Asian City Crossings is the first volume to examine the relationship between the city and performance from an Asian perspective. This collection introduces "city as method" as a new conceptual framework for the investigation of practices of city-based performing arts collaboration and city-to-city performance networks across East- and Southeast Asia and beyond. The shared and yet divergent histories of the global cities of Hong Kong and Singapore as postcolonial, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual sites, are taken as points of departure to demonstrate how "city as method" facilitates a comparative analytical space that foregrounds in-betweenness and fluid positionalities. It situates inter-Asian relationality and inter-city referencing as centrally significant dynamics in the exploration of the material and ideological conditions of contemporary performance and performance exchange in Asia. This study captures creative dialogue that travels city-based pathways along the Hong Kong-Singapore route, as well as between Hong Kong and Singapore and other cities, through scholarly analyses and practitioner reflections drawn from the fields of theatre, performance, and music. This book combines essays by scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, ethnomusicology, and human geography with reflective accounts by Hong Kong and Singapore-based performing arts practitioners to highlight the diversity, vibrancy, and complexity of creative projects that destabilise notions of identity, belonging, and nationhood through strategies of collaborative conviviality and transnational mobility across multi-sited networks of cities in Asia. In doing so, this volume fills a considerable gap in global scholarly discourse on performance and the city and on the production and circulation of the performing arts in Asia.

"Asian City Crossings is the first volume to examine the relationship between the city and performance from an Asian perspective. This collection introduces "city as method" as a new conceptual framework for the investigation of practices of city-based performing arts collaboration and city-to-city performance networks across East- and Southeast Asia and beyond. The shared and yet divergent histories of the global cities of Hong Kong and Singapore as postcolonial, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual sites, are taken as points of departure to demonstrate how "city as method" facilitates a comparative analytical space that foregrounds in-betweenness and fluid positionalities. It situates inter-Asian relationality and inter-city referencing as centrally significant dynamics in the exploration of the material and ideological conditions of contemporary performance and performance exchange in Asia. This study captures creative dialogue that travels city-based pathways along the Hong Kong-Singapore route, as well as between Hong Kong and Singapore and other cities, through scholarly analyses and practitioner reflections drawn from the fields of theatre, performance, and music. This book combines essays by scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, ethnomusicology, and human geography with reflective accounts by Hong Kong and Singapore-based performing arts practitioners to highlight the diversity, vibrancy, and complexity of creative projects that destabilise notions of identity, belonging, and nationhood through strategies of collaborative conviviality and transnational mobility across multi-sited networks of cities in Asia. In doing so, this volume fills a considerable gap in global scholarly discourse on performance and the city and on the production and circulation of the performing arts in Asia"--

For most of the latter half of the twentieth century, Roppongi was an enormously popular nightclub district that stood out from the other pleasure quarters of Tokyo for its mix of international entertainment and people. It was where Japanese and foreigners went to meet and play. With the crash of Japan's bubble economy in the 1990s, however, the neighborhood declined, and it now has a reputation as perhaps Tokyo's most dangerous district—a hotbed of illegal narcotics, prostitution, and other crimes. Its concentration of “bad foreigners,” many from China, Russia and Eastern Europe, West Africa, and Southeast Asia is thought to be the source of the trouble. Roman Adrian Cybriwsky examines how Roppongi's nighttime economy is now under siege by both heavy-handed police action and the conservative Japanese “construction state,” an alliance of large private builders and political interests with broad discretion to redevelop Tokyo. The construction state sees an opportunity to turn prime real estate into high-end residential and retail projects that will “clean up” the area and make Tokyo more competitive with Shanghai and other rising business centers in Asia. Roppongi Crossing is a revealing ethnography of what is arguably the most dynamic district in one of the world's most dynamic cities. Based on extensive fieldwork, it looks at the interplay between the neighborhood's nighttime rhythms; its emerging daytime economy of office towers and shopping malls; Japan's ongoing internationalization and changing ethnic mix; and Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown, the massive new construction projects now looming over the old playground.

