Fast-paced economic growth in Southeast Asia from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s brought increased attention to the overseas Chinese as an economically successful diaspora and their role in this economic growth. Events that followed, such as the transfer of Hong Kong and Macau to the People's Republic of China, the election of a non-KMT government in Taiwan, the Asian economic crisis and the plight of overseas Chinese in Indonesia as a result, and the durability of the Singapore economy during this same crisis, have helped to sustain this attention.

The study of the overseas Chinese has by now become a global enterprise, raising new theoretical problems and empirical challenges. New case studies of overseas Chinese, such as those on communities in North America, Cuba, India, and South Africa, continually unveil different perspectives. New kinds of transnational connectivities linking Chinese communities are also being identified. It is now possible to make broader generalizations of a Chinese diaspora, on a global basis. Further, the intensifying study of the overseas Chinese has stimulated renewed intellectual vigor in other areas of research. The transnational and transregional activities of overseas Chinese, for example, pose serious challenges to analytical concepts of regional divides such as that between East and Southeast Asia.

Despite the increased attention, new data, and the changing theoretical paradigms, basic questions concerning the overseas Chinese remain. The papers in this volume seek to understand the overseas Chinese migrants not just in terms of the overall Chinese diaspora per se, but also local Chinese migrants adapting to local societies, in different national contexts.

Contents: Chineseness and “Overseas” Chinese Identifications and Identities of a Migrant Community:Five Southeast Asian Chinese Empire-Builders: Commonalities and Differences (J Mackie)Providers, Protectors, Guardians: Migration and Reconstruction of Masculinities (R Hibbins)Tasting the Night: Food, Ethnic Transaction, and the Pleasure of Chineseness in Malaysia (S-C Yao)Multiple Identities among the Returned Overseas Chinese in Hong Kong (J K Chin)Chinese or Western Education? Cultural Choices and Education:Chinese Education and Changing National and Cultural Identity among Overseas Chinese in Modern Japan: A Study of Chûka Dôbun Gakkô [Tongwen Chinese School] in Kobe (B W-M Ng)Chinese Education in Prewar Singapore: A Preliminary Analysis of Factors Affecting the Development of Chinese Vernacular Schools (T B Wee)Hokkien Immigrant Society and Modern Chinese Education in British Malaya (C H Yen)The Search for Modernity: The Chinese in Sabah and English Education (D T-K Wong)Fitting In: Social Integration in the Host Society:Language, Education, and Occupational Attainment of Foreign-Trained Chinese and Polish Professional Immigrants in Toronto, Canada (Z Li)Career and Family Factors in Intention for Permanent Settlement in Australia (S-E Khoo & A Mak)No Longer Migrants: Southern New Zealand Chinese in the Twentieth Century (N Pawakapan)Singapore Chinese Society in Transition: Reflections on the Cultural Implications of Modern Education (G K Lee)
Readership: Academics and lay people who are interested in social studies of Chinese immigrant societies.
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Michael W. Charney

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