In this analysis of three generations of women in a Chinese silk factory, Lisa Rofel brilliantly interweaves the intimate details of her observations with a broad-ranging critique of the meaning of modernity in a postmodern age. The author based her study at a silk factory in the city of Hangzhou in eastern China. She compares the lives of three generations of women workers: those who entered the factory right around the Communist revolution in 1949, those who were youths during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, and those who have come of age in the Deng era. Exploring attitudes toward work, marriage, society, and culture, she convincingly connects the changing meanings of the modern in official discourse to the stories women tell about themselves and what they make of their lives. One of the first studies to take up theoretically sophisticated issues about gender, modernity, and power based on a solid ethnographic ground, this much-needed cross-generational study will be a model for future anthropological work around the world.

"Cogent, evocative, and theoretically rigorous. I know of no one else who has so artfully delineated the complex, heterogeneous effects of political mobilization on the formation of collective and individual subjectivities."—Dorinne Kondo, author of Crafting Selves

A special issue of PUBLIC CULTURE, this volume of essays examines modernity from transnational and transcultural perspectives, holding that within different cultures, there are different starting points of the transition to modernity that lead to differen

Arab Modernism as World Cinema explores the radically beautiful films of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi, demonstrating the importance of Moroccan and Arab film cultures in histories of world cinema. Addressing the legacy of the Nahda or “Arab Renaissance” of the nineteenth and early twentieth century—when Arab writers and artists reenergized Arab culture by engaging with other languages and societies—Peter Limbrick argues that Smihi’s films take up the spirit of the Nahda for a new age. Examining Smihi’s oeuvre, which enacts an exchange of images and ideas between Arab and non-Arab cultures, Limbrick rethinks the relation of Arab cinema to modernism and further engages debates about the use of modernist forms by filmmakers in the Global South. This original study offers new routes for thinking about world cinema and modernism in the Middle East and North Africa, and about Arab cinema in the world.

Arguing for the idea of connected histories, Bhambra presents a fundamental reconstruction of the idea of modernity in contemporary sociology. She criticizes the abstraction of European modernity from its colonial context and the way non-Western "others" are disregarded. It aims to establish a dialogue in which "others" can speak and be heard.

A fascinating ethnographic study of the cultural politics of urban redevelopment in Kampung Serani, one Penang community, in the 1990s. Through interviews, newspaper reports, and other records, Goh considers changing notions of culture, ethnic identity, and urban space.

"Offers an intense scholarly experience in its comprehensiveness, its variety of voices and its formal organization... the editors took a risk, experimented and have delivered a much-needed resource that upends the status-quo." - Architectural Histories, journal of the European Architectural History Network "Architectural theory interweaves interdisciplinary understandings with different practices, intentions and ways of knowing. This handbook provides a lucid and comprehensive introduction to this challenging and shifting terrain, and will be of great interest to students, academics and practitioners alike." - Professor Iain Borden, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture "In this collection, architectural theory expands outward to interact with adjacent discourses such as sustainability, conservation, spatial practices, virtual technologies, and more. We have in The Handbook of Architectural Theory an example of the extreme generosity of architectural theory. It is a volume that designers and scholars of many stripes will welcome." - K. Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory, Harvard University The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory documents and builds upon the most innovative developments in architectural theory over the last two decades. Bringing into dialogue a range of geographically, institutionally and historically competing positions, it examines and explores parallel debates in related fields. The book is divided into eight sections: Power/Difference/Embodiment Aesthetics/Pleasure/Excess Nation/World/Spectacle History/Memory/Tradition Design/Production/Practice Science/Technology/Virtuality Nature/Ecology/Sustainability City/Metropolis/Territory. Creating openings for future lines of inquiry and establishing the basis for new directions for education, research and practice, the book is organized around specific case studies to provide a critical, interpretive and speculative enquiry into the relevant debates in architectural theory.