Rogue Flows

Rogue Flows brings together some of the best and most knowledgeable writers on consumption and cultural theory to chart the under-explored field of cultural flows and consumption across different regions in Asia, and the importance of these flows in constituting contemporary Asian national identities. It offers innovative possibilities for envisioning how the transfer of popular and consumer culture (such as TV, music, film, advertising and commodities) across Asian countries has produced a new form of cross-cultural fertilisation within Asian societies, which does not merely copy Western counterparts.

Rogue Flows is unique in its investigation of how “Asianness” is being exploited by Asian transnational cultural industries and how it is involved in the new power relations of the region. It is an important contribution to the literature of Asian cultural studies.

Koichi Iwabuchi is Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Monash University. He is a chair in Media and Cultural Studies and the director of Monash Asia Institute. Stephen Muecke is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Mandy Thomas is Executive Director, Humanities and Creative Arts, Australian Research Council, Canberra, Australia.

“Rogue Flows is a valuable addition to the existing literature on global popular culture. What distinguishes this book is its focus on Asia (however unsafe a signifier this may now be), not only in contrast to a non-Asian West, but also as a complex web of internal relationships. This allows the authors of these chapters to demonstrate the importance of historic trade patterns around the Indian Ocean, in addition to the more customary focus on the Pacific, to explore the variant social, cultural and linguistic forms of ‘Chineseness’ in different regions, and much more besides.” —Richard King, Department of Pacific and Asian Studies, University of Victoria, Canada; co-editor: Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia

“Rogue Flows is a thoughtful and engrossing series of interventions on the nature of commerce in modern Asia. Its editors are prominent scholars in the fields of culture and anthropology, and their collective expertise has produced a work of subtle contradiction and challenge.” —Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Professor of Communication and Culture and Director of the Centre for Trans/forming Cultures, University of Technology, Sydney.