We have lots of books that look back on the post-war period, exploring everything from the Khrushchev "Thaw" in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the state of religion after the communist era, the position of rural women in society, the Soviet secret police, the changes in Russian Universities, and the Russian/Soviet intellectual tradition of Oriental and Islamic studies. Why not browse our popular Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series here?
 

Victory Day gave rise to widespread communist control over Eastern Europe, with the ‘Iron Curtain’, as Churchill called it, separating Eastern and Western Europe. The Soviet Union joined the United Nations in 1945, enjoying a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and considerable voting power in the General Assembly through its satellite states.

Victory Day remains an important point in world history. Following this event the Soviet Union exerted control over large areas of Eastern Europe, including aiding post-war reconstruction, and the formation of the Warsaw Pact in 1955. Whilst many believe that the Soviet Union encouraged the war-torn countries of Eastern Europe to improve their military and economic strength and scientific research, as well as to provide aid to developing countries, others believe that this blocked these countries from open contact with the West and non-communist areas, thus stunting potential growth. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 - followed by the reunification of Germany and the toppling of Communist regimes - instigated transitions to democracy, conflicts and economic transformations which are still being felt today. The fields of politics and economics are still dealing with the consequences of one day in May 1945 – and some of our titles dealing with these themes are below.
 

All you need to do is email Gemma (Gemma.Walker@tandf.co.uk) with your name, address and telephone number and you will automatically be entered into our prize draw. The winner will be announced on our twitter page on the 8th May 2013 by 4pm GMT. Make sure you follow us @asian_studies to find out if you are the lucky winner.
 

Why not check out our new online Central Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe catalog?  

Why not view the price list for BASEES 2013?

Routledge Asian Studies publish high quality research monographs, key textbooks, supplementary reading and reference works across all disciplines throughout humanities and social sciences, and covers all regions of Asia. We continue to actively commission books so please do get in touch with any ideas, questions or feedback you have.

We are particularly keen to consider proposals for textbooks on Chinese history, gender and sexuality in Asian history, the environmental history of Asia and the history of race and ethnicity in Asia which would be suitable for use on undergraduate and postgraduate courses at universities across the world.

If you would be interested in writing or editing a textbook on any aspect of these topics or have an idea for a new Asian Studies textbook please contact: Leanne Hinves: Leanne.Hinves@tandf.co.uk
 

Why not browse our Asian Studies Textbook Catalog?

For more information about how to submit a book proposal, have a look at our Information for Authors page.

This year we have two new four-volume collections coming out: Social Transformation in China and Gender and Japanese Society. Order your copies today!

Why not browse all the bestselling backlist titles in the series here?

Why not take a look at our Critical Concepts in Asian Studies flyer?

What are the socio-cultural transformations accompanying China’s economic transition?

What are the experiences and responses of people who have gone through these social changes?

What are the theoretical implications for social scientists who study social and economic development?

The aim of this new four-volume collection is to address some of the pertinent questions raised by the difference in ordinary people’s experience of China’s economic modernisation. Social Transformation in China answers these questions by collecting essential and cutting-edge scholarship to reflect and capture experiences of socio-cultural transformations in China. Topics covered include the issues around work, the restructuring of state enterprises, unemployment, changes in welfare provisions, migration and women workers’ experiences; the family, such as love and marriage, one-child policy, and ageing; the cultural domain including topics on media and consumption; the emergence of civil society, including topics on religion and non-government organizations.

Given China’s ever growing economic influence, and sheer population size, there is an increasing demand from the rest of the world to understand Chinese society and its rapid economic modernisation. By collecting the work of leading figures on China from disciplines such as Sociology, Anthropology, Social Policy, Cultural Studies and Political Sciences, this set will not only appeal to researchers and students in Chinese Studies but also more widely to academics and policymakers who are concerned with the social impact of economic development.

Gender and Japanese Society has been compiled and introduced by D. P. Martinez, the editor of an acclaimed four-volume anthology on Modern Japanese Culture and Society (Routledge, 2007). This new title is a collection of classic and the very best cutting-edge scholarship on themes and issues around gender in historical and contemporary Japan. Fully indexed and with a comprehensive introduction newly written by the editor, which carefully situates the collected material in its intellectual context, Gender and Japanese Society is an essential reference work. It is destined to be welcomed by scholars and students as a vital research resource.

Browse the rest of the titles in this series below.
 

Why not take a look at our Routledge Research on Gender in Asia series?

Women’s Day originated as a Socialist political event in Eastern Europe and Russia (the Soviet bloc) but gradually the day became more global and as a result partially lost its political overtones. For some, the day has become simply an occasion for men to express their love for women whilst in other regions the original political and human rights theme designated by the United Nations runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are remembered.

Have a look below at the diverse selection of titles we have exploring the role of women in Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Join in the discussions about International Women's Day on March 8th on our Asian Studies Twitter and also our Middle East Studies Twitter.

