Jane Hutchison and Andrew Brown (eds), Routledge, 2001

This book offers wide-ranging insights into the organising capacities of workers in Asia today. Nine case-studies examine workers' responses to class relations through independent unions, non-government organisations (NGOs) and more (dis)organised struggles.

Countering the notion that globalisation holds entirely negative consequences for labour organisation, the authors reveal some of the openings for local activism which can arise from transnational production arrangements. They reject the assertion that globalisation is the main determinant of labour's weakness and marginalisation in the region.

The volume covers the "second-tier" industrializers - China, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and Bangladesh. Interdisciplinary in nature, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, development studies and international labour studies

Chua Beng-Huat (ed.) , Routledge, 2000

This book seeks to answer the question: Is the emergence of consumer society creating moral havoc and cultural confusion in traditional Asia? It does this via a series of case studies that challenge conventional ideas about consumption and consumerism: the contributors consider if the inundation of Western consumer goods have created identity confusions among the affluent in Asia, and if the expansion of consumer culture really does threaten the stability of politically anti-liberal states in Asia. These case studies are on Malaysia, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan. The book also contains two theoretical chapters. This is the first book to analyse in detail consumerism in the region, and will be valuable reading for students and researchers in Asian studies, economics, politics and cultural studies.

Michael Pinches (ed.), Routledge, 1999

The new rich in Asia have played a crucial role in the social and economic transformation of the region. Yet they are also a focal point for the cultural restructuring of national, ethnic, religious and class identities in Asia.

In this latest volume in The New Rich Series, the authors examine the cultural reconfiguration, consumer behaviour, economic success and social status of the new rich. The book includes case studies from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, India and China that challenge the narrow political-economic and cultural-determinist approaches that have so far dominated the literature on capitalist development and privilege in Asia.

Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia shows that the cultural reconfiguration of domestic and international relations around Asia's new rich has often been characterised by tension and division, and by an elevated status for the new rich themselves and the nation-states in which they live and work. While the new rich are celebrated in some quarters, they are reviled in others.

Professor Krishna Sen and Maila Stivens (eds) , Routledge, 1998

The modernising and globalising of East and Southeast Asia have been systematically gendered processes. In this book detailed case studies of China, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines explore such changes in depth.

The contributors to this study argue for a focus on the reworkings of the 'public' and 'private' in order to understand the development of new affluence, middle-class values and indeed modernity in the region. The volume is especially concerned with the links between femininities, public and private spheres and the changing shapes of class and nation in the countries examined.

Gender and Power in Affluent Asia shows the importance of women's agency in trasforming economies and ideologies. It also reveals the costs of trasforming economies and ideologies. It also reveals the costs of authoritarianism and development borne by women, and the contradictory searches for new forms of autonomy through political action, intimacy and the juggling of 'work' and 'home'.

Garry Rodan (ed.), Routledge, 1996

In the light of sweeping social and economic transformations across Asia, some political commentators have predicted that the expansion of civil society and the rapid development of liberal democracy will necessarily follow. But the scenarios may be more complex. This book reveals the diversity of political oppositions in Asia, including analyses of the nature of the social movements and organisations outside institutional party politics which are contesting the exercise of state power.

Studies range form Garry Rodan's analysis of non-governmental organisations and the formal opponents of the PAP in Singapore, to He Baogang's scrutiny of Chinese dissidents based outside the People's Republic of China. All take up the challenge of looking at political opposition in the light of the new social phenomenon of the rising middle class or 'new rich' of Asia.

Rodan's hard-hitting analysis of the problems of current political theorising in relation to Asia sets the case studies firmly in the midst of the latest debates about democratisation. Political Oppositions in Industrialising Asia shatters complacent assumptions about the progress of liberal democracy.

Richard Robison and David S G Goodman (eds) Routledge, 1995

Mobile Phones, McDonalds and middle-class revolution is the first volume in the New Rich in Asia series.

In recent years dramatic changes in Asia's social and economic systems have seen the burgeoning of a substantial middle class. This has captured imagination in the West, in large part because the new middle class represents massive new markets for Western-style products.

But what are the other implications of the emergence of Asia's 'new rich'? Will they bring with them the institutions of liberalism, democracy, rule of law and new institutional freedoms? These are the questions addressed by the New Rich in Asia series.

This volume introduces a series which will be the first to examine political and social development by analysing the phenomenon of the new rich in East and Southeast Asia. The contributors are acknowledged experts on the social and political systems they dissect. Each study is based upon detailed field research and combines both theoretical and empirical material.