From Beijing to Port Moresby : The Politics of National Identity in Cultural Policies

Essays in this volume focus on Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, and the People's Republic of China as sites rife with discursive complexity. From small to large, young to old, former colony to former colonial power, these six examples do well to represent situated voices and cultural values meted out in a larger "global" space. Contributors trace how "culture" functions in debates about national integration and identity, socioeconomic development and underdevelopment, and tradition and modernity. Each seeks to denaturalize discourses of culture and cultural policy, and so represent culture as social discourse.