Search Results

Ritual, ideology and politics

Mandy Sadan

in Being and Becoming Kachin: Histories Beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma

This chapter considers the 1843 revolt from the perspective of the trans-Patkai region and possible connections with the Opium Wars. It explores the political and cultural contexts of ... More

This chapter considers the 1843 revolt from the perspective of the trans-Patkai region and possible connections with the Opium Wars. It explores the political and cultural contexts of Singpho-Jinghpaw interaction with a wider world, and concludes that the spread of gumlao revolt was an outcome of the region-wide pressures that were placed upon this region in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Evidence of ideological change in Jinghpaw models of power is then suggested by a close examination of a ritual called the Tawn Na, which emerged as a discourse in relation to changes seen at the Burmese court during this time. The chapter proposes that in light of this regional transformation, it would be inappropriate to consider ‘Kachin’ ideological models insulated from the political developments that were taking place across this region, and these changes were important in the later development of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism.Less

Translating and Transforming the American Dream: Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter and Gish Jen's Typical American

Weimin Tang

in China Abroad: Travels, Subjects, Spaces

This chapter, by focusing on what have been largely denounced as the two assimilationist Bildungsromane, Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter, and Gish Jen's Typical American, brings to the fore ... More

This chapter, by focusing on what have been largely denounced as the two assimilationist Bildungsromane, Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter, and Gish Jen's Typical American, brings to the fore an insider and outsider's profound ambivalence that illuminates the full complexity of the cross-cultural Chinese American subject. It is precisely in the active presence of this Chineseness, both as a historical given and cultural reinvention, that the myth of the American Dream as a trope of assimilation in the narratives of Wong's and Jen's mimic (wo)men's striving for likeness to the original symbol is simultaneously negotiated and contested. Ultimately transcending the reductive dichotomous polarization, the dream narratives of Wong and Jen are reread here as enunciating a metonymic displacement and transformation of the national myth in the cross-cultural Chinese American subject's very translational repetition of the American Dream itself.Less

Timur, World Conqueror and Connoisseur

Marina Belozerskaya

in Medusa’s Gaze: The Extraordinary Journey of the Tazza Farnese

The earliest surviving record of the Tazza was produced in Central Asia, either for the great and ruthless conqueror Timur in Samarqand, or for his more refined grandson Baysunghur at Herat. The bowl ... More

The earliest surviving record of the Tazza was produced in Central Asia, either for the great and ruthless conqueror Timur in Samarqand, or for his more refined grandson Baysunghur at Herat. The bowl may have come to the Timurid court as war booty, tribute, or a diplomatic gift. Once there, it was depicted by the court calligrapher Mohammed al-Khayyam. This chapter suggests how the Tazza would have been viewed differently by Timur and his descendants.Less

Constructing a Narrative for the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland: The Use of ‘Hard Science’ and Archaeological Reasoning

Alison Sheridan and Pierre Pétrequin

in Early Farmers: The View from Archaeology and Science

Case studies are presented to discuss various ways, good and bad, in which ‘hard science’ has been used to construct aspects of the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland. The use of radiocarbon dating and ... More

Case studies are presented to discuss various ways, good and bad, in which ‘hard science’ has been used to construct aspects of the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland. The use of radiocarbon dating and dietary evidence to characterise the Neolithisation process is reviewed; the disjunction between existing archaeological narratives and the results of a genetic and morphometric analysis of the Orkney vole as a Neolithic arrival in Orkney is considered; and the reasons for the success of Projet JADE, a major international research programme investigating axeheads and other artefacts made of jadeitite and other alpine rocks, are explored. Conclusions are reached about the way in which ‘hard science’ can be used to inform archaeological narratives (and vice versa).Less

Early Civilization In the Maya Lowlands, Monumentality, and Place Making: A View from the Holmul Region

Francisco Estrada-Belli

in Early New World Monumentality

Contrary to accepted views on the origin of Maya civilization, which place the earliest manifestations of Maya civilization towards the end of the Preclassic period (i.e. 100 B.C.), several lines of ... More

Contrary to accepted views on the origin of Maya civilization, which place the earliest manifestations of Maya civilization towards the end of the Preclassic period (i.e. 100 B.C.), several lines of evidence suggest that the most important turning point in the developmental trajectory of Lowland Maya civilization occurred around 800 B.C. At this time, a number of Lowland ceremonial centers were founded and public ceremonial architecture manifested itself. At Cival, large-scale construction projects took place by 800 B.C. in connection with the center's founding event. In light of the differences in labor investment and scale between initial and later public building projects at Cival and Holmul, two major phases of development are suggested, which may correlate with different but equally significant changes in Early Lowland Maya social organization, economy, and long-distance networks of interaction. After considering the newly documented developments in ideology, public ritual, and monumentality at Cival and at other Lowland centers, this chapter proposes a re-examination of commonly held notions about the Lowland Maya's path to civilization.Less

