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Abstracts of Papers in this issue:

In his retrospective paper on Harmony, Conflict, and Antithesis in the Chinese Tradition, Rhoads Murphey, Professor Emeritus of the University of Michigan, argues that the antithesis between harmony and conflict has informed Chinese history since virtually its beginnings. He traces this uneasy confrontation from the manifestations of the Mandate of Heaven to the Communist ideology of the twentieth-century and beyond.

Learning to Read in Late Imperial China by Li Yu examines theories and practices of how children were taught to read in China from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. Focusing on four main pedagogical procedures, namely memorization, vocalization, punctuation, and explication, the paper argues that loud chanting of texts and constant anxiety of reciting were two of the most prominent themes that ran through both the descriptive and prescriptive discourses in the history of reading in late imperial China. This paper won the 2003 MCAA Percy Buchanan Graduate paper prize for China and Inner Asia. Li Yu is an adjunct lecturer at Emory University.

Robert A. Fish, author of Call for Outrage? A Victory for Freedom? The Annexation of Korea and Japanese Participation in World War I as Portrayed in the Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho and Competing Japanese Junior High School History Textbooks argues that the Japanese Ministry of Education approved the use of the Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho, a nationalistic history textbook, for use in Japanese junior high schools beginning in 2002. Its approval sparked protests in both Japan and abroad. This article analyzes how all of the approved textbooks present the history of the Russo-Japanese War, the annexation of Korea, and Japanese participation in World War I. The Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho differs greatly in tone and interpretation from all other approved texts. Criticism of the educational implications of the Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho must be tempered by this fact. The approval of this text, and the reaction within Japan to its approval, illustrates the strength of academic freedom within Japan today. Robert Fish is an assistant professor at Indiana State University.

In Development Issues and the Role of Religious Organizations in Indonesia, Jennifer L. Epley analyzes some of Indonesia's experiences with development issues from a multidimensional perspective. The paper includes a descriptive account of civil society and religious organizations in Indonesia, as well as a preliminary explanation for why the Indonesian government often acts through and with religious organizations. Specifically, the government frequently interacts with religious organizations and in different ways than with secular civil society organizations in areas such as economic and social development. An examination of Muslim organizations, namely Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, and their involvement in the policy arenas of family planning and education is included. Jennifer Epley is a graduate student at the University of Michigan. This paper was the winner of the 2003 MCAA Percy Buchanan graduate student paper for Southeast Asia.

In Collaboration and Resistance: Representations of Colonial Korea, Jon Glade maintains that colonial relations are often viewed as a reductionist binary that pits the colonizer/repressor against colonized/repressed. Applying this type of strict binary to the case of Japan’s colonization of Korea—often done by those who write history from the nationalist paradigm perspective—allows historians to easily place all, or nearly all, Koreans in the category of “resistor,” absolving them of any connection they may have had to collaboratory activities during the colonial period. One area that complicates these overly simple dichotomous images is literature. The literary works analyzed in this paper are discursive spaces that complicate popular or official histories of the colonial period. Jon Glade is a graduate student at the University of Illinois. 

You Xiaoye, author of English Teaching in China: Contributing to an Alternative Modernity, maintains that most discussions about the worldwide spread of English invariably imply that the globalization of English is a phenomenon of European modernity and therefore imperialistic in nature. Breaking away from the traditional conceptualization of modernity as a universalizing social construct, the author advocates including an alternative conceptualization, i.e., the possibility of multiple forms of modernity, in understanding the spreading of English and English teaching. To substantiate this alternative viewpoint, the author traces English teaching across three recent periods of Chinese history: the Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China , and the People’s Republic of China. The brief historical review illustrates that English and English teaching have fully engaged the Chinese people in a discourse of modernity in their own terms. Rather then being imperialistic, English teaching, as part of globalization, has served as a mediating force at the conjuncture of Chinese politics, economics, and culture when the Chinese people struggle to modernize their country. You Xiaoye is a graduate student at Purdue University.

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