This text examines the politics of culture and the culture of politics in Pacific Asia through case studies on the South Pacific, China, South Korea, Thailand and Southeast Asia. The contexts and cultures of the chapters are wide-ranging and Callahan skilfully ties them together with the objective of analyzing the relation between the state’s cultural governance and resistance to it.

The themes covered include:

• governmentality and cultural production

• popular culture and resistance

• East/West relations

• gender, identity and democracy

• civil society, social movements and democracy

• national and transnational identity production.

Cultural Governance and Resistance in Pacific Asia addresses the dynamics between Asian studies and cultural studies, and the overlap between comparative politics and international relations, and as such will appeal to students and scholars of Asian studies, cultural studies, comparative politics, sociology and anthropology alike.

William A. Callahan is Professor of International Politics at the University of Manchester, and has taught in Thailand, China, South Korea and the United States. His most recent publication is Contingent States: Greater China and Transnational Relations (University of Minnesota Press, 2004).