2018

Dwi Noverini Djenar, Michael C. Ewing, and Howard Manns. Style and Intersubjectivity in Youth Interaction. Boston/Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 2018.

This book examines how style and intersubjective meanings emerge through language use. It is innovative in theoretical scope and empirical focus. It brings together insights from discourse-functional linguistics, stylistics, and conversation analysis to understand how language resources are used to enact stances in intersubjective space. While there are numerous studies devoted to youth language, the focus has been mainly on face-to-face interaction. Other types of youth interaction, particularly in mediated forms, have received little attention. This book draws on data from four different text types – conversation, e-forums, comics, and teen fiction – to highlight the multidirectional nature of style construction.

Indonesia provides a rich context for the study of style and intersubjectivity among youth. In constructing style, Indonesian urban youth have been moving away from conventions which emphasised hierarchy and uniformity toward new ways of connecting in intersubjective space. This book analyses how these new ways are realised in different text types.

Claire Maree and Kaori Oakno (eds.,). Discourse, Gender and Shifting Identities in Japan: The Longitudinal Study of Kobe Women’s Ethnographic Interviews 1989-2019, Phase One. Routledge Taylor and Francis 2018.

This book is the first in a unique series drawn from an interdisciplinary, longitudinal project entitled ‘Thirty Years of Talk.’ For 30 years, Okano recorded ethnographic interviews and collected data on the language of working class women in Kobe, Japan. This long-range study sketches the transitions in these women’s lives and how their language use, discourse and identities change in specific sociocultural contexts as they shift through different stages of their personal and public lives. It is a ground-breaking, ‘real time’ panel study that follows the same individuals and observes the same phenomena at regular intervals over three decades. In this volume the authors examine the changes in the speech of one particular woman, Kanako, as her social identity shifts from high-school girl to mother and fisherman’s wife, and as her relationship with the interviewer develops. They identify changes in linguistic strategies as she negotiates gender/sexuality norms, stylistic features related to the construction of rapport, the use of discourse markers as she gets older, and the interviewer’s information-seeking strategies.

Akihiro Ogawa (ed.,). Routledge Handbook of Civil Society in Asia. Routledge Taylor and Francis, 2018.

The Routledge Handbook of Civil Society in Asia is an interdisciplinary resource, covering one of the most dynamically expanding sectors in contemporary Asia. Originally a product of Western thinking, civil society represents a particular set of relationships between the state and either society or the individual. Each culture, however, moulds its own version of civil society, reflecting its most important values and traditions.

This handbook provides a comprehensive survey of the directions and nuances of civil society, featuring contributions by leading specialists on Asian society from the fields of political science, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Comprising thirty-five essays on critical topics and issues, it is divided into two main sections.

Abdullah Saeed. Human Rights and Islam: An Introduction to Key Debates Between Islamic Law and International Human Rights Law. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018.

Is there a basis for human rights in Islam? Beginning with an exploration of what rights are and how the human rights discourse developed, Abdullah Saeed explores the resources that exist within Islamic tradition in support of human rights. He identifies those that are compatible with international human rights law and can be garnered to promote and protect human rights in Muslim-majority states.

Relying on significant texts in the Qur’an and hadith, early juristic discourses and modern Islamic scholarship, Saeed explains the compatibilities and incompatibilities between Islamic law and international human rights law. He also deals separately with a number of specific rights that are usually considered somewhat incompatible with Islamic law, such as the rights of women and children, freedom of expression and religion and jihad and the laws of war. Each chapter also contains a case to allow readers to look more closely at issues of relevance.

Human Rights and Islam emphasises the need for Muslims to rethink problematic areas of Islamic thought that are difficult to reconcile with contemporary conceptions of human rights. Students of Islamic law, human rights and Islam in the modern period will appreciate this challenging but accessible look at an important topic.

Tim Lindsey and Dave McRae (eds.,). Strangers Next Door? Indonesia and Australia in the Asian Century. Hart Publishing, 2018.

There are no two neighbouring countries anywhere in the world that are more different than Indonesia and Australia. They differ hugely in religion, language, culture, history, geography, race, economics, worldview and population (Indonesia, 270 million, Australia less than 10 per cent of that). In fact, Indonesia and Australia have almost nothing in common other than the accident of geographic proximity. This makes their relationship turbulent, volatile and often unpredictable.

Strangers Next Door? brings together insiders and leading observers to critically assess the state of Australia–Indonesia relations and their future prospects, offering insights into why the relationship is so important for Australia, why it is so often in crisis, and what this means for the future. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the Indo-Pacific region, Southeast Asia, Australia and Indonesia, and each country’s politics, economy and foreign policy.

Thomas Reuter. Rumah Leluhur Kami: Kelebihdahuluan dan Dualisme dalam Masyarakat Bali Dataran Tinggi. Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia, 2018.

Rumah Leluhur Kami is an ethnographic about the Bali Mountain Community (Bali Aga), an ethnic group that has a unique history and culture as native to the island of Bali. In a popular notion of Balinese identity, highland people are presented as a conceptual counterpart to castles built in the lowlands of the southern island of Bali by newcomers from the Javanese kingdom, Majapahit. Hidden in the cultural shadows of the palace, the world of Bali’s highlands has been largely neglected, even though Bali Island is one of the most studied places in the world. This book discusses the social and economic organisation status of the Bali Aga community from the perspective of innovative theories about "overprotection".