Examining how the shared interests of state elites and the middle classes rationalize mistreatment of domestic workers, the author argues that the "premodern" exploitation of migrant domestic workers is at odds with the global expansion of open markets and free trade.
Cosmopolitan Sex Workers is a groundbreaking look into the phenomenon of non-trafficked women who migrate from one global city to another to perform paid sexual labor in Southeast Asia. Through a new, innovative framework, Christine B.N. Chin shows that as neoliberal economic restructuring processes create pathways connecting major cities throughout the world, competition and collaboration between cities creates new avenues for the movement of people, services and goods. Loosely organized networks of migrant labor grow in tandem with professional-managerial classes, and sex workers migrate to different parts of cities, depending on the location of the clientele to which they cater. But while global cities create economic opportunities for migrants (and depend on the labor they provide), states react with new forms of securitization and surveillance. As a result, migrants must negotiate between appropriating and subverting the ideas that inform global economic restructuring. Chin argues that migration allows women to develop intercultural skills that help them to make these negotiations. Cosmopolitan Sex Workers is innovative not only in its focus on non-trafficked women, but in its analysis of the complex relationship between global economic processes and migration for sex work. Through fascinating interviews with sex workers in Kuala Lumpur, Chin shows that sex work can provide women with the means of earning income for families, for education, and even for their own businesses. It also allows women the means to travel the world - a form of cosmopolitanism "from below.
The business of cruise tourism in recent years has commanded news media attention especially on issues of environmental pollution, passenger safety and worker rights, yet consumer interest in cruise vacations has not been adversely affected by negative publicity and it continues to grow at an average of 8-9% per annum. This unique mode of business focusing on the production and consumption of pleasure at sea and on land offers us an unprecedented opportunity to analyze the manner in which ongoing economic restructuring processes to bring about free markets in goods, services and labour can and does involve both life on land and at sea. This interdisciplinary analysis elicits an examination of states' relationship to the maritime regulatory structure governing ship ownership, management and operations, cruise lines' business strategies, development of port communities to capture cruise-related revenue, changing leisure consumption patterns and meanings, and the employment of foreign migrant workers as seafarers.
A multi-layered tale that explores the myriad facets of love, intimidation and reconciliation The famous cross-dressing Cantonese opera singer, Chan Kam Foong, passes away, leaving her secret journal to her granddaughter, Xiu Yin, an archival officer at the Singapore National Archives. Xiu Yin reads through the journal that chronicles her grandmother’s relationship with Dearest Intimate in their village in China to their respective escapes to the Nanyang before WWII and her desperate search for Dearest Intimate in Singapore. Her grandmother’s reflections and letters to Dearest Intimate forces Xiu Yin to examine her marriage to an abusive husband and she plucks up the courage to leave him. A surprise encounter with her first love, a rising Cantonese opera singer, brings a period of calm and joy. But when Meng proposes marriage, Xiu Yin backs off and he leaves for Hong Kong. It takes three years of loneliness and letter writing before they reunite again.
The Race is a novel about the discovery of fifteen Supermarine Spitfire airplanes buried in Burma at the end of World War II and their subsequent excavation, acquisition, and transformation into state-of-the-art floatplanes, capable of traveling long distances and landing at sea. Fifteen women of different backgrounds are ultimately chosen to pilot the planes in a trans-Pacific race from Tokyo to San Francisco. Beyond their private narratives, each woman experiences a larger dialogue about culture and gender issues, the moral and ecological state of our planet, the human condition, and the universal need for compassion. Evolving around stories and narrative fictions seen as photographic fact, The Race is a logical extension of Nagatani's visual campaigns. His lifelong interests in Buddhism, fiction and poetry, alternative medicine, indigenous cultures, identity, and self-examination all play a prominent part in this epic tale of adventure.
Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Water Resources Monograph Series, Volume 8. The gavel goes down, the witness is called and sworn in: "Will you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" Every court day scientists and engineers take this oath, yet few know the duties of an expert witness and fewer still know the procedures in a lawsuit. Unprepared for the courtroom, they watch a drama unfold without benefit of the plot (Ball, 1975). Courtrooms swirl with costume and ceremony. Jury, judge, and spectators assume roles: audience, director, trier of the facts. And the lawyers! Lawyers are the key dramatis personae. Protagonist and antagonist confront one another as lawyers argue their clients cases in the courtroom. They object endlessly. They cross-examine opposing witnesses mercilessly. They speak an opaque jargon of "laches," "remittitur" and "stare decisis." They speak Latin: "ab initio," "in pari causa," "lex loci actus." They speak old French: "estoppel," "fee simple," "voire dire." And they speak law-speak: "abuse of discretion," "clearly erroneous," "malice aforethought" (Mellinkoff, 1963). They call contrary versions of the same story true. They plead for understanding and compassion. They mix independent variables called "facts" and a dependent variable called "law" into an argumentative gruel for court consumption. Then it's over, and the judge delivers his or her opinion. One lawyer calls it the decision of the decade, a magnificent example of benign, reasoned law. The other darkly threatens to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, to relieve an onerous and oppressive injustice. All of this is fascinating theatre, but to the unprepared scientist or engineer, the drama has none of the charm and all of the clarity of a Japanese "Noh" play.
The haunting memoir of a girl growing up in the Moso country in the Himalayas -- a unique matrilineal society. But even in this land of women, familial tension is eternal. Namu is a strong-willed daughter, and conflicts between her and her rebellious mother lead her to break the taboo that holds the Moso world together -- she leaves her mother's house.
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