In this pathbreaking collections of essays, Canada-based Chinese scholar Simin Li explores the latest insights into information, knowledge, political communication, and identity in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and their neighbors, friends, and adversaries. Discourses of Asian Societies follows the social dynamics of these East Asian nations and reflects their recent political discourses and civil practices, grouped into four themes: memory and diaspora, civil practice and discourse in China, political discourses in Hong Kong, and youth identity and nationalism in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

In this stimulating and timely book, Scott Bailey, an American teaching Russian and Eurasian history in Japan, traces the history of the dynamic Russian Geographical Society, which carried out major research expeditions to Central Eurasia during the second half of the nineteenth century. The immediate goal of its expeditions was to collect ethnographic, geographic, and natural-scientific information on these regions and their peoples. Their wider benefits established and extended Russia’s imperial control in Central Eurasia, including some regions under direct or indirect Chinese control.

In this exciting new book, Taiwanese scholar Catherine Kai-Ping Lin examines Taiwan’s diplomatic history since the 1970s through the lens of sports in the development of nationalism in foreign relations. Since 1971, when Taiwan lost its United Nations seat to the communist People’s Republic of China, the country has gradually shifted its foreign policy.

Vietnam has claimed the Paracel and Spratly Island groups for hundreds of years. China’s invasion and capture of the Paracels from South Vietnam in 1974, and its ongoing occupation of the Spratlys, have created increasing opposition and anger not only among Vienamese citizens but worldwide. This book insists that China’s illegal violation of Vietnamese sovereignty rights in the Paracels and Spratlys has included serious human rights violations and decelerated the process of human emancipation.

In this penetrating study, Mohd Aarif Rather tackles the problem of the Kashmir Valley, one of the most complex situations in international politics, from the perspective of human security. The Kashmir conflict involves disputed borders between two nuclear power, India and Pakistan, and a local population that has become increasingly alienated from Indian federal rule. Kashmir has also witnessed intense militarization, resulting in various security issues,problematized identities, and disputed demarcation of frontiers.

In this fascinating new study, Aneeda Jan examines an enduring problem prevailing on an international scale. In the absence of any comprehensive approach, the phenomenon of honor killings is mainly viewed as a social menace than a criminal act demanding global solutions. Why is the menace of honor killing so rampant? How can we analyze or focus on social and legal measures adopted by different countries to prevent honor killings? To what extent have judicial bodies provided guidance to set standards regarding the prevention and control of honor killings?

Eric Cunnigham’s exciting new book combines a new translation of the Chinese classic Daodejing with a synthetic interpretation of the Dao. It innovatively employs the interweaving perspectives of Anthroposophy and esoteric world history. Among the inspirations for this work’s unique reading of the verses of the Daodejing is the speculation of contemporary esoteric scholars that the Yellow Emperor of Chinese mytho-history was actually a human incarnation of the spirit known elsewhere as Lucifer.

More than 13,000 people lost their lives and many others suffered in other ways during the Maoist-led armed conflict that lasted for ten years (1996-2006) in Nepal. Many people are still missing and many more have been displaced. The lives of women in particular have been affected, with a heightened prevalence of gender-based violence during the armed conflict and post-conflict transition period. The warring sides used gendered strategies of the war wage war against each other and this book deals about the implications of such tactics.

In the mid-20th century, Korea was dubbed the last custodian of Confucianism, but it is now very hard to even call the country a truly Confucian society. Following this argument, Quo Vadis Korea? explores critically how some five decades of breakneck industrialization and unbridled modernization could ineluctably change the nation so fundamentally that their repercussions now sharply negate many basic principles of Confucianism in one way to another.

This fascinating study discusses the history of Japanese Catholic intellectuals and their reception of the spirit and ideas of John Henry Newman in historical, geopolitical and cultural contexts. Newman, living in the nineteenth century, discussed issues critical to his age such as liberalism, secularism, education, conscience, and faith. Many scholars living in different ages and nations have been attracted to his works.