Asian Cities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 217 pp. (Tables, figures, map, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$121.00, cloth. ISBN 978-94-6298-472-1.
As succinctly presented in the introduction by Gregory Bracken, this book is intended to investigate current practices related to the care of the self in an urban environment. This edited volume consists of the introduction and afterword and eight papers that deal with various regions and topics from different academic fields. As editor, Bracken excellently unites all the papers from a people-centred approach to places and practices in cities. These places include: British architectural style in a Chinese village; a Korean public bathhouse called a jjimjilbang; the alchemical appropriation of the human body and mind and natural elements like water, wood, and stone for self-cultivation; a Hindu crematorium entangled in rapid urbanization; urban cities in India fraught with both the desire for modernity and the violence of a traditional system; an overseas Chinese home in Yokohama; Asian Americans’ mental health situation; and the smart surveillance city of Singapore.
Following a more conventional sense of citizenship are the insightful cases presented in chapters 1, 5, and 8. In the first chapter, Minost deals with Chinese citizens’ daily practices in a new Chinese residential town, Thames Town, Songjiang, in which the architecture is designed with British influence. While Thames Town also attracts many tourists, it has its own residential features. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the author persuades the reader to go deep into the daily lives of residents beyond the dichotomies of authenticity and imitation and West and East. Residents live in Western-style houses but generate their own ways of living. The author calls this “hybridization of spatial practice” (12). In recent years, Chinese national confidence in their economy and culture have been growing and yet copycat culture is still prevalent, often resulting in harsh criticism. Yet, this chapter shows that Chinese urban transformation is less a hierarchical acculturation process than a process of subjective appropriation and hybridization.
In chapter 5, Johri describes young migrants’ struggles to unfetter themselves from caste- and gender-based identities and reinvent themselves in cities in India. However, the author sadly shows that it is often not possible to fully escape from traditional restrictions, resulting in tragic consequences like suicide, rape, or murder in the cities that are supposed to represent modernity.
The authors of chapter 8 depict a futuristic society operated and controlled by sensors and robots. Singapore, a city-state of about 5.45 million people, is well-known as one of the safest countries in the world. It is also one of the most surveilled cities, although it cannot surpass cites in China. More than 100,000 CCTV cameras were installed across Singapore in 2022 to monitor people’s movement. Coupled with various kinds of sensors and individual smart phones, this monitoring technology is reaching levels of perfect surveillance. Here, Alleblas and Dorrestijn question the meaning of human agency in smart cities where a considerable portion of self care is increasingly transferred to technologies.
Reading through subsequent chapters, one might be confused with the concept of citizenship, as presented in the book’s title. Unexpected words such as self-cultivation, multifocal approach to a Korean bathhouse, alchemical practice through ki suryŏn, and crematoria, don’t seem to be explicitly related to the conventional concepts and practices of citizenship. Nevertheless, the reader is introduced to a variety of care practices in very different settings.
Chapter 2, by Hälbig, looks at jjimjilbang (Korean-style public bathhouse and sauna), where after cleansing in sex-segregated spaces, bathers then enjoy food and drink in communal spaces, and even sleep on the floor beside friends or strangers while wearing loose-fitting leisure wear provided by the jjimjilbang. From a multifocal approach, the author sheds light on the production of cultural meaning in terms of people’s spatial experience. As another interesting case, chapter 3 deals with the Korean ki suryŏn, which is a way of self-cultivation towards the transforming of the self. While many Asians are familiar with the concept of ki, not many people are practicing it like the way of GiCheon. This chapter investigates the visual iconography of DVDs that advertise GiCheon and focus on natural elements like water, wood, and stone as instrumental tools for self-cultivation. Based on ancient Asian traditions, the technology of self-cultivation in GiCheon refashions itself in modernity.
In chapter 4, Ikkurthy wonderfully describes Indian funeral spaces that have been influenced by three centuries of religion, region, and time. This investigation draws insight into the architecture of death in Hinduism and the changing meanings of crematoriums and funeral rituals that are now situated at the core of new urban spaces of life inevitably mixed with death.
Chapters 6 and 7 examine the lives of overseas Chinese in Yokohama, Japan and Asian Americans in the United States, respectively. We often hear about the stories of success or failure of those who’ve left their home countries. Beyond such simplified narratives, Elim shows how Chinese immigrants to Yokohama create family, home, and community without losing their cultural identity. In their diasporic life, Chinese education and family-run businesses have played significant roles in maintaining ethnic identity. Meahwhile, chapter 7 deals with Asian Americans’ low utilization of mental health services. Contrary to the Chinese in Yokohama, many immigrants to the US try to assimilate to Western culture, often sacrificing their ethnic identity, which can result in emotional dissonance. Srinivasa and Pasupuleti mention how many mental health cases suffer in silence because they are afraid of stigmatization, and that mental health services are often culturally insensitive.
As Bracken emphasizes in the afterword, each chapter in this book is related to human agency and care practices in specific spaces. Human agency is extended and reinvented through cultural identities and practices; and in some cases, it is transferred to non-human agents, restrained, or even severely violated. Yet, regarding the terms of these practices of citizenship, not all the chapters of this book seem to have been edited coherently. In addition, it is not easy to understand how to associate the practice of citizenship with certain subject matter such as jjimjilbang, ki suryŏn, or a Hindu crematorium. Nevertheless, through all chapters Bracken presents the significance of a people-centred approach in dealing with the role of human agency in ever-changing cities, where citizenship is constantly reconfigured beyond our conventional understanding of it. This book has various tints and shades, which provide the reader an opportunity to engage in both philosophical thinking and emotional connection in regards to human agency and how people struggle to care for themselves in the city.
Woojong Moon