Asia/South Asia Research Sources: Library Books

This book documents contemporary architectural projects designed by women architects participating in diverse forms of practice in diverse regions around the world. Examining each design within its unique context, this collection of forty projects includes beautifully illustrated case studies of transformative buildings, encompassing a range of sizes, building types, materials, and construction methods. Overcoming historical challenges within architectural practice, the women architects in this collection lead their firms and expand the field of architecture.

Have you ever thought about dependencies in Asian art and architecture? Most people would probably assume that the arts are free and that creativity and ingenuity function outside of such reliances. However, the 13 chapters provided by specialists in the fields of Asian art and architecture in this volume show, that those active in the visual arts and the built environment operate in an area of strict relations of often extreme dependences. Material artefacts and edifices are dependent on the climate in which they have been created, on the availability of resources for their production, on social and religious traditions, which may be oral or written down and on donors, patrons and the art market. Furthermore, gender and labour dependencies play a role in the creation of the arts as well. Despite these strong and in most instances asymmetrical dependencies, artists have at all times found freedoms in expressing their own imagination, vision and originality. 　 This shows that dependencies and freedoms are not necessarily strictly separated binary opposites but that, at least in the area of the history of art and architecture in Asia, the two are interconnected in what are often complex and multifaceted layers.

This new edited volume of critical essays examines designs for modern living in Asia between 1945 and 1990. Focusing particularly on the post-World War II and postcolonial years, this book advances multidisciplinary knowledge on approaches to and designs for modern living. Developed from extensive primary research and case studies, each essay illuminates commonalities and particularities of the trajectories of Modernism and notions of modernity, their translation and manifestation in life across Asia through design. Authors address everyday negotiations and experiences of being modern by studying exhibitions, architecture, modern interiors, printed ephemera, literary discourses, healthy living movements and transnational networks of modern designers. They examine processes of exchange between people, institutions and with governments, in and across Asia, as well as with the USA and countries in Western Europe. This book highlights the ways in which the production and discourses of modern design were underscored by economic advancement and modernization processes, and fuelled by aesthetic debates on modern design. Critically exploring design for modern living in Asia, this book offers fresh perspectives on Modernism to students and scholars.

Liang Ssu-ch'eng (1901-1972) was a pioneer in the scientific study of Chinese architectural history. He virtually created this field in China, and most of its current practitioners are his students. The book, which he wrote in English for a Western public and originally intended to publish in the 1940s, provides a rare record and analysis of temples, pagodas, tombs, bridges, and imperial palaces that are China's architectural heritage. It is a record that could not be duplicated today because a number of the structures have since been altered or demolished. With his co-workers, Liang combed the countryside for ancient buildings which he photographed with his Leica camera and recorded in large, detailed architectural drawings of plans, elevations, and cross-sections. These drawings are a text in themselves. Bearing captions in Chinese and English, they teach fundamental lessons about the anatomy of Chinese structures. Liang's account covers the origin of Chinese architecture and its two surviving basic handbooks from the 12th and 18th centuries; architecture of the pre-Buddhist period; cave temples; buildings in wood traced through several periods of stylistic development from c. 850 to 1911; Buddhist pagodas (most of the surviving pagodas are masonry structures) from simple square plans to those that are multi-storied and eaved; and other masonry structures such as tombs, vaulted buildings, bridges; terraces; and gateways.

This book offers a critical reading of the Anthropocene that draws on archaeological, ecological, geological, and ethnographic evidence to argue that the concept reproduces the modernist binary between society and nature, and forecloses a more inclusive politics around climate change. The authors challenge the divisions between humans as biological and geophysical agents that constitute the ontological foundations of the period. Building on contemporary critiques of capitalism, they examine different conceptions of human-environment relationships derived from anthropology to engage with the pressing problem of global warming.

With Asia's cities undergoing unprecedented growth in the 21st century, lauded the 'urban century' by many, Sustainable Cities in Asia provides a timely examination of the challenges facing cities across the continent including some of the projects, approaches and solutions that are currently being tested. This book uses numerous case studies, analysing topical issues ranging from city cycling in India, to green spaces in China, to the use of community-led energy generation projects in post-Fukushima Japan. Containing contributions from an international team of scholars, it also takes a multi-disciplinary approach and draws on examples from a wide range of countries, including China, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. Ultimately, by providing a comprehensive discussion of the broader debates around the shape of sustainable urbanism, it demonstrates that Asia is one of the most active regions in terms of the development of sustainable city strategies. Tackling the contemporary issues of key importance for sustainability, such as property markets, migration and transport, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Urban Geography, Sustainability, Environmental Studies and Asian studies.

