnographic nature, describing and discussing the significant religious roles and achievements of Thai Buddhist women, not only in the field of Buddhist education, and with regard to their monastic roles, but also in terms of their roles as accomplished Buddhist practitioners. This paper examines the changes occurring in the status and position of women in Thai Buddhist practice. In this regard I focus on the analysis of one of the first widely acknowledged female saints of modern Thai Buddhism: Khun Mae Bunruean Tongbuntoem (1895–1964). Khun Mae Bunruean has obtained her increasing reputation through the advanced meditative achievements which her followers believe she possessed. I use hagiographical accounts of her as a focal point to unravel and examine Thai beliefs in relation to female sainthood in present-day Thai Buddhism. This is done by discussing gendered hagiographical writing against the background of relevant canonical and post-canonical Pali texts that have exerted authority in religious discourses on gender by informing and nurturing Thai religious value systems. This textual research is complemented by the ethnographic examination of Thai Buddhist beliefs and venerational practices which cannot be found in authoritative Pali texts but which still play a significant role in the understanding of the particularities of female saints in modern Thai Buddhism. I do not confine myself to hagiographical accounts and venerational practices directly linked to gender, but also devote some attention to other conspicuous aspects, elements, and expressions of Mae Bunruean's sainthood and her veneration.

Traditionally plantations in Malaysia provide primary school education for the children of their workers as well as other basic needs. This element is normally part of the ‘package’ of welfare facilities offered to the residential work force on plantations. However, the conditions under which this educational scheme is usually implemented are far from satisfactory, in comparison with those of the population as a whole and the progress achieved in the democratization of education since independence. Thus the plantation workers’ children have become an educationally disadvantaged group, with the highest drop-out rates, lowest achievement levels, and attending the ‘poorest and smallest’ schools in the entire nation. Almost all these schools in plantations are ‘Tamil Schools’ in accordance with the majority residential work force — Indian Tamils who form the bulk of the labour force in plantations. Basically this paper will review the characteristics and the educational climate of these schools, along with other indicators of education such as enrolment rates, drop-out rates, and achievement rates.

When India gained independence in August 1947 the world watched with excitement as well as trepidation as to what would happen following this unique and major event. The political destiny of the world's largest democracy would lie in the hands of an infinitesimal portion of the population – the political executive. India's new institutions had new operators to act in new conditions. There were few precedents. Within this Westminster system, refounded in India with its emphasis on executive flexibility and ambiguity, the leading political figures often had conflicting opinions and interpretations as to their powers. The relationship between Nehru as Prime Minister and other leading political figures, such as Patel as deputy Prime Minister, Prasad as President, and their definitions of their roles, would forge a new India. This paper revisits those debates and ideas in the first decade following independence, which allow greater understanding of the workings and conventions of today's Indian executive.

The Great Qing Imperial Post Office was set up in 1896, soon after the First Sino-Japanese War. It provided the first national postal service for the general public in the whole of Chinese history, and was a symbol of China's increasing engagement with the rest of the globe. Much of the preparation for the launch was carried out by the high-ranking foreign staff of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, an influential institution established after the first Opium War.

With a mission to promote modernization and project Qing power, the Imperial Post Office was established with a centrally controlled set of unified methods and procedures, and its success was rooted in integration with the new railway network, a strategy at the heart of its ambitious plans for expansion. This article explores the history of this postal expansion through railways, the use of which allowed its creators to plan networks in an integrated way—from urban centres on the coasts and great rivers through to China's interior.

The role of skills has been eclipsed in the transition from an agrarian-craft economy rooted in hand-labour in small households to a modern political economy where productive work takes place outside the household, in offices and factories. Yet the ideological erasure of skilled work should not be confused with its actual disappearance. Precisely because such work was typically construed as private and unimportant, the embedded hierarchies and skills that shaped the handloom weaving industry in the North Indian province of United Provinces under colonial rule could escape systematic conversion to capitalist structures. Skill as human capital constituted the capitalist labour processes in the modern handloom industry, not as an abstract act, but as a historical experience. Handloom workers were reproduced, generationally, socially, and hierarchically, through the passing on of skilled labour within the unorganized informal sector of handloom weaving. Thus the stuff of community skills should move beyond its projection as either ‘endangered’ or ‘regressive’ to explore its access to capitalist structures and the exploitative networks that contain, transmit, and enable the production of skills.

