Transforming Asia
About the Book Series
Asia is often viewed through a fog of superlatives: the most populous countries, lowest fertility rates, fastest growing economies, greatest number of billionaires, most avid consumers, and greatest threat to the world’s environment. This recounting of superlatives obscures Asia’s sheer diversity, uneven experience, and mixed inheritance.
Amsterdam University Press’s Transforming Asia series publishes books that explore, describe, interpret, understand and, where appropriate, problematize and critique contemporary processes of transformation and their outcomes. The core aim of the series is to finesse ‘Asia’, both as a geographical category and to ask what Asia’s ‘rise’ means globally and regionally, from conceptual models to policy lessons.
Visual Interrogations of Femininities in the Malay World: Camera, Chimera and Colonisation
1st Edition
By Maznah Mohamad, Bahar Gürsel, Suriani Suratman
May 27, 2026
This book curates and examines colonial-era photographs from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries sourced from photo-archives of former British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, uncovering how femininities in the Malay world are represented through visual imagery and their role in ...
Development on Loan: Microcredit and Marginalisation in Rural China
1st Edition
By Nicholas Loubere
January 10, 2026
Key to China's plans to promote rural development is the de-marginalisation of the countryside through the incorporation of rural areas into the urban-based market-oriented financial system. For this reason, Chinese development planners have turned to microcredit -- i.e. the provision of ...
China's Political Worldview and Chinese Exceptionalism: International Order and Global Leadership
1st Edition
By Benjamin Ho
January 09, 2026
China's Political Worldview and Chinese Exceptionalism: International Order and Global Leadership' uses the notion of Chinese exceptionalism as a framework to analyze China's international politics and foreign policy. This book argues that China's approach to international relations is best ...
Land, Life, and Emotional Landscapes at the Margins of Bangladesh
1st Edition
By Éva Rozália Hölzle
January 09, 2026
Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in the north-eastern borderlands of Bangladesh, this book focuses on the everyday struggles of indigenous farmers threatened with losing their land due to such state programmes as the realignment of the national border, ecotourism, social forestry and ...
Living Standards in Southeast Asia: Changes over the Long Twentieth Century, 1900-2015
1st Edition
By Anne Booth
January 09, 2026
Living Standards in Southeast Asia: Changes over the Long Twentieth Century, 1900-2015 examines changes in living standards across the ten countries of Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) from the early years of the ...
Money and Moralities in Contemporary Asia
1st Edition
Edited
By Lan Anh Hoang, Cheryll Alipio
January 09, 2026
Money and Moralities in Contemporary Asia provides original, nuanced insights into social meanings of money and wealth in moral economies of Asia. Through case studies from South and Southeast Asia, the collection sheds important light on how the new mobilities and wealth created by neoliberal ...
Spain, China, and Japan in Manila, 1571-1644: Local Comparisons and Global Connections
1st Edition
By Birgit Tremml-Werner
January 09, 2026
Spain, China and Japan in Manila, 1571—1644 offers a new perspective on the connected histories of Spain, China, and Japan as they emerged and developed following Manila's foundation as the capital of the Spanish Philippines in 1571. Examining a wealth of multilingual primary sources, Birgit ...
Asian Smallholders in Comparative Perspective
1st Edition
Edited
By Eric Thompson, Jamie Gillen, Jonathan Rigg
December 01, 2025
Asian Smallholders in Comparative Perspective provides the first multicountry, inter-disciplinary analysis of the single most important social and economic formation in the Asian countryside: the smallholder. Based on ten core country chapters, the volume describes and explains the persistence, ...
Dynamics of Democracy in Timor-Leste: The Birth of a Democratic Nation, 1999-2012
1st Edition
By Rui Feijo
December 01, 2025
The Indonesian province of Timor-Leste made international news when it decided to break away from Indonesia in 1999. The decision sparked deadly rampages by pro-integrationist militias, violence that only abated when the UN sent a force to maintain peace and help ease the way to actual independence...
Sanctions with Chinese Characteristics: Rhetoric and Restraint in China's Diplomacy
1st Edition
By Angela Poh
December 01, 2025
The view that China has become increasingly assertive under President Xi Jinping is now a common trope in academic and media discourse. However, until the end of Xi Jinping's first term in March 2018, China had been relatively restrained in its use of coercive economic measures. This is puzzling ...
Timor-Leste’s Long Road to Independence: Transnational Perspectives
1st Edition
Edited
By Zelia Pereira, Rui Graça Feijó
December 01, 2025
From a much neglected Portuguese colony to independence, Timor-Leste travelled a belated, long and troubled journey that included a 24-year Indonesian occupation. A classic process of European decolonization (1974–1975) was followed by a nationalist struggle against “Third World Colonialism” (1975–...