Complementing established work on Asian cities, social change and transformation in the Asia Pacific and cultural politics in Asia, this work will be of interest to students, researchers and academics in the field of Asian studies, Asian cultural studies, urban geography, urban studies, anthropology, sociology and cultural studies.

This book seeks document urban experiences of dissent and emergent resistance against disjunctive global and local flows that converge and intersect in some of Asias fastest growing cities.

This book documents urban experiences of dissent and emergent resistance against disjunctive global and local capital, technology and labour flows that converge and intersect in some of Asia’s fastest growing cities. Rather than constructing occupants of the city as simply passive victims of globalisation or urbanisation, it presents ways in which people are using everyday strategies embedded in cultural practice to challenge dominant socio-economic and political forces impacting on urban space. Taking the city as a site of contestation and a stage where social conflicts are played out, the book highlights the connections between urban power and dissent; the nature and impact of resistance; how the spatiality and built environment of the city generates conflict and, conversely, how protagonists use the cityscape to stage their everyday and public dissent. The contributors explore the conditions, strategies, and outcomes of such dissent and forms of cultural resistance, and explore the following themes: the impact of urban development, gentrification and ghetto-isation; urban counter narratives and the re-imagining of city spaces; the role of grassroots activism and social movements; cultural resistance in the creation of neighbourhoods and communities; the impact of gender, class and the politics of identity on forms of dissent; the formation of transgressive spaces.

While there is no lack of studies on Asian cities, the majority focus on financial districts, poverty, the slum, tradition, tourism, and pollution, and use the modern, affluent, and transforming Western city as the reference point. This vast Asian empirical presence is not complemented by a theoretical presence; academic discourses overlook common and basic urban processes, particularly the production of space, place, and identity by ordinary citizens. Switching thevantage point to Asian cities and citizens, Transforming Asian Cities draws attention to how Asians produce their contemporary urban practices, identities, and spaces as part of resisting, responding to, andavoiding larger global and national processes. Instead of viewing Asian cities in opposition to the Western city andusing it as the norm, this book instead opts to provincialize mainstream and traditional knowledge. It argues that the vast terrain of ordinary actors and spaces which are currently left out should be reflected in academic debates and policy decisions, and the local thinking processes that constitute these spaces need to be acknowledged, enabled, and critiqued. The individual chapters illustrate that "global" spaces are more (trans)local, traditional environments are more modern, and Asian spaces are better defined than acknowledged. The aim is to develop room for understandings of Asian cities from Asian standpoints, especially acknowledging how Asians observe, interpret, understand, and create space in their cities.

Despite China's recent emergence as a major global economic and geopolitical power, its association with counterfeit goods and intellectual property piracy has led many in the West to dismiss its urbanization and globalization as suspect or inauthentic. In Underglobalization Joshua Neves examines the cultural politics of the “fake” and how frictions between legality and legitimacy propel dominant models of economic development and political life in contemporary China. Focusing on a wide range of media technologies and practices in Beijing, Neves shows how piracy and fakes are manifestations of what he calls underglobalization—the ways social actors undermine and refuse to implement the specific procedures and protocols required by globalization at different scales. By tracking the rise of fake politics and transformations in political society, in China and globally, Neves demonstrates that they are alternate outcomes of globalizing processes rather than anathema to them.

This volume explores how migration is playing a central role in the renewing and reworking of urban spaces in the fast growing and rapidly changing cities of Asia. Migration trends in Asia entered a new phase in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War which marked the advent of a renewed phase of globalization. Cities have become centrally implicated in globalization processes and, therefore, have become objects and sites of intense study. The contributors to this book reflect on the impact and significance of migration with a particular focus on the contested spaces that are emerging in urban contexts and the economic, social, religious and cultural domains with which they intersect. They also examines the roles and effects of different forms of migration in the cauldron of urban change, from low-skilled domestic migrants who maintain a close engagement with their rural homes, to highly skilled/professional transnational migrants, to legal and illegal international migrants who arrive with the hope of transforming their livelihoods. Providing a mosaic of insights into the links between migration, marginalization and contestation in Asia’s urban contexts, Asian Cities, Migrant Labor and Contested Spaces will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, migration studies, urban studies and human geography.

"Examines contemporary consumption practices in South Korea, China, India, Japan, and Singapore and both updates and extends popular culture studies of the region. Through an interdisciplinary lens, this collection of essays explores how recent advances and shifts in information technologies and globalization have impacted cultural markets, fashion, the digital generation, mobile culture, femininity, matrimonial advertising, and a film actress' image and performance."--Publisher's description.