Let’s talk fat, geopolitical fat. Strategists rarely see geopolitical “fat tail” events coming. They are so unlikely to happen that we ignore their possibility. A second usage of “geopolitical fat” literally means Western imperial powers grubbily making a feast of the resources of Asia. Third, for the journalist Dennis Bloodworth, “geopolitical fat” denoted a protective lining of territory through which ran the vital Ho Chi Minh Trail, the pipeline for men and weapons to be fed into South Vietnam. It was all about pipelines and supply routes, and soon the fat was properly in the fire.
Full Text PDFSenior Minister Mouly Ieng of the Royal Government of Cambodia takes readers on a long historical journey from Cambodia’s ancient past, through to its twentieth-century political trauma, and its emergence as a prosperous middle-income country. In view of its tumultuous history, he explains that Cambodia cannot afford to side with one camp against another, and that the Kingdom is willing to make friends with all nations. Cambodia, he states, still maintains a particular interest with the United States and other Western powers, which have opened their market to Cambodian manufactured products. Cambodia as well as other members of ASEAN do not feel any threat from China, he adds. “That is why we conduct business with China without fear.” In foreign policy, the Constitution prohibits Cambodia from entering into an alliance with any foreign power, and in addition Cambodia must abide by the ASEAN Charter.
Full Text PDFThere is much that India needs to do if its Project Mausam is to serve as the blueprint of the Act East policy, much as the history of China’s Maritime Silk Road underpins its Belt and Road Initiative strategy. The Indian Ocean must not remain Indian only in name but must serve as the natural maritime expression of India’s national interest. India can employ the “neo-Curzonian” potential of contemporary Indian foreign policy which is premised on a logic of centrality in India’s dealings with major powers in seeking access and leverage from East Africa to Pacific Asia by building links with neighboring regions.
Full Text PDFA strange friendship between reader and writer over thirty-odd years is cause for celebration by Julie Banerjee Mehta who raises a glass to Michael Ondaatje on his 80th birthday this September. It does not matter that we have never met, she writes. “He walked by my side during some of my toughest times when I felt the pain of separation from my family when I came to live in Canada.”
Full Text PDFThe author interviews traditional musicians of Meghalaya, as well as young performers, to discover how the traditional music and musical instruments of the state are being popularized among the younger generation, leading to a current resurgence of an ancient artform that has a rich folkloric oral history.
Full Text PDFThis study, the first of a two-article series, tells the story of the beginning of the South Asian tea industries through botanical imagination and incubation. The two articles rewind the history of universal botanist entrepreneurship through the journey of the tea plant across the Bengal Region. The first article sketches how during the late-eighteenth and the early-nineteenth centuries, botanists depicted blueprints of tea planting and wrote up business plans. Botanists lobbied the British colonial authorities in India and Ceylon to encourage and experiment on tea cultivation, and ignited public enthusiasm for the tea planting business in the region. The second article, to be published in the next issue, tells how botanists transformed their plans for tea planting into actual action with increasing enthusiasm in South Asia for tea plantation since the 1830s. With the help of botanists and a burgeoning botanical infrastructure in India and Ceylon, tea planters established a successful South Asian tea industry for the world. To research his tea series, the author traveled since January 2023 to Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom, and hopes to continue his expedition to other tea producing countries such as India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Japan, and Brazil. Through research, he expects to reconnect the global migration of tea plants with China’s “Huizhou tea” and Pu’er tea” in the future, and to witness how the tea plant unites modern global humanity.
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There has been a remarkable decline in insurgency-related violence across the Indian Northeast owing to negotiated agreements with armed groups, and the desire of young people to find jobs and seek a life of prosperity. There are visible signs of construction of new physical infrastructure, as well as buoyant economic growth and rising literacy in many Northeastern states. Manipur’s good economic growth, however, is imperilled by a new cycle of violence between the majority Meitei community and the state’s tribal communities since May 2023. This study employs phenomenological hermeneutic analysis to argue that national security concerns play a major role in shaping development efforts, and to highlight the multifaceted nature of the conflicts, encompassing ethnic clashes, poverty, unemployment, political instability, extortion by insurgent groups, corruption, and the use of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act under which the military tackles active insurgencies. The article explores innovative approaches to end the conflict in the Northeast, arguing as well that the impressive economic growth and development indicators in Manipur, as well as in a few other Northeastern states, make the forging of peace a real possibility.
