Sights of Contestation

The fourteen essays presented in this volume examine the diverse ways in which cultural products are shaped and re-shaped in public spaces in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and some other countries in the Pacific in their continuing encounters with the forces of localism and globalism. Various theories of globalisation have been proposed since the 1970s to predict the trend of development toward homogenisation and explain the tensions hitherto created. However diverse the theories may be, there is one fact that assumes the form of a challenge. As the world has become seemingly less and less divergent in its "shrinkage," the traditional categories of cultural division and opposition, such as the East versus the West, may no longer be adequate in analysing the world we live in today. Paradoxically enough, this very shrinkage and restructuring of the world has the effect of focusing more sharply on questions of localism, identity and cultural roots. This is, in fact, a moment in history when the local and the global are co-implicated in complex and unanticipated ways. How do cultural workers, who are primarily writers, intellectuals, journalists, filmmakers and educators, in Asia and the Pacific respond to this challenging phenomenon? How do they conceptualise it? What are the prospects and problems they foresee with regard to their own societies and cultures? These are questions of utmost significance as one seeks to come to terms with East Asia and the emerging Pacific as a space of contestation and resistance in the global/local process of cultural production. The fourteen essays collected in this book certainly represent the views of some of the prominent scholars in the region.