In this book, Phan Le-Ha identifies and discusses four growing self-sustained/sustaining fundamental phenomena in transnational education (TNE), namely (1) the planned, evolving and transformative mediocrity behind the endorsement of English-medium education legitimized by the interactive Asia-the West relationship; (2) the strategic employment of the terms ‘Asia/Asian’ and ‘West/Western’ by all stakeholders in their perceptions and construction of choice, quality, rigour, reliability and attractiveness of programs, courses, and locations; (3) the adjusted desire for an imagined (and often misinformed) ‘West’ among various stakeholders of transnational education; and (4) the assigned and self-realized ownership of English by otherwise normally on-the-margin groups of speakers. A focus on how these phenomena impact questions of identity and desire in TNE is a running theme. The above phenomena are discussed against the backdrop of ‘the rise of Asia’ sentiment and how this sentiment has played out in interactions and relationships between ‘the West’ and ‘Asia’ and among Asian institutions and various entities. Phan Le-Ha’s examination of the identified phenomena in TNE has been informed by her multi-layered engagement with the dialectic of the Asia-the West relationship, her critical take on certain pro-Asia and decolonisation scholarship, and her interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to theorise the field and the specific topic under scrutiny. Phan Le-Ha shows that the current Asia chooses (not necessarily by force but largely by will and often with an informed and well-articulated agency) to go with the idea of the West and often desires an affiliation with the West either directly or indirectly, something that is getting more intense in the context of globalization, regionalization, and commercialization of education. The rise of Asia has made the idea of the West even more looked-for in Asia. TNE in Asia, in many ways, is the transforming and dynamic transit point, a layover that facilitates entry into a wanted destination – the West and/or the idea of the West. The West and Asia need one another more than ever in the context of the internationalization and commercialization of higher education. What’s more, the West and Asia have hardly ever been mutually exclusive but have rather been in an eventful love-and-obsession relationship with each other. This is the very dialectic proposition that Phan Le Ha takes throughout this book while paying specific attention to transnational higher education in the greater Asian region including the Middle East, following her several research projects conducted in the region since 2005 to date. Transnational Education Crossing 'the West' and 'Asia' explores: • English, Internationalisation of Higher Education, and Identity: Increasing Academic Monolingualism and English-only Package • Transnational Education and Dream Realization: From the Philippines to Vietnam, From Afghanistan to Dubai, From Everywhere in Asia to Thailand • Desiring International /Transnational Education: Theorisation of Key Concepts and Next Steps from Here The book will be of interest to researchers in the field of transnational education, Asia education and education policy.

This book examines issues that have emerged as higher education systems and individual institutions across East Asia confront and adapt to the changing economic, social, and educational environments in which they now operate. The book’s focus is on how higher education systems learn from each other and on the ways in which they collaborate to address new challenges. The sub-theme that runs through this volume concerns the changing nature of cross-border sharing. In particular, the provision of technical assistance by more industrialized countries to lower and middle income countries has given way to collaborations that place the latter’s participating institutions on a more equal footing.

This multidisciplinary book examines the diverse ways in which environmental disasters with compounding impacts are being governed as they traverse sovereign territories across rapidly urbanising societies in Asia and the Pacific. Combining theoretical advances with contextually rich studies, the book examines efforts to tackle the complexities of cross-border environmental governance. In an urban age in which disasters are not easily contained within neatly delineated jurisdictions, both in terms of their interconnected causalities and their cascading effects, governance structures and mechanisms are faced with major challenges related to cooperation, collaboration and information sharing. This book helps bridge the gap between theory and practice by offering fresh insights and contrasting explanations for variations in transboundary disaster governance regimes among urbanising populations in the Asia-Pacific.

"Reading Asian Television Drama offers an informative overview of East Asian television drama and its cultural impact. It examines both the text and context of TV dramas from such countries as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, China and South Korea. Chapters analyse various internationally popular dramas including South Korean 'hallyu' shows like Jewel in the Palace, Winter Sonata and Wedding. Other chapters focu on Asian TV networks within Asia, as well as Asian global cultural exchange and the international consumption of East-Asian television drama. They also provide full and varied coverage of the major issues relating to contemporary East Asian television and its cultural formation within Asia as well as in the West."--The back cover.