This article explores the gender and sexuality boundary work of Japanese shojo anime series Ouran High School Host Club (2006) through theoretical perspectives of Judith Butler’s performativity theory and Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory. At the same time that Ouran first aired, the Akihabara district in Tokyo was alive with a vibrant dansō community. Only recently has this community been researched for the first time. In addition, reverse harem manga, which Ouran can be classified as, has only recently been analyzed. Visual theory specific to anime style, paired with emerging research about Japanese Dansō identity and the changing role of the shōjo in global society, creates a rich understanding of the nuanced boundary work that takes place in Ouran. I argue, Ouran High School Host Club successfully operates within a dominant paradigm of shōjo conventions in order to create space for two new performances of the shōjo, which disrupt the shōjo myth. These performances are Haruhi’s dansō identity, and Tamaki’s shōjo identity. Viewers can still identify the show within shōjo genre conventions; however, it is within this comfortable space that the series is able to develop each character with significant depth and create non-normative performances of gender and sexuality. This is an important step toward inclusive boundary work, where images in a highly visible mass-market media text can create representations of gender performance to be experimented and identified with.
Full Text PDFRising Asia is a scholarly publication and journal of record with a multidisciplinary orientation. It serves as a resource for the study, investigation, and teaching of Asian societies. Each volume of the journal contains interpretive essays on all aspects of Asian history, economy, diplomacy, literature, health, science, military affairs (war, peace and society or WPS) and culture.
Its coverage spans the humanities and social sciences, incorporating various thematic approaches—historical, economic, foreign policy, military, literary and theoretical that explore issues of grand strategy, ideology, ethnicity, race and gender, diasporic and indigenous communities, and colonialism and postcolonialism. The journal also publishes research articles in the field of Film Studies, as well as commentaries on museum exhibits and resource guides, provided all of them are scholarly in nature.
| Title: | Rising Asia Journal |
|---|---|
| Frequency: | Three times a year |
| ISSN: | ISSN 2583-1038 |
| Publisher: | Rising Asia Foundation |
| Chief Editor: | Harish C. Mehta |
| Copyright: | Rising Asia Foundation |
| Starting year: | January 2021 |
| Subject: | Multidisciplinary subjects |
| Language: | English |
| Publication Format: | Online |
| Phone No: | 91-9830721954 |
| Email id: | harishcmehta1968@gmail.com |
| Website: | www.rajraf.org |
| Address: | 32 T, New Road, Alipore, Kolkata 700 027, West Bengal, India |
HARISH C. MEHTA
PhD, McMaster University, Canada;
former Lecturer at University of Toronto, McMaster,
and Trent University;
and former Senior Indochina Correspondent,
The Business Times of Singapore.