In recent decades, as part of the efforts of the Chinese government first to integrate and, more recently, to forcibly assimilate the Uyghur population into China’s mainstream culture and society, the Uyghur language has been marginalized and repressed to an unprecedented extent. The academic literature on Xinjiang’s language policy has repeatedly acknowledged that this repression is a major source of concern and discontent among many Uyghurs. However, to date, little has been written about the public response of Uyghurs to this policy and their open efforts to challenge it. In particular, with very few exceptions, little is known about the public response of Uyghur writers and artists. In this article I analyse a large corpus of Uyghur poems and songs that engaged openly with the Uyghur language crisis and were published and disseminated in the Uyghur public sphere between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s. Unlike some studies that try to assess the condition of certain languages at a certain point in time through objective methodologies, these literary and artistic works provide an insider view on how the Uyghur cultural elite and many other Uyghurs experienced the repression and loss of their native language, and also, how they struggled against this repression. In the article I examine the diverse sentiments, perceptions, and discourses that these literary and artistic expressions communicate, and the different strategies that the Uyghurs used to struggle against the language policy and its consequences. I also explore what these works tell us about the development of Xinjiang’s language policy over time, the linguistic reality in the region, and the impact that the language policy has had on Uyghur society. Finally, the article also investigates the broad political meanings of these works and speculates on the link between them and the efforts of the Chinese government to further marginalize the Uyghur language.

Kerala is a well-recognized ‘model’ of human development in the world. In this article, I look at a crucial aspect of this development, which is often approached in a positivist fashion of statistical aggregation alone: consumption. Instead, there is a need to study the meanings that surround it. I delineate the many forces, particularly the new material infrastructure, that have driven consumption in the last three decades, especially the last one. With increasing integration into global market forces through migration and investment, and cultural imaginations, I show that there is a tectonic change in consciousness about consumption, marked by fantasies, desires, and, contrarily, feelings of excess and ambivalence. I argue that the non-market sector has also played an important role in consumption. There is an increasing generalization of certain ideas about consumption as well as disenchantments across classes. But critically, I contend, there are caste, class, and gender disparities in consumption as well as differences in the meanings attributed to it. Thus, consumption is a socially meaningful, but discrepant, space. This article is based on fieldwork conducted in a town in central Kerala, supplemented with quantitative data.

This article provides an innovative anthropological analysis of youth activism in contemporary Thailand by examining its past and current manifestations through an unusual theoretical nexus—that between (cosmological) politics and kinship tropes. Against the backdrop of the Buddhist kingdom’s long-standing cult of the ‘Father-King’, the article focuses on the 2020 Thai democracy movement in relation to student demonstrations in the 1970s. It aims to explore the ambiguous permutations in the meanings of kinship that have marked Thai young people’s democratic engagement in a range of social fields—including friendship, siblinghood, and comradeship. Drawing upon archival material, oral histories of student revolts, and extended ethnography with today’s youth activists in a number of political sites—anti-government rallies, universities, and private homes—the article reveals how kin relationships, hierarchies, and affects are entangled in diverse political formations of youth dissent. Through a detailed reading of these complex entanglements, it shows how relationships of ‘equal friendship’ and ‘hierarchical siblinghood’ substantiate the symbolic grounds of Thai youth activism, as conflicting instantiations of ‘filial insubordination’ to monarchical parenthood. While youth activists advocate for an egalitarian, ‘friendship-based’ polity, explicitly questioning the democratic viability of Thailand’s Buddhist kin(g)ship, they are simultaneously caught up in (seemingly inescapable) hierarchical sibling relationships that validate the latter’s ontological legitimacy in practice, generating subtle tensions. It is argued that attention given to the varied cultural shapes of these tensions can make it possible to unearth the deep, kinship-based core of Thai social conflict that is concealed beneath public forms and straightforward political stances.