"This edited volume examines the historical development of Chinese-medium schools from the British colonial era to recent decades of divergent development after the 1965 separation of Singapore and Malaysia. Educational institutions have been a crucial state apparatus in shaping the cultural identity and ideology of ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia. This volume applies various perspectives from education theory to heritage studies in dealing with the cultural legacy and memory of such schools as situated in larger contexts of society. The book offers comprehensive practice-based analysis and reflection about the complex relationships between language acquisition, identity construction, and state formation from socio-political-cultural perspectives. It covers a broad range of aspects from identities of culture, gender and religion, to the roles played by the state and the community in various aspects of education such as textbooks, cultural activities, adult education, as well as the representation of the culture in Chinese schools through cultural memory and literature. The readership includes academics, students and members of the public interested in history and society of Chinese diaspora especially in Southeast Asia. This also appeals to scholars interested in bilingual or multilingual outlook in education as well as diasporic studies"--

This edited volume examines the historical development of Chinese-medium schools from the British colonial era to recent decades of divergent development after the 1965 separation of Singapore and Malaysia. Educational institutions have been a crucial state apparatus in shaping the cultural identity and ideology of ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia. This volume applies various perspectives from education theory to heritage studies in dealing with the cultural legacy and memory of such schools as situated in larger contexts of society. The book offers comprehensive practice-based analysis and reflection about the complex relationships between language acquisition, identity construction, and state formation from socio-political-cultural perspectives. It covers a broad range of aspects from identities of culture, gender, and religion, to the roles played by the state and the community in various aspects of education such as textbooks, cultural activities, and adult education, as well as the representation of culture in Chinese schools through cultural memory and literature. The readership includes academics, students and members of the public interested in the history and society of the Chinese diaspora, especially in South East Asia. This also appeals to scholars interested in a bilingual or multilingual outlook in education as well as diasporic studies.

This book is a case study of policy translation at an elite Japanese university. Through an analysis of the implementation of government-funded reform policies, Black investigates the role of the university in society, the youth-to-work transition, and systems of organisational management operative at the university. Black was present throughout the initial adoption phase of the Super Global project, a policy project implemented at an elite Japanese university, the University of Tsukuba. Aligned with a basic critical realist perspective, the different components of his research are integrated in four levels of analysis: the macro level of policy, the organisation level of the university, the departmental level of the English Section, and the individual level of the student. The analysis and the different sources of data look at internal structures of the organisation and try to understand what the mechanisms of policy translation operative are in the integrated and overlapping complexity of the four levels of analysis. At the core of the research is the objective of understanding why things are as they are. The main theories to emerge from the case study serve to inform the judgements and decisions of practitioners or policy makers in this area. It is a telling case for internationalisation-focused education reform policy in Japan.

Winner of the Comparative and International Education Society’s Globalization and Education SIG Book Award Cambodia for Sale: Everyday Privatization in Education and Beyond details a post-conflict society that socializes children into a world of private rather than public goods. Despite the government's best efforts since the 1990s to re-constitute a functioning system of public services, life remains organized around buying and selling virtually everything, from humanitarian aid to schooling and from religious good deeds to irrigation. Through an ethnography of one village, Cambodia for Sale argues that efforts to rebuild Cambodia after decades of conflict have resulted in various forms of everyday privatization. Although this is most notable in the education system, these practices of privatization can be found in multiple institutions that constitute social life, from the Buddhist pagoda to local government. The various efforts of international development are as much at fault for this reality as are the legacies of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. This argument unfolds through the life stories of six residents of the Preah Go village, who collectively depict everyday life through overlapping village institutions, systems, and histories. This is an insightful and valuable reference for scholars interested in educational development, Southeast Asian studies, and comparative education.

Transnational skilled migrants are often thought of as privileged migrants with flexible citizenship. This book challenges this assumption by examining the diverse migration trajectories, experiences and dilemmas faced by tertiary-educated mobile Malaysian migrants through a postcolonial lens. It argues that mobile Malaysians’ culture of migration can be understood as an outcome and consequence of British colonial legacies – of race, education, and citizenship – inherited and exacerbated by the post-colonial Malaysian state. Drawing from archival research and interviews with respondents in Singapore, United Kingdom, and Malaysia, this book examines how mobile Malaysians make sense of their migration lives, and contextualizes their stories to the broader socio-political structures in colonial Malaya and post-colonial Malaysia. Showing how legacies of colonialism initiate, facilitate, and propagate migration in a multi-ethnic, post-colonial migrant-sending country beyond the end of colonial rule, this text is a key read for scholars of migration, citizenship, ethnicity, nationalism and postcolonialism.

There have been few efforts to overcome the binary of China versus the West. The recent global political environment, with a deepening confrontation between China and the West, strengthens this binary image. Post-Chineseness boldly challenges the essentialized notion of Chineseness in existing scholarship through the revelation of the multiplicity and complexity of the uses of Chineseness by strategically conceived insiders, outsiders, and those in-between. Combining the fields of international relations, cultural politics, and intellectual history, Chih-yu Shih investigates how the global audience perceives (and essentializes) Chineseness. Shih engages with major Chinese international relations theories, investigates the works of sinologists in Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other academics in East Asia, and explores individual scholars' life stories and academic careers to delineate how Chineseness is constantly negotiated and reproduced. Shih's theory of the "balance of relationships" expands the concept of Chineseness and effectively challenges existing theories of realism, liberalism, and conventional constructivism in international relations. The highly original delineation of multiple layers and diverse dimensions of "Chineseness" opens an intellectual channel between the social sciences and humanities in China studies.

China’s rapid economic growth has drawn attention to the Chinese diasporic communities and the multiple networks that link Chinese individuals and organizations throughout the world. Ethnic Chinese have done very well economically, and the role of the Chinese Diaspora in China’s economic success has created a myth that their relations with China is natural and primordial, and that regardless of their base outside China and generation of migration, the Chinese Diaspora are inclined to participate enthusiastically in China’s social and economic agendas. This book seeks to dispel such a myth. By focusing on Guangdong, the largest ancestral and native homeland, it argues that not all Chinese diasporic communities are the same in terms of mentality and orientation, and that their connections to the ancestral homeland vary from one community to another. Taking the two Cantonese-speaking localities of Panyu and Xinyi, Yow Cheun Hoe examines the hierarchy of power and politics of these two localities in terms of their diasporic kinsfolk in Singapore and Malaysia, in comparison with their counterparts in North America and Hong Kong. The book reveals that, particularly in China’s reform era since 1978, the arguably primordial sentiment and kinship are less than crucial in determining the content and magnitude of linkages between China and the overseas Chinese. Rather, it suggests that since 1978 business calculation and economic rationale are some of the key motivating factors in determining the destination and degree of diasporic engagement. Examining various forms of Chinese diasporic engagement with China, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese Diaspora, Chinese culture and society, Southeast Asian culture and society and ethnicity.

This book explores the impact of cultural identity, the internal configurations of the educational field, and the struggles both inside and outside the educational systems of post-World War II Singapore and Hong Kong. By comparing the school politics of these two nations, Wong generates a theory that illuminates connections between state formation, education, and hegemony in countries with dissimilar cultural makeups.

The nineteen articles in this volume examine the ethnic Chinese in Singapore, presenting a fascinating cross-country comparison between the past and the present. While some issues address the issues of tradition and modernity, others trace the process of change, especially economic, social and cultural change in terms of ethnic Chinese society, politics, identity, business and literature in these two countries.