harishcmehta1968@gmail.com
harish.mehta@utoronto.ca
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GURJIT SINGH
Former Ambassador of India to Germany, Indonesia, ASEAN, Ethiopia and the African Union;
currently honorary Professor of Humanities, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore (Japan, Indonesia, ASEAN, Africa and Europe),
ambassadorgurjitsingh@gmail.com
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ANG CHENG GUAN
Professor, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. (International History and Politics of Southeast Asia),
iscgang@ntu.edu.sg
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JANGKHONGAM DOUNGEL
Professor, Department of Political Science, Mizoram University, Aizawl (Local/Regional Politics & Socio-Economic Development of Mizoram, and Autonomy Movements in the North East),
jdoungel@gmail.com
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Julie Banerjee Mehta
Former Lecturer, University of Toronto and York University, currently Guest Faculty Professor, Loreto College, Calcutta (Postcolonial and Gender Theory, World Literatures, Diaspora Studies and Southeast Asian Culture),
juliemehta57@gmail.com
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Suchorita Chattopadhyay
Professor, Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University (Comparative Literature, Japan, and Asian Diasporas),
suchoritachattopadhyay@yahoo.com
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Ajay Dandekar
Professor, Shiv Nadar University (International Relations, China, Geostrategy),
ajay.dandekar@snu.edu.in
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Craig Etcheson
PhD (International Relations), University of Southern California; former Visiting Scientist at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health from 2017 through June 2022 (Transitional Justice, Genocide Studies, and Cambodia),
etcheson@ix.netcom.com
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Lalnundika Hnamte
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Pachhunga University College, A Constituent College of Mizoram University (Peace and Conflict Resolution; Northeast Indian politics; Sixth Schedule and Tribal Autonomy; Migration and Citizenship;
Look East/Act East Policy),
lalnundika@jbc.edu.in
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Tuan Hoang
Associate Professor of Great Books, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California (Modern Vietnamese Intellectual and Religious History, Vietnamese American History,
and Vietnamese Catholicism),
tuan.hoang@pepperdine.edu
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Sanjay Kathuria
PhD (Economics), University of Oxford; Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, and Ashoka University, Sonipat, India; Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research and former Lead Economist, World Bank (South Asian Trade and Investment, India's North East, Global Economy, Economic Growth, and Competitiveness),
sanjay@cprindia.org
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Veronica Khangchian
Assistant Professor, Gandhian School of Democracy and Socialism, ITM University, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh; and former faculty in the Department of Sociology at Delhi School of Economics and Maitreyi College, University of Delhi (Ethnicity & Conflict, Migration, and Peace Processes in Northeast India),
verokarujiliu@gmail.com
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Vimal Khawas
Professor, the Special Centre for the Study of North East India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (the Himalayan region, Sikkim, Nepal, Environmental Studies/Security, Development Studies, Urban and Regional Planning),
vimalkhawas@mail.jnu.ac.in
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Siddharth Mallavarapu
Professor, Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, Shiv Nadar University (Disciplinary histories of International Relations, Theories of IR in the Global South, Asia in World Affairs, Comparative Political Thought, and Critical Security Studies),
siddharth.m@snu.edu.in
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Medha
Assistant Professor, Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, Shiv Nadar University (South Asian Historical International Relations, Postcolonial and Decolonial approaches, Identities, Ideologies and Religion, and Discourse Theory),
medha@snu.edu.in
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Biswajit Mohapatra
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong (Politics, International Relations and Foreign Policy; and India's North East),
biswajitm1@gmail.com
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Nguyet Nguyen
Assistant Professor of History, Department of Social Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Alaska, Southeast, Juneau, Alaska (Vietnam War, U.S. Foreign Relations, Imperialism and Decolonization, and Gender Politics),
ntnguyen2@alaska.edu
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Por Heong Hong
Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang (Malaysia's healthcare policy, biopolitics, politics of memory, politics of heritage),
porheonghong@usm.my
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Vu Duong Luan
Senior Lecturer, Department of Heritage Studies, and Head of Office of Research Affairs and International Cooperation, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi (Transnational History of Sino-Vietnamese Early Modern Borderlands, Comparative Studies of Social and Economic Institutions of Imperial China and Vietnam, and the Politics of Heritage in Chinese and Vietnamese societies).
luanvuduong@gmail.com
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BOOKS
Mohini Maureen Pradhan
mohinipcal53@gmail.com
FILM STUDIES
Raka Mukherjee
rakamukherjeeofficial@gmail.com.
RESEARCH
Hemalatha Sridhar
tatsugarde@gmail.com
Hussena Calcuttawala
hussenacal@gmail.com
COLUMNS
Valentina Notts
valentinanotts@gmail.com
PUBLISHING EXECUTIVE
Roshni Subramani
sales.risingasia@gmail.com
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