Agent communication

Christopher Walton

in Agency and the Semantic Web

In the preceding chapters, we have described in detail the various techniques that can be used to construct reasoning agents for the Semantic Web. However, as we have ... More

In the preceding chapters, we have described in detail the various techniques that can be used to construct reasoning agents for the Semantic Web. However, as we have repeatedly emphasized, this reasoning capability provides only part of the functionality that will be instrumental in the construction of Semantic Web applications. To supply the remaining functionality, we must also provide a communicative capability to the agents that we construct. This capability will allow our agents to interact and cooperate with other agents on the Semantic Web, and thereby realize more complex tasks than could be accomplished with a single agent in isolation. The focus of this chapter is on how we can design and build agents which can interact together successfully on the Semantic Web. To address the issues of communication and coordination in this environment, it is useful to take our inspiration from human social systems, where these issues are solved in the real world. Following this approach, we treat a group of agents as a society, where these agents typically share a common interest, e.g. solving a specific type of problem. To become a member of this society, an agent must agree to observe certain rules and conventions. In return, the agent can itself benefit from the society, e.g. the expertise of other agents. In this societal view, it becomes possible to define conventions for the agents to follow, and the incentives for agents to operate together are made clear. This in turn makes the challenges of agent-based communication and coordination more manageable. The societal view is a popular approach in the field of MASs, and has important consequences for the way we define our systems. Our discussion is structured around the following five considerations, which must be addressed if we are to design agents that can successfully participate in a society: 1. The ability to communicate with other agents. 2. A basis on which to understand what is being communicated. 3. The ability to structure communication into coherent patterns. Less

Semantic Web services

Christopher Walton

in Agency and the Semantic Web

In this book we have been consistently directed by the vision of the Semantic Web. This vision can be summarized as the ability for computers to automatically use ... More

In this book we have been consistently directed by the vision of the Semantic Web. This vision can be summarized as the ability for computers to automatically use information on the Web in a similar way to humans. In particular, we want to be able to retrieve, comprehend, and exchange knowledge using automated techniques. At this point we have defined all of the main techniques that can be used to realize these goals. A summary of the four key techniques that we now have at our disposal is presented below: 1. We have the ability to represent knowledge in a form suitable for automated processing. This ability is provided by the definition of ontologies, which provide structure to knowledge. 2. We can construct entities, called agents, which act on behalf of humans and solve specific goals. We have presented many different techniques that can be used to construct these agents, dependent on the purpose for that the agents to be applied. 3. We can reason about the knowledge that we represent to answer specific questions. This can be accomplished by query answering techniques, or by complex inferences over the knowledge, guided by the ontology. 4. Our agents can communicate with other agents, and form societies based on common interests. Within these societies, agents can collaborate towards the resolution of common goals, which could not be accomplished by individual agents alone. The purpose of this penultimate chapter is to show how we can harness and combine these four key techniques to build systems and applications for the Semantic Web. As stated in Chapter 1, Semantic Web applications are not constructed statically in the traditional manner. Instead, these applications are constructed dynamically, at run-time, from combinations of services, termed knowledge services. Our presentation is designed to answer the two key questions below: 1. How can we construct knowledge services that encompass the various capabilities that we have available? 2. How do we compose knowledge services into applications that can accomplish specific tasks? Less

Transcending Gendered Geographies: Yunnanese Women Traders

Wen-Chin Chang

in Beyond Borders: Stories of Yunnanese Chinese Migrants of Burma

This chapter examines the social construction of gender inequality in relation to power distribution in both public and domestic spheres in Burma by focusing on the economic activities of Yunnanese ... More

This chapter examines the social construction of gender inequality in relation to power distribution in both public and domestic spheres in Burma by focusing on the economic activities of Yunnanese women. It discusses the involvement of Yunnanese women in border trade, along with their entrepreneurship, familial obligations and sacrificial motherhood, and how their economic activities transgress borders. It also considers Yunnanese women's participation in jade trade, money-carrying and restaurant businesses, and in rotating markets. It shows that these women's practices reflect an ongoing process of shaping and reshaping “gendered geographies of power” while also simultaneously contesting and reproducing gender categories.Less

Circulations of the Jade Trade: The Duans and the Pengs

Wen-Chin Chang

in Beyond Borders: Stories of Yunnanese Chinese Migrants of Burma

This chapter examines the transnational jade trade dominated by Yunnanese migrants since the 1960s due to their well-connected transnational networks. Focusing on the experiences of the Duan and Peng ... More