1) This volume presents a comprehensive and systematic study of water conflicts across South Asia. 2) It not only brings narratives of water disputes but also looks at emerging challenges and effective policy measures. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of development studies and South Asian studies across world.

This open access book explores the implications of urbanization in South Asia for water (in-) security in the peri-urban spaces of Dhaka and Khulna in Bangladesh, Bengaluru, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune in India, and Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The book looks into specifically peri-urban water security issues in a context of rapid urbanization and social-environmental changes, including the changing climate and its emerging impacts. It demonstrates how urbanization processes change water flows between rural and urban areas, the implications of this processes for the water security of peri-urban populations, and how new institutions and technologies develop to mediate the relationships between peri-urban communities and water. The book seeks to further the debate on peri-urban water security, including what constitutes the peri-urban, socially differentiated access to water in peri-urban spaces, interventions for improving water access, and emerging forms of cooperation and conflict related to water access in a context of urbanization and climate change. As such, this book is an interesting read for academics with various disciplinary backgrounds, professionals working in the worlds of national and international policy, NGOs, activist groups, research and development institutes, and individual readers interested in water security and urbanization. 

Part I: Spatial Religiosity and the Making of Neighbourhoods 2. Sacred Anchors in Contemporary Neighbourhoods: The Case of Jain Religious Institutions in Ahmedabad - Gauri Bharat 3. In Search of a Neighbourhood among the Kashivasis: An Ethnographic Account of an Ashram in Banaras - Anakshi Pal 4. Gossip and Intra-Denominational Politics in a Christian Neighbourhood in Greater Kolkata: A Sociological Reflection - Abhijit Dasgupta Part II: Dalit Neighbourhoods: Histories, Subjectivities and Contestation 5. Locating Dalit Bastis: The Sites of Everyday Silent Resistance and Works from the Late 19th-Century to the Mid-20th-Century United Provinces - Vijay Kumar 6. Making of the 'New City': The Overlapping Structures of Caste and Class in Post-Partition Delhi - Akanksha Kumar Part III: Engendering Neighbourhood: Female Neighbours and Contested Subjectivities 7. Living Like Friends and Neighbours: Everyday Narratives of the Neighbourhood - Joyashree Sarma 8. Home-ing the World and World-ing the Home: An Understanding of Singlehood, Rental Housing and Neighbourliness - Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana 9. Paros and Parosan: Spatial Affectivity and Gendered Neighbourhood in South Asia - Sadan Jha Part IV: A House in a Neighbourhood: Planning, History and Aspirations of Housing 10. Government Officer Housing Precincts in Urban Lucknow: A Construction of Urban Exclusivity through Occupation-defined Neighbourhoods - Sonal Mithal 11. Neighbourhoods in Space-Time: A Case of House Prices and Latent Aspirations - Yugank Goyal and Harini Shah 12. Whose Neighbourhood Is It Anyway: A Spatial History of Urban Patna - Sheema Fatima Afterword: 'Neighbours' as Neighbourhoods - AbdouMaliq Simone

The last decade has been a transformative period in Kashmir, the hotly contested and densely militarized border territory located high in the Himalayan mountains between India and Pakistan. Suppressed and unheard, Kashmiri political aspirations were subordinated to larger geopolitical concerns--by opposing governments laying claim to Kashmir, by security experts promoting bilateral peace settlements in the region, and by academic researchers studying the conflict. But since 2008, Kashmiris who grew up in the midst of armed insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare have been deploying new strategies for challenging India's state and military apparatus and projecting their legal and political claims for freedom from Indian rule to global audiences. Resisting Occupation in Kashmir analyzes the social and legal logic of India's occupation of Kashmir in relation to colonialism, militarization, power, democracy, and sovereignty. It also traces how Kashmiri youth are drawing on the region's long history of armed rebellion against Indian domination to reimagine the freedom struggle in the twenty-first century. Resisting Occupation in Kashmir presents new ways of thinking and writing about Kashmir that cross conventional boundaries and point toward alternative ways of conceptualizing the past, present, and future of the region. The volume brings together junior and senior scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds who have conducted extensive fieldwork during the past decade in various regions of Kashmir. The contributors, many of whom were born and raised during the peak of the conflict in the 1990s, offer ethnographically grounded perspectives on contemporary social, legal, and political life in ways that demonstrate the multiplicity of experiences of Kashmiri communities. The essays highlight the ways in which this scholarly orientation--built through collaboration and dialogue across different kinds of borders--offers a new critical approach to Kashmir studies at this transformative and generative moment. Contributors: Mona Bhan, Haley Duschinski, Farrukh Faheem, Gowhar Fazili, Bruce Hoffman, Mohamad Junaid, Seema Kazi, Ershad Mahmud, Cynthia Mahmood, Saiba Varma, Ather Zia.