Browse all titles in the series here.

Professor Sakwa is an Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a member of the Advisory Boards of the Institute of Law and Public Policy in Moscow, chair of the Advisory Board of the Eurasian Political Studies Network and, since September 2002, a member of Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences.

Reviews for the series:

"Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections." - A. Siaroff, CHOICE, 2010 (Democratic Elections in Poland, 1991-2007).

"This excellent collection is a coherent and well-informed introduction to the economic and social transformations in a major Soviet ‘rustbelt’region, as well as to the economic conundrums of post-Communist Ukraine." - Serhy Yekelchyk, Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 89, no. 2, April 2011 (Re-Constructing the Post-Soviet Industrial Region).

"A valuable addition to Russian foreign-policy analysis, especially for its use of comparison between policies towards China and Japan in order to explain different trends in Russian thinking about its own identity in the turbulent period of the last two decades." -Stephen Aris, University of Birmingham, Europe-Asia Studies (Russian Policy towards China and Japan).

Since the end of the Cold War, significant attention has focussed on the issue of nuclear deterrence and in particular whether formal nuclear security guarantees from nuclear weapons states to non-nuclear weapons states involving the possible use of nuclear weapons have a place in the twenty-first century global strategic landscape. Growing support for nuclear disarmament in the US and elsewhere has seen serious doubts being raised about the ongoing utility of extended nuclear deterrence.

Asia, the US and Extended Nuclear Deterrence provides the first detailed analysis of the way in which extended nuclear deterrence operates in contemporary Asia. It addresses the following key questions: What does the role of extended nuclear deterrence in Asia tell us about the broader role of extended nuclear deterrence in the contemporary international system? Is this role likely to change significantly in the years ahead? O’Neil uses a theoretical and historical framework to analyse the contemporary and future dynamics of extended nuclear deterrence in Asia and challenges many of the existing orthodox perspectives on the topic.

Providing a new perspective on debates surrounding extended nuclear deterrence, this book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of Asian politics, international relations and security studies, but also to policy makers and professionals.
 

Based on intensive interviews that author Romit Dasgupta carried out with young male private sector employees in Japan, Re-Reading the Salaryman in Japan makes an important contribution to the study of masculinity and Japanese corporate culture. After having initially being launched at the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) Biennial Conference, along with other titles in the Routledge/ASAA East Asia Series, the official launch of Re-Reading the Salaryman in Japan was held at The University of Western Australia, in Perth, Australia, on Monday 10 September 2012 in the University’s Institute of Advanced Studies.

Professor Vera Mackie (University of Wollongong) attended the launch and unveiled the book. Vera is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and had been an important mentor for Romit throughout the writing of Re-Reading the Salaryman. Dr Yasuo Takao from Curtin University also said a few words, since he too had also been involved with Romit's research in its early days. Apart from Vera and Yasuo, the launch was attended by academics, postgraduate students, friends, and members of Romit’s family.

In Japan, the figure of the suited, white-collar office worker or business executive ‘salaryman’ (or, sarariiman), came to be associated with Japan’s economic transformation following World War Two. The ubiquitous ‘salaryman’ came to signify both Japanese masculinity, and Japanese corporate culture, and in this sense, the ‘salaryman’ embodied ‘the archetypal citizen’.

Romit's book uses the figure of the ‘salaryman’ to explore masculinity in Japan by examining the ‘salaryman’ as a gendered construct. Whilst there is a considerable body of literature on Japanese corporate culture and a growing acknowledgement of the role of gender, until now the focus has been almost exclusively on women in the workplace. In contrast, this book is one of the first to focus on the men within Japanese corporate culture through a gendered lens. Not only does this add to the emerging literature on masculinity in Japan, but given the important role Japanese corporate culture has played in Japan’s emergence as an industrial power, Romit's research offers a new way of looking both at Japanese business culture, and more generally at important changes in Japanese society in recent years.

Here you can listen to Gene being interviewed by East Asian Studies.

Listen to the interview with Gene Cooper here.

During the early communist period of the 1950s, temple fairs in China were both suppressed and secularized. Temples were closed down by the secular regime and their activities classified as feudal superstition and this process only intensified during the Cultural Revolution when even the surviving secular fairs, devoted exclusively to trade with no religious content of any kind, were suppressed. However, once China embarked on its path of free market reform and openness, secular commodity exchange fairs were again authorized, and sometimes encouraged in the name of political economy as a means of stimulating rural commodity circulation and commerce.