This chapter examines the transnational jade trade dominated by Yunnanese migrants since the 1960s due to their well-connected transnational networks. Focusing on the experiences of the Duan and Peng families, it considers the economic agency of the Yunnanese traders in Burma in combating subjugation by the state. It also discusses the jade traders' dynamism in the formation of their transnational networks and capital flows in response to the politico-economic policies adopted by different states. Finally, it explains how the jade traders' business extension to Guangzhou and Hong Kong since 2000 has resulted in the circulation of people, commodities, capital, information, techniques, and trade knowledge.Less

Unlikely Daughters, Exemplary Mothers, and Disembedded China Men: Jade Snow Wong and Maxine Hong Kingston

Yoon Lee

in Modern Minority: Asian American Literature and Everyday Life

For Chinese-Americans during and after World War II, everydayness offered a means of constructing an identity that was both modern and American. Fifth Chinese Daughter exhibits a particular type of ... More

For Chinese-Americans during and after World War II, everydayness offered a means of constructing an identity that was both modern and American. Fifth Chinese Daughter exhibits a particular type of everyday thinking that relies on the repeatability of actions as the basis of knowledge. Wong claims modernity by presenting herself as an anomaly, an unlikely daughter of Chinatown. Thus she illustrates her fitness as a post-war American citizen. After the social movements of the late 1960s and 70s, everyday recurrence fails to offer an adequate basis of identity. Rather, identity comes to be equated with self-determination and unique laws of self-development. Kingston’s The Woman Warrior struggles to base a sense of self on her mother’s exemplary stories, but the project proves untenable in the face of the modern world’s repetitions and reductions. In her second work, China Men, she turns toward modern history, offering a portrait of the everyday as the realm of faceless, endless, and abstract labor, performed by generic subjects.Less

Sierra Motherlode, Domain 2

Earl B. Alexander, Roger G. Coleman, Todd Keeler-Wolfe, and Susan P. Harrison

in Serpentine Geoecology of Western North America: Geology, Soils, and Vegetation

The Sierra Motherlode domain is in a series of allochthonous terranes, sometimes called the “Foothill Belt,” along the western edge of the ... More

The Sierra Motherlode domain is in a series of allochthonous terranes, sometimes called the “Foothill Belt,” along the western edge of the north-northwest–south-southeast trending Sierra Nevada, adjacent to the Great Valley of California. It is a discontinuous belt from the southern Sierra Nevada, in Tulare and Fresno counties, to Butte County in the northern Sierra Nevada , but a branch within the belt is practically continuous from El Dorado County about 140 km north to Plumas County at the north end of the range. Cenozoic block faulting has lifted the Sierra Nevada and tilted the mountain range toward the west; therefore the highest elevations are on the east side of the range. Uplift is more pronounced in the southern than in the northern Sierra Nevada. Altitudes range from <200 m adjacent to the Great Valley to more than 4000 m along the crest of the central to southern part of the mountain range. The highest altitudes in the Sierra Motherlode domain are 1939 m (6360 feet) on Red Mountain and 1935 m (6335 feet) on Red Hill in Plumas County, and even higher on some of the granitic plutons that are within the outer limits of the serpentine domain. These plutons were intruded into the allochthonous terranes after the terranes had been accreted onto the continent. Much of the western slope of the northern Sierra Nevada is an undulating to rolling plateau. This plateau is a remnant from the early Tertiary when its surface was deeply weathered to produce lateritic serpentine soils with silica deposited in the subsoils and in fractures in the bedrock (Rice and Cleveland 1955, Rice 1957). The ancient plateau was capped by volcanic flows that produced a practically continuous cover in the northern Sierra Nevada (Durrell 1966). Uplift along the eastern side of the northern part of the Sierra Nevada to initiate its current relief commenced 4 or 5 Ma ago (Wakabayashi and Sawyer 2001). Since the range began to rise a few million years ago, the larger streams flowing across it have cut deep canyons up to about 600 m below the plateau. Less

The Filial Debtor: Jade Snow Wong

erin Khuê Ninh

in Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature

This chapter provides a reading of Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter, which closely critiques the logic implicit in intergenerational conflict. The beginning of Wong's autobiography invokes an ... More

This chapter provides a reading of Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter, which closely critiques the logic implicit in intergenerational conflict. The beginning of Wong's autobiography invokes an exoticizing and problematic rhetoric of Chinese cultural otherness, and introduces her childhood experiences immediately into a discourse of cultural conflict or conflicting cultural expectations. In the narrative, that which is Chinese in association is often felt to be constricting, anachronistic, or developmentally arrested, while qualities considered American become synonymous with a versatile modernity and individual empowerment. This bias makes the autobiography no less than a prototype for the kind of intergenerational conflict narrative, which scholarship has been understandably criticized for its self-directed essentialism, and its eager adoption of Orientalist binaries.Less

The Caring of Jailers: Evelyn Lau, Catherine Liu

erin Khuê Ninh

in Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature

This chapter argues that between the era of Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter and that of Evelyn Lau's Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid and Catherine Liu's Oriental Girls Desire Romance, economic relations ... More