In Kashmir's frigid winter a woman leaves her door cracked open, waiting for the return of her only son. Every month in a public park in Srinagar, a child remembers her father as she joins her mother in collective mourning. The activist women who form the Association of the Parents of the Disappeared Persons (APDP) keep public attention focused on the 8,000 to 10,000 Kashmiri men disappeared by the Indian government forces since 1989. Surrounded by Indian troops, international photojournalists, and curious onlookers, the APDP activists cry, lament, and sing while holding photos and files documenting the lives of their disappeared loved ones. In this radical departure from traditionally private rituals of mourning, they create a spectacle of mourning that combats the government's threatening silence about the fates of their sons, husbands, and fathers. Drawn from Ather Zia's ten years of engagement with the APDP as an anthropologist and fellow Kashmiri activist, Resisting Disappearance follows mothers and "half-widows" as they step boldly into courts, military camps, and morgues in search of their disappeared kin. Through an amalgam of ethnography, poetry, and photography, Zia illuminates how dynamics of gender and trauma in Kashmir have been transformed in the face of South Asia's longest-running conflict, providing profound insight into how Kashmiri women and men nurture a politics of resistance while facing increasing military violence under India.

Almost forty years after the publication of Hobsbawm and Ranger's The Invention of Tradition, the subject of invented traditions--cultural and historical practices that claim a continuity with a distant past but which are in fact of relatively recent origin--is still relevant, important, and highly contentious. Invented Traditions in North and South Korea examines the ways in which compressed modernity, Cold War conflict, and ideological opposition has impacted the revival of traditional forms in both Koreas. The volume is divided thematically into sections covering: (1) history, religions, (2) language, (3) music, food, crafts, and finally, (4) space. It includes chapters on pseudo-histories, new religions, linguistic politeness, literary Chinese, p'ansori, heritage, North Korean food, architecture, and the invention of children's pilgrimages in the DPRK. As the first comparative study of invented traditions in North and South Korea, the book takes the reader on a journey through Korea's epic twentieth century, examining the revival of culture in the context of colonialism, decolonization, national division, dictatorship, and modernization. The book investigates what it describes as "monumental" invented traditions formulated to maintain order, loyalty, and national identity during periods of political upheaval as well as cultural revivals less explicitly connected to political power. Invented Traditions in North and South Korea demonstrates that invented traditions can teach us a great deal about the twentieth-century political and cultural trajectories of the two Koreas.

"On the Margins of Urban South Korea, seeks to provide rich and illuminating accounts of key sites of urban, national, and transnational development in contemporary South Korea. It is an outcome of long-term collaboration and dialogue among interdisciplinary Korean Studies scholars from architecture, anthropology, and geography. The seven key sites are the Education City Project in Jeju; the Chinatown Project in Incheon; Saemaul Undong(New Village Movement)in Pohang; Alternative Korean Wave in Bongcheon-dong, Seoul; Pine Tree Hill Neighbourhood Activism in a southern port city; sites of struggles against greenbelt deregulation in the Seoul Metropolitan Region; and the garment worker movement in Changshin-Dong, Seoul. The volume offers an original focus on key sites or, what the editors and contributors call core locations, and aims to articulate the significance of knowledge based in a particular location. It is inspired by two inter-connected notions: "core location (haeksim hyunjang)," a place with the lived experience of multiple layers of marginality in colonial history with an emphasis on the reseacher's praxis and rootedness in the location; and "Asia is Method," a means of thinking about an area, especially the non-western, not simply as an object of western interest but as a tool to generate frameworks that enable decolonization of epistemological hegemony.

"A photographic guide to the notable modern buildings and the famous architectural classics in Japan."
Includes indexes

Introduction to Japanese Architecture provides an overview of Japanese architecture in its historical and cultural context. It begins with a discussion of prehistoric dwellings and concludes with a description of contemporary trends in areas as diverse as country inns, underground malls, and love hotels. The intervening 12,000 years are analyzed in reference to major changes in architecture caused by Buddhist and indigenous influences, feudalism, and finally the influence of Western culture in the 19th century.

This overview of the construction, design, carpentry and background of Japanese architecture presents information on building methods, urban planning, use of gardens and the relation between social change and architectural styles.

A contemporary reminder of the importance of the carpenter and wood in Japanese architecture. When Japanese architecture is mentioned today, images of temples or pagodas generally come to mind. Others may think of more contemporary works: massive modular walls of rough concrete poured in place and bearing imprints of their formwork in the manner of Ando Tadao, the lighter structures of Ito Toyo and Sejima Kazuyo, or the finely wrought facades of Kuma Kengo. A generational chasm and, rather surprisingly, even a historical one seems to have opened up between the emblematic images of traditional Japanese architecture, in which wood is the material of choice, and more current and innovative work, in which its use has been reduced. Even though the carpenter has long been the lead builder, contemporary architectural culture appears to have forgotten this reservoir of construction experience accumulated over centuries. The Carpenter and the Architect expertly corrects this outdated notion.

