Asia inside out: itinerant people

Table of contents:

Introduction: Seekers, sojourners, and meaningful worlds in motion /​ Eric Tagliacozzo, Helen F. Siu, and Peter C. Perdue
Mobility's spatial fix: finding the Vietnamese "homeland" from the outside in /​ Erik Harms
Mobility assemblage and the return of Islam in Southeast China /​ Biao Xiang and Qiang Ma (Ramadan)
Cowry country: mobile space and imperial territory /​ David Ludden
Persian rugs in Southeast Asia: cultural production and taste making in a new market /​ Narges Erami
A "south" imagined and lived: the entanglement of medical things, experts, and identities in premodern East Asia's South /​ Angela Ki Che Leung
Traveling manuscripts: understanding pilgrimage in Central and Eastern Islamic lands /​ Mounia Chekhab-Abudaya
Slaves, arms, and political careering in nineteenth-century Oman /​ Seema Alavi
The darker side of mobility: refugees, hostages, and political prisoners in Persianate Asia /​ James Pickett
Deploying Theravada Buddhist geographies in the age of imperialism /​ Tamara Loos
Itinerant singers: triangulating the Canton-Hong Kong-Macau soundscape /​ May Bo Ching
Roast beef vs. pigs' trotters: knowledge-in-transit in the work of a Chinese food evangelist /​ Emma Teng
The Asian sportscape: hubs of play and flows of contention /​ William W. Kelly.

In the final volume of Asia Inside Out, a stellar interdisciplinary team of scholars considers the migration of people—and the ideas, practices, and things they brought with them—to show the ways in which itinerant groups have transformed their culture and surroundings. Going beyond time and place, which animated the first two books, this third one looks at human beings on the move.

Human movement from place to place across time reinforces older connections while forging new ones. Erik Harms turns to Vietnam to show that the notion of a homeland as a marked geographic space can remain important even if that space is not fixed in people’s lived experiences. Angela Leung traces how much of East Asia was brought into a single medical sphere by traveling practitioners. Seema Alavi shows that the British preoccupation with the 1857 Indian Revolt allowed traders to turn the Omani capital into a thriving arms emporium. James Pickett exposes the darker side of mobility in a netherworld of refugees, political prisoners, and hostages circulating from the southern Russian Empire to the Indian subcontinent. Other authors trace the impact of movement on religious art, ethnic foods, and sports spectacles.

By stepping outside familiar categories and standard narratives, this remarkable series challenges us to rethink our conception of Asia in complex and nuanced ways.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674987630