Multilingual Readings

<Multilingual Readings Project>

Asian Families and Intimacy:
Asian Intellectual Heritage from 9 Societies
(Provisional title)

Research done in the Asian region has generally gone through the European and North American academia to arrive at other areas of Asia. This mediated communication has its limits, both in terms of approach and quality, and has resulted in the lack of a shared intellectual basis among the Asian region. This situation is the reason for our initiative to propose a new series. In this series we will select, and translate into English, the most important and influential works that have been produced in each of these societies and which are key texts of their intellectual heritage. This collection will benefit Asian scholars in understanding each other and contribute to constructing a shared intellectual basis on which future research collaboration can be built. It will also provide scholars in Europe and other areas of the world who would like to study Asia with an insiders’ view. This series seeks to help build an intellectual basis for an Asian Community.

We propose to open the series with volumes on “families and intimacy” because, firstly, the “family” has often been given a special value in the cultural identity of Asian societies and secondly, because changes in the family are of deep concern to the Asian region today. These two aspects often combine to form our everyday life. In the Asian region responsibility for social welfare is placed on individual families instead of the state (familialism) because welfare policies are based on the supposed centrality of the family in the Asian tradition which is allegedly different from European societies. By collecting works that cover the historical and the contemporary we hope to highlight the diversity and the shared commonalities, in theory and practice, in Asian families.

This collection, which will consist of 6 volumes, will be compilations of important and influential articles published in the Asian region. Five volumes will have special focuses and the first one will contain an annotated bibliography and an overview of existing research in each of the Asian countries.

The Editorial Committee includes the researchers from 9 Asian societies (Korea, Vietnam, Japan, India, Thailand, the Philippines, China, Taiwan and Indonesia) and five Chief Editors will be responsible for editing one volume each:

Chief Editors:
Eun Kisoo (Seoul National University, Korea), Nguyen Huu Minh (Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciencs), Ochiai Emiko (Kyoto University, Japan), Patricia Uberoi (University of Delhi, India), Thanes Wongyannava (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand)

Associate Editors:
Carolyn Sobritchea (The University of Philippines), Hou Yangfang (Fudan University, China), Nagasaka Itaru (University of Hiroshima, Japan), Morimoto Kazuhiko (Kyoto University, Japan), Ayami Nakatani (Okayama University), Gadis Arivia (University of Indonesia), (Taiwanese scholars will be added.)

0) The State of Art
        Annotated Bibliography and Overview of Research in Each Society
1) Family Ideology (Chief editor: Thanes Wongyannava)
        The State, Religion, Law, Foreign Influence
2)Patriarchy and Patrilineality (Chief editor: Eun Kisoo)
        Inheritance and Succession, Ancestor Worship, Extended Family
3) Sexuality (Chief editor: Patricia Uberoi)
        Premarital and Extramarital Relationship, Virginity, Homosexuality, Motherhood?
4) Marriage and Family Life (Chief editor: Nguyen Huu Minh)
        Marriage and Family Formation, Living Arrangement after Marriage,
           Divorce and Remarriage, Gender Division of Work
5) Care Regimes (Chief editor: Ochiai Emiko)
        Familial Care, Intergenerational Exchange, Public Institutions, Domestic Worker

This series will review important published work with insider’s point view especially those written in the local languages. (Not necessarily excluding works by foreign scholars or those written in foreign languages). Our focus is on “intimacy” but we will include the interaction between the private and public spheres, the historical and the contemporary, ideas and reality, paying special attention to the differences in period and class. Sinicization, Sanskritization, Modernization, Globalization are discussed in each context as is gender.

Each volume will include, a substantial introduction by the Chief editor, 18-20 chapters. The total length of one volume should be 350 pages, i.e., 150,000 words.