This chapter argues that between the era of Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter and that of Evelyn Lau's Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid and Catherine Liu's Oriental Girls Desire Romance, economic relations within the family have evolved in response to changing opportunities for the model minority. Second-generation children become viable capital investments, raised to enter profitable math- and science-based professional fields now open to them, in order to repay their parents' suffering with significant consumer goods. In this context, the unprofitable pursuit of literature can become an overdetermined act of self-preservation and disobedience, and an interesting precursor to other forms of masochistic rebellion: drug addictions, suicide, or running away from home. In revisiting model minority discourse, the chapter asserts that because of the immigrant family's commitment to capitalist ideals, a model child is required to be a model minority, dutiful and grateful to both family and nation.Less

Asian American Firsts and the Progress toward Racial Integration

Cindy I-Fen Cheng

in Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War

This chapter examines the successes of Asian Americans in the United States to emphasize the importance of cultural assimilation in bringing about racial integration as well as the willingness and ... More

This chapter examines the successes of Asian Americans in the United States to emphasize the importance of cultural assimilation in bringing about racial integration as well as the willingness and ability of racialized minorities to prove their desirability to dominant society. Using the discourse on the first, it explains how Asian Americans assumed the role of model minorities during the early Cold War years and how the social status of Asians in general was employed as a measure of the credibility of U.S. democracy. The firsts were featured in mainstream periodicals to show how the nation was progressing toward a racially inclusive society. The chapter focuses on three individuals whose professional achievements made headlines during the early Cold War years: Sammy Lee, Jade Snow Wong, and Delbert Wong. Finally, it explores the concept of tokenism and how it undermined the first as an indicator of America's steady progress toward racial equality.Less

Jade Yoga and Heavenly Dharma: Buddhist Thought in Classical Age China and India

Christopher I. Beckwith

in Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia

This chapter considers the relationship of Early Buddhism to Chinese thought during the Warring States period (ca. 450 BC–221 BC). Chinese thought was in a nearly constant state of flux, if not ... More

This chapter considers the relationship of Early Buddhism to Chinese thought during the Warring States period (ca. 450 BC–221 BC). Chinese thought was in a nearly constant state of flux, if not turmoil, during the Warring States period, which began shortly after the death of Confucius. Ideas related to the Early Buddhism attested in the fragments of Pyrrho and Megasthenes are clearly present in Warring States writings, especially Early Taoist texts, including the Laotzu, the Chuangtzu, as well as the anonymous Jade Yoga Inscription. Some of the Early Taoist material is approximately contemporaneous with Pyrrho and Megasthenes. It seems that this material's appearance in China is connected to the fact that Central Asia, including Bactria and Gandhāra, was part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire down to Alexander's invasion and conquest of the region in 330–325 BC.Less

Social Melodrama and the Sexing of Political Complaint

in Opera and the City: The Politics of Culture in Beijing, 1770–1900

This chapter explores the drama The Garden of Turquoise and Jade (Feicui yuan), written in Suzhou in the early Qing, and its several kunju performance redactions. The themes considered in Garden are ... More

This chapter explores the drama The Garden of Turquoise and Jade (Feicui yuan), written in Suzhou in the early Qing, and its several kunju performance redactions. The themes considered in Garden are typical of the plays written by contemporaries among the so-called Suzhou writers' group of early Qing dramatists. Its popularity indicates that urban audiences connected with the plight of the downtrodden. The gender and class politics of Garden are a blend of old and new. The villains are all men who usurp authority. The commercial productions taken from the plot illustrate the gendered (and classed) face of social complaint. It is shown that traces of late Ming romantic imaginings about gender and class carried over in modified form into the social melodramas of the Qing.Less

Squandering Your Potential with Richard Bruce Nugent

Brian Glavey

in The Wallflower Avant-Garde: Modernism, Sexuality, and Queer Ekphrasis

This chapter examines early texts of Richard Bruce Nugent that share an experimental use of ellipses. Nugent developed the elliptical style in his description of his own drawing, “Sahdji.” The ... More

This chapter examines early texts of Richard Bruce Nugent that share an experimental use of ellipses. Nugent developed the elliptical style in his description of his own drawing, “Sahdji.” The ekphrastic origin of this formal experiment helps illuminate his most significant work, “Smoke, Lilies and Jade,” which functions as a powerful examination of the hermeneutics of sexuality. This is a story that is celebrated as the first published work in the African-American tradition to deal openly with male same-sex desire, as a work that seems to have no use for the epistemology of the closet. At the same time, however, the multiple ellipses that interrupt every line of text invite readers to imagine that something has been repressed. By placing same-sex desire on the surface of the text while also highlighting things left unsaid, Nugent complicates the critical tendency to read homosexuality through forms of preterition.Less