Kwok B. Chan

Chee Kiong Tong

The first of the "Asian Science Series," this book explores the question: Who are the Chinese in Thailand? Are they "assimilated Thais" or are they "Chinese" living in Thailand? Does their being "in" Thailand make them "of" Thailand? Through a collection of authoritative essays, this book explores how the Chinese of Thailand constantly alternate their positions within the fabric of the Thai society. For those seeking the composite image of what it means to be a Chinese, this book holds up many intriguing mirrors. This is a co-publication with Times Academic Press

The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand

Alternate Identities

This book aims to bring us to the deeper, human level of Singapore's history -- thus also its future. With over 150 photographs from Singapore's National Heritage Board and hitherto unpublished private collections, Singapore's social history goes under the lens of eleven ethnographers, unfolding hidden and forgotten facets of the nation's early years.

A Social History of Singapore

Past Times

The hybrid person is often described as a figure who is at once a combination of cultures, a melange of influences, and somehow better for it. But author Chan Kwok-bun's research in recent years, presented in this book, has shown that an entirely positive outlook for the hybrid actor - the person who slips, slides, and glides between cultures and times - is not always accurate. More often, while hybridity offers promise - the best of both worlds, or even the best of all worlds - it is also a very heavy burden to bear. Based on Chan's research in Hong Kong, Singapore and North America, a hybrid person faces nation-states demanding allegiance, races protecting purity and punishing pollution, and societies and cultures insisting that one way is the best way, perhaps the only way. What, then, can we say of hybridity? How is it shaping the modern world? The brief answer is that transnationalism, living in nations, is now a fact of many lives.

Promises and Limits

Hybridity

David Hayward

Jan W. Walls

While the economic forces shaping globalization are powerful and seemingly getting stronger, they are not immutable, nor are their effects predictable or necessarily overwhelming. Contributors to this book are optimistic that the socio-cultural formations of the future, such as cultural hybridity and cosmopolitanism, will be a viable option for constructing new or renewed global communities of migrants around the world. It is with these tools that migrants are best equipped to navigate the raging torrents of globalization in the new millennium of a post-postmodern era. Globalization brings with it a fear, a sense of loss and demise. It also brings with it a new sense of opportunity and hope. It is in this spirit that this book should be read.

Kwok B. Chan

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