On Garo, Indic people of Madhupur, Bangladesh.

An investigation into the category of tribes in South Asia. It focuses on one so-called tribal community, the Garos of Bangladesh. It deals with the evolution of Garo identity/ethnicity and with the progressive making of cultural characteristics that support a sense of Garo-ness, in the context of the complex historical developments.

Drawing on first person accounts, Asia in the Making of Christianity studies conversion in the lives of Christians throughout Asia, past and present. Fifteen contributors treat perennial questions about conversion: continuity and discontinuity, conversion and communal conflict, and the politics of conversion. Some study individuals (An Chunggŭn of Korea, Liang Fa of China, Nehemiah Goreh of India), while others treat ethnolinguistic groups or large-scale movements. Converts sometimes appear as proto-nationalists, while others are suspected of cultural treason. Some transition effortlessly from leadership in one religious community into Christian ministry, while others re-convert to new forms of Christianity. The accounts collected here underscore the complexity of conversion, balancing individual agency with broader social trends and combining micro- with macrocontextual approaches.

A study of the impact of language policies on ethnic relations in fifteen Asian and Pacific countries.

Papers presented at the Conference on Memory and the Partition Motif in Contemporary Conflicts, held in July 2005.

Largely due to the tastes of nineteenth century Western collectors and curators, weaponry abounds in ethnographic museums. However, the relative absence of Asian, African, Native American and Oceanic arms and armour from contemporary gallery displays neither reflects this fact, nor accords these important artefacts the attention they deserve. Weapons are often those objects in museums which most strongly record traumatic histories of colonial conquest around the world, showcase a society’s most complex technologies, and encode a wealth of historical information relating to violent conflict, cultural identities, and indigenous masculinities. This volume brings together an international collective of museum professionals, indigenous cultural historians, anthropologists and material culture specialists to address the historical role of weapon collections in ethnographic museums, and to reconsider the value of studying arms for the purposes of writing richer cultural histories. From Australia to the Amazon, from Uttar Pradesh to ancient Ulster, the essays in this book endeavour to return ethnographic weapons to the centre of material culture studies. In doing so, they offer a blueprint for a more sophisticated future treatment of world weaponry.