Globalisation has long historical roots in South Asia, but economic liberalisation has led to uniquely rapid urban growth in South Asia during the past decade. This book brings together a multidisciplinary collection of chapters on contemporary and historical themes explaining this recent explosive growth and transformations on-going in the cities of this region. The essays in this volume attempt to shed light on the historical roots of these cities and the traditions that are increasingly placed under strain by modernity, as well as exploring the lived experience of a new generation of city dwellers and their indelible impact on those who live at the city's margins. The book discusses that previously, cities such as Mumbai grew by accumulating a vast hinterland of slum-dwellers who depressed wages and supplied cheap labour to the city's industrial economy. However, it goes on to show that the new growth of cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Madras in south India, or Delhi and Calcutta in the north of India, is more capital-intensive, export-driven, and oriented towards the information technology and service sectors. The book explains that these cities have attracted a new elite of young, educated workers, with money to spend and an outlook on life that is often a complex mix of modern ideas and conservative tradition. It goes on to cover topics such as the politics of town planning, consumer culture, and the struggles among multiple identities in the city. By tracing the genealogies of cities, it gives a useful insight into the historical conditioning that determines how cities negotiate new changes and influences. There will soon be more mega cities in South Asia than anywhere else in the world, and this book provides an in-depth analysis of this growth. It will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian History, Politics and Anthropology, as well as those working in the fields of urbanisation and globalisation.

Today's urban environments face ever-increasing flows of human movement, natural disasters, and iterative economic crises. In response, city planning has developed innovative, hybrid forms that go beyond conventional ways of planning. Integrating practices of other disciplines, planning has become increasingly intricate and at the same time dependent on the cross fertilization of data, ideas, and actions across economies, societies, and geographies.This richly illustrated book of edited essays aims at introducing new approaches towards the planning of cities across the world, including Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. Covering demographically, politically, culturally, and socially diverse regions, it not only examines the use of conventional planning tools, but also explores more experimental and cross-disciplinary approaches of urban planning.

Urban Resettlements in the Global South provides new perspectives on resettlement through an urban studies lens. To date, resettlement has been theorised through development studies and refugee studies, but urban resettlement is also a major dimension of urban development in the Global South and may help to rethink contemporary urban dynamics between spectacular new town developments and rising incidences of eviction and displacement. Conceptualising resettlement as a binding notion between production/regeneration and destruction/demolition of urban space helps to illuminate interdependencies and to underline significant ambiguities within affected people's perspectives towards resettlement projects. This volume will offer an interesting selection of ten different case studies with rich empirical data from Latin America, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, focused on each stage of resettlement (before, during, after relocation) through different timescales. By offering a frame for analysing and rethinking resettlement within urban studies, it will support any scholar or expert dealing with resettlement, displacement, and housing in an urban context, seeking to improve housing and planning policies in and for the city.

An unprecedented survey of the origins and evolution of Chinese architecture, from the last millennia BCE to today Throughout history, China has maintained one of the world's richest built civilizations. The nation's architectural achievements range from its earliest walled cities and the First Emperor's vision of city and empire, to bridges, pagodas, and the twentieth-century constructions of the Socialist state. In this beautifully illustrated book, Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt presents the first fully comprehensive survey of Chinese architecture in any language. With rich political and historical context, Steinhardt covers forty centuries of architecture, from the genesis of Chinese building through to the twenty-first century and the challenges of urban expansion and globalism. Steinhardt follows the extraordinary breadth of China's architectural legacy--including excavation sites, gardens, guild halls, and relief sculpture--and considers the influence of Chinese architecture on Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and Tibet. Architectural examples from Chinese ethnic populations and various religions are examined, such as monasteries, mosques, observatories, and tombs. Steinhardt also shows that Chinese architecture is united by a standardized system of construction, applicable whether buildings are temples, imperial palaces, or shrines. Every architectural type is based on the models that came before it, and principles established centuries earlier dictate building practices. China's unique system has allowed its built environment to stand as a profound symbol of Chinese culture.

Cities in China are extremely dynamic and experience high pressure to grow, transform and adapt. But in what directions, on what basis and to which goals? The authors and their team have researched the intensive transformation processes of about twenty-five neighborhood communities that were created in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Suzhou in the last 30 years, ranging from inner-city to peripheral areas, starting from planning and leading up to user satisfaction studies. This in-depth overview on neighborhood typology and development in China follows the book Emergent Architectural Territories in East Asian Cities by Peter Rowe,