This book reveals how once these secular "temple-less temple fairs" were in place, they came to serve not only as venues for the proliferation of a great variety of popular cultural performance genres, but also as sites where a revival or recycling of popular religious symbols, already underway in many parts of China, found familiar and fertile ground in which to spread. Taking this shift in the Chinese state’s attitudes and policy towards temple fairs as its starting point, The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China shows how state-led economic reforms in the early 1980s created a revival in secular commodity exchange fairs, which were granted both the geographic and metaphoric space to function. In turn, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of the temple fair phenomenon, examining its economic, popular cultural, popular religious and political dimensions and demonstrates the multifaceted significance of the fairs which have played a crucial role in expanding the boundaries of contemporary acceptable popular discourse and expression.

Watch the video Lessons Learnt to find out more about January 27th 2013

 More information about the Holocaust can be found here.

The Routledge Jewish Studies Series covers the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, culture, politics, philosophy, theology, religion, as they relate to Jewish affairs. Here we present five books that emphasise the diversity and originality of the series. Click on the links below to find out more!

Bestseller God, Jews and the Media delves into the complex relationship between Judaism and the mass media to provide a comprehensive examination of modern Jewish identity in the information age. Chapters explore how the impact of Judaism is to be found particularly in the religious media in Israel – haredi and modern Orthodox – and looks at the evolution of new patterns of religious advertising, the growth and impact of the internet on Jewish identity, and the very legitimacy of certain media in the eyes of religious leaders.

Jews and India is a topic that has received little attention and this book seeks to rectify the situation. Despite the fact that the Indian Jewish population constitutes one of the country’s tiniest minorities, the relations of the local Jews with other communities form an integral part in the history of Indian multiculturalism. This has become increasingly apparent over the last two centuries as Judaism and its image have been incorporated into the discussions of some of the most prominent figures of different religious and nationalist movements, leaders of independent India, and the Indian mass media. Furthermore, recent decades witnessed mass adoption of Israelite identity by Indians from two different regions and religious groups.

Collaboration with the Nazis examines the changes in representing collaboration, during the Holocaust, especially in the destruction of European Jewry, in the public discourse and the historiography of various countries in Europe that were occupied by the Germans, or were considered, at least during part of the war, as Germany's allies or satellites.

Muscular Judaism has been described by the Journal of Israeli History as the "outcome of a serious, illuminating, and original project that successfully integrates its insights into a well-established field of research and contributes to an ongoing critical discussion on the origins and implications of the Zionist discourse. The book is very well written, its arguments are clear and convincing. Presner's use of theory is useful but not exaggerated, and his historiographical methods are very productive".

The Jews of Ethiopia offers the results of the most recent research carried out in European and Israeli universities on Ethiopian Jews. With a special focus on Europe and the role played by German, English and Italian Jewish communities in creating a new Jewish Ethiopian identity, it investigates such issues as the formation of a new Ethiopian Jewish elite and the transformation of the identity from Ethiopian Falashas to the Jews of Ethiopia during the twentieth century.
 

Routledge Major Works WINTER BACKLIST OFFER! (from 12/12/12 – 12/3/13)

There is a fantastic range of titles on offer from subject areas such as Allied Health, Asian Studies, Business, Economics, Education, History, Linguistics, Literature, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religion and Sociology.

This eclectic mix of titles includes collections on Mao Zedong, Sufism, Marketing Research, Journalism, Radio, French Feminists, War and Human Rights.

Click here to download our list of 50 titles currently available to purchase!

To receive 20% off simply add your selection of books to your cart, place MWINTER20 into the Discount code field and then “Update Cart”!

This particular offer really shows the scope and range of Routledge Major Works-an essential reference teaching programme for your library.

Routledge would like to extend their congratulations to Hilary Pilkington, Al'bina Garifzianova and Elena Omel'chenko for winning the Nove Prize 2010 for their book, Russia's Skinheads. The Nove Prize was established by BASEES in March 1995 in recognition of the outstanding contribution to its field of study made by the late Alec Nove. Please click here for information on this award.

Russia’s Skinheads: Exploring and Rethinking Subcultural Lives provides a thorough examination of the phenomenon of skinheads, explaining its nature and its significance, and assessing how far Russian skinhead subculture is the ‘lumpen’ end of the extreme nationalist ideological spectrum. There are large numbers of skinheads in Russia, responsible for a significant number of xenophobic attacks, including 97 deaths in 2008 alone, making this book relevant to Russian specialists as well as to sociologists of youth subculture. It provides a practical example of how to investigate youth subculture in depth over an extended period – in this case through empirical research following a specific group over six years – and goes on to argue that Russian skinhead subculture is not a direct import from the West, and that youth cultural practices should not be reduced to expressions of consumer choice. It presents an understanding of the Russian skinhead as a product of individuals’ whole, and evolving, lives, and thereby compels sociologists to rethink how they conceive the nature of subcultures.

Following the recent Presidential elections in Russia, Routledge are pleased to showcase our selection of topical titles on Vladimir Putin. These include titles on Putin's politics, his political party, his relationship to the media, and the cultural impact of Putin as a celebrity. You can recommend these titles to your librarian, or find out more information about these titles by following the provided links below.