Dangerous Pleasures

Dangerous Pleasures
Author: Gail Hershatter
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 631
Release: 2023-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520917553

This pioneering work examines prostitution in Shanghai from the late nineteenth century to the present. Drawn mostly from the daughters and wives of the working poor and declassé elites, prostitutes in Shanghai were near the bottom of class and gender hierarchies. Yet they were central figures in Shanghai urban life, entering the historical record whenever others wanted to appreciate, castigate, count, regulate, cure, pathologize, warn about, rescue, eliminate, or deploy them as a symbol in a larger social panorama. Over the past century, prostitution has been understood in many ways: as a source of urbanized pleasures, a profession full of unscrupulous and greedy schemers, a changing site of work for women, a source of moral danger and physical disease, a marker of national decay, and a sign of modernity. For the Communist leadership of the 1950s, the elimination of prostitution symbolized China's emergence as a strong, healthy, and modern nation. In the past decade, as prostitution once again has become a recognized feature of Chinese society, it has been incorporated into a larger public discussion about what kind of modernity China should seek and what kind of sex and gender arrangements should characterize that modernity. Prostitutes, like every other non-elite group, did not record their own lives. How can sources generated by intense public argument about the "larger" meanings of prostitution be read for clues to those lives? Hershatter makes use of a broad range of materials: guidebooks to the pleasure quarters, collections of anecdotes about high-class courtesans, tabloid gossip columns, municipal regulations prohibiting street soliciting, police interrogations of streetwalkers and those accused of trafficking in women, newspaper reports on court cases involving both courtesans and streetwalkers, polemics by Chinese and foreign reformers, learned articles by Chinese scholars commenting on the world history of prostitution and analyzing its local causes, surveys by doctors and social workers on sexually transmitted disease in various Shanghai populations, relief agency records, fictionalized accounts of the scams and sufferings of prostitutes, memoirs by former courtesan house patrons, and interviews with former officials and reformers. Although a courtesan may never set pen to paper, we can infer a great deal about her strategizing and working of the system through the vast cautionary literature that tells her customers how not to be defrauded by her. Newspaper accounts of the arrests and brief court testimonies of Shanghai streetwalkers let us glimpse the way that prostitutes positioned themselves to get the most they could from the legal system. Without recourse to direct speech, Hershatter argues, these women have nevertheless left an audible trace. Central to this study is the investigation of how things are known and later remembered, and how, later still, they are simultaneously apprehended and reinvented by the historian.

China Briefing, 1988

China Briefing, 1988
Author: Anthony J. Kane
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429710097

China Briefing, 1988 approaches the events of the previous year differently from past volumes in the series, providing a long-term perspective on the dramatic developments of spring and summer 1987. Senior China specialists examine the student demonstrations and their aftermath in the larger context of the 40-year history of the People's Republic o

International Relations in Southeast Asia

International Relations in Southeast Asia
Author: N Ganesan
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2010
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9814279579

"The central theme of this book is the utility of bilateralism and multilateralism in Southeast Asia international relations. The intention was to examine a sufficient number of empirical cases in the Southeast Asian region since the mid-1970's so as to establish a pattern of interactions informing a wider audience of interactions unique to the region. Through these case studies, we seek to identify how this pattern of interaction compares with similar experiences elsewhere vis-a-vis the theoretical underpinnings of multilateralism and bilateralism. Consequently, this book also examines the theoretical drift in international relations literature at the broadest level and the overall drift of Southeast Asian international relations between the nations themselves and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)."--P. xv.

Balkan Babel

Balkan Babel
Author: Sabrina Petra Ramet
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2018-02-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429975031

The fourth edition of this critically acclaimed work includes a new chapter, a new epilogue, and revisions throughout the book. Sabrina Ramet, a veteran observer of the Yugoslav scene, traces the steady deterioration of Yugoslavia's political and social fabric in the years since 1980, arguing that, while the federal system and multiethnic fabric laid down fault lines, the final crisis was sown in the failure to resolve the legitimacy question, triggered by economic deterioration, and pushed forward toward war by Serbian politicians bent on power - either within a centralized Yugoslavia or within an 'ethnically cleansed' Greater Serbia. With her detailed knowledge of the area and extensive fieldwork, Ramet paints a strikingly original picture of Yugoslavia's demise and the emergence of the Yugoslav successor states.

The PFLP's Changing Role in the Middle East

The PFLP's Changing Role in the Middle East
Author: Harold M. Cubert
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135220298

This is a history of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a violent Marxist faction within the Palestinian national movement. Cubert explores the group's background and provides an analysis of its aims, methods, structures and the factors responsible for its decline.

Dynamics of Asymmetric Territorial Conflict

Dynamics of Asymmetric Territorial Conflict
Author: U. Resnick
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-07-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137303999

This book provides a comprehensive study of asymmetric territorial conflict combining game theory, statistical empirical analysis and historiographic analysis. Using the Israeli-Palestine conflict as a case study, it tests the model on a database of almost four hundred territorial conflicts.