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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Desiring Revolution And Revolutionary Desire: Gender, Sexuality, And Politics In Three Cultural Revolution Memoirs, Ka F. Wong
Asian Review
The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), one of the darkest moments in twentieth-century Chinese history, has long been seen as a political tragedy linked with power struggles, ruthless violence, and even mass hysteria, but never with "sex." Personal accounts of the events complicate the public narrative, however. In three Red Guard memoirs—Anchee Min's Red Azalea (1995), Rae Yang's Spider Eaters (1997), and Liang Xiaosheng's Confession of a Red Guard (Yige hongweibing di zibai, 1988), the writers drastically contradict the typical perception, recounting revolutionary experiences that were charged with sexual escapades and erotic fantasies. Rather than producing a "sexless" young generation of Red …
The Paradox Of Sacred Consumption In The Case Of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Hidetake Yano
The Paradox Of Sacred Consumption In The Case Of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Hidetake Yano
Asian Review
This study analyzes the complicated relationship between consumer society and religious activities, focusing on the activities of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, a movement whose followers have increased since the 1970s, especially among the new urban middle classes in Thailand. With regard to the activities of the temple, there appear to be two different images. Outsiders criticize the temple for religious practice which promote consumerism and worldly desire, but followers of the temple claim their religious practice is a protection against contemporary stimuli of worldly desire. These views are not necessarily incongruous if the temple's activities are considered within the framework of …
Counter-Movements In Democratic Transition: Thai Rightwing Movements After The 1973 Popular Uprising, Prajak Kongkirati
Counter-Movements In Democratic Transition: Thai Rightwing Movements After The 1973 Popular Uprising, Prajak Kongkirati
Asian Review
After 1973, the Thai student movement was limited and weakened by several right-wing movements that collectively operated as counter-movements. This paper explores the factors and processes that account for the emergence and success of these counter-movements. The impact of the student movement, the changing political rules, and the incapacity of the Thai elite to employ old tactics to crush the student movement created critical conditions for a counter-movement to mobilize. Such conditions, however, cannot guarantee success. The success of the right-wing movements resulted from three factors: 1) effective organization and framing; 2) fragmentation of authority; and 3) state inaction. This …
Introduction, Suwanna Satha-Anand
Severing Body From Mind: The Cartesian Model Revisited, Supakwadee Amatayakul
Severing Body From Mind: The Cartesian Model Revisited, Supakwadee Amatayakul
Asian Review
This paper attempts to reevaluate Descartes's doctrines of mindbody distinctness and mind-body union and their contribution to feminist theories. The understanding that Descartes's substance dualism establishes an absolute demarcation between mind and body is philosophically misleading, especially when his investigations of "genuine human beings" that are capable of having "passions" are considered. Descartes's accounts of the mind-body union and the passions can be interpreted as consistent with feminist tenets and thus deemed a possible resource for feminist philosophical analyses.
Causal Patterns And Chance In The Narratives Of Jorge Luis Borges, Suradech Chotiudompant
Causal Patterns And Chance In The Narratives Of Jorge Luis Borges, Suradech Chotiudompant
Asian Review
The essay investigates how the narratives of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges explore the role of the human mind in problematizing, and intervening in, the causal pattern, thereby exposing the reader to an awareness that causal patterns are no longer a transcendental system, but an open-ended procedure in which our mind always has a part to play. The first part of the essay discusses how Borges, especially in his short story 'Emma Zunz,' views causality as a complex human construct. The second part analyzes Borges's treatment of chance in 'El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan' (The garden of forking …
Crime Of Passion: Justice And Emotion, Nuangnoi Boonyanate
Crime Of Passion: Justice And Emotion, Nuangnoi Boonyanate
Asian Review
This paper argues that, in the case of crimes of passion, women's groups should not demand a single standard of punishment for both men and women, and the abolition of the judge's discretion, but rather a different framework for understanding anger in the case of men and women respectively. The judgment in the controversial "Doctor Killing his Wife" case, committed five years ago in Bangkok, suggests that the understanding of emotion or passion on the pan of the judge, and possibly of the Thai justice system, is non-cognitive. As a result, any deep understanding of the mentality and of the …
The Gender Of The Sangha And The Reform And Bureaucratization Of Thai Buddhism, Varaporn Chamsanit
The Gender Of The Sangha And The Reform And Bureaucratization Of Thai Buddhism, Varaporn Chamsanit
Asian Review
This paper casts a gender lens on the history of the Thai Buddhist monkhood and the monastic order, or the sangha, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that the historical development of the Thai Buddhist sangha has been a gendered process, in which the exclusive maleness of the sangha has had to be maintained and reconsolidated over time to keep it a predominantly male domain. This was particularly the case during the period of Buddhist reform and bureaucratization of the sangha, which is the focus of this paper. In this gendered historical process, women were often …