Minority Stages

Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display offers intriguing new perspectives on historical and contemporary Sino-Indonesian performance. For the first time in a major study, this community’s diverse performance practices are brought together as a family of genres. Combining fieldwork with evidence from Indonesian, Chinese, and Dutch primary and secondary sources, Josh Stenberg takes a close look at Chinese Indonesian self-representation, covering genres from the Dutch colonial period to the present day. From glove puppets of Chinese origin in East Java and Hakka religious processions in West Kalimantan, to wartime political theatre on Sumatra and contemporary Sino-Sundanese choirs and dance groups in Bandung, this book takes readers on a tour of hybrid and diverse expressions of identity, tracing the stories and strategies of minority self-representation over time. Each performance form is placed in its social and historical context, highlighting how Sino-Indonesian groups and individuals have represented themselves locally and nationally to the archipelago’s majority population as well as to Indonesian state power. In the last twenty years, the long political suppression of manifestations of Chinese culture in Indonesia has lifted, and a wealth of evidence now coming to light shows how Sino-Indonesians have long been an integral part of Indonesian culture, including the performing arts. Valorizing that contribution challenges essentialist readings of ethnicity or minority, complicates the profile of a group that is often considered solely in socioeconomic terms, and enriches the understanding of Indonesian culture, Southeast Asian Chinese identities, and transnational cultural exchanges. Minority Stages helps counter the dangerous either/or thinking that is a mainstay of ethnic essentialism in general and of Chinese and Indonesian nationalisms in particular, by showing the fluidity and adaptability of Sino-Indonesian identity as expressed in performance and public display.

The Second Edition of this award-winning volume in the field of language rights and language policy is a timely and useful revision of its core arguments and examples, addressing new theoretical and empirical developments since its initial publication.

In reviewing the international literature on this vital subject, this book examines three groups who seem most affected by unfair language practices in education: women and girls; minority cultural groups; and minority social groups.

All over the world, in the most varied contexts, contemporary theatre is a rich source for increasing the visibility of communities generally perceived by others as minorities, or those who see themselves as such. Whether of a linguistic, ethnic, political, social, cultural or sexual nature, the claims of minorities enjoy a privileged medium in theatre. Perhaps it is because theatre itself is linked to the notions of centre and periphery, conformism and marginality, domination and subjugation – notions that minority theatre constantly examines by staging them – that it is so sensitive to the issues of troubled and conflicted identity and able to give them a universal resonance. Among the questions raised by this volume, is that of the relationship between the particular and the more general aims of this type of theatre. How is it possible to speak to everyone, or at least to the majority, when one is representing the voice of the few? Beyond such considerations, urgent critical examination of the function and aims of minority theatre is needed. To what kind of public is such drama addressed? Does it have an exemplary nature? How is it possible to avoid the pitfalls and the dead end of ghettoization? Certain types of audience-specific theatre are examined in this context, as, for example, theatre as therapy, theatre as an educational tool, and gay theatre. Particular attention is paid to the claims of minorities within culturally and economically dominant western countries. These are some of the avenues explored by this volume which aims to answer fundamental questions such as: What is minority theatre and why does theatre, a supposedly bourgeois, if not to say elitist, art form, have such affinity with the margins? What if, particularly in contemporary society, the theatre as a form, were merely playing out its fundamentally marginal status? The authors of these essays show how different forms of minority theatre can challenge cultural consensus and homogenization, while also aspiring to universality. They also address the central question of the place and status of apparently marginal forms of theatre in the context of globalization and in doing so re-examine theatre itself as a genre. Not only do they illustrate how minority theatre can challenge the dominant paradigms that govern society, but they also suggest their own more flexible and challenging frameworks for theatrical activity.

Decomposition of Alloys: The Early Stages contains the proceedings of the 2nd Acta-Scripta Metallurgica Conference held in Sonnenberg, Germany, on September 19-23, 1983. Contributors discuss the early stages of decomposition in alloys, placing emphasis on the unsolved problems of the field, rather than on the solved ones. This book has 36 chapters and opens with a discussion on developments in the theory of the kinetics of first-order phase transitions, followed by an analysis of metastability and spinodal nucleation; neutron scattering during decomposition of aluminum alloys; Ostwald ripening of precipitates; and phase stability under irradiation. The next chapters explore decomposition processes in Al-Zn alloys; thermal decomposition in Cu-Ni-Fe alloys; and the initial stages of discontinuous precipitation reactions. Other papers focus on the mechanisms of plate precipitate growth; spinodal decomposition and continuous ordering; and early stages of decomposition in Ni-Al single crystals. This monograph will be of interest to students and practitioners of physics and metallurgy.