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approaches in examining the treatment and mistreatment of workers in theworkplace. In addition, this section offers major comparisons between localdomestic workers, past and present, and so-called foreign maids.

The last three chapters of this volume focus on countries where transnational

domestic workers are absent, due in part to ideological formation such as Japansrysai kenbo and to policies that restrict foreign workers, as in the case ofAustralia. The chapter on South Korea seems to be an exception in whichH. Lee shows the eventual replacement of Filipinas by a small group ofKorean Chinese trickling into a country that still does not prefer live-in outsiders.

Rather than seeing women domestic workers as passive victims of mistreat-ment and discrimination, this volume documents the strength and supportivenetworks that workers possess in their host countries. Countries such as HongKong and Malaysia allow nongovernmental organizations to operate, but

countries such as Singapore and Bangladesh offer very minimal activist organiz-ing opportunities. Although M. M. B. Asis in her chapter plants the seed of hopein the formation of the Magna Carta for Household Helpers/Domestic Workers,it is not clear to the reader whether it has been adopted and enforced by thegovernment and recruitment agencies in the Philippines and whether othercountries will also follow suit. Similarly, the United Nations InternationalConvention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and All Members of TheirFamilies is mentioned in passing by several authors. We know that only twosending countriesSri Lanka and the Philippineshave ratied the conventionbut not enough to know the benets the convention has provided to workers andtheir families and how the convention might better serve its purpose.

Despite some of these shortcomings, this volume is still a welcome additionto the area of migration studies. The volume provides a framework for under-standing the complexity the state plays in the life and work of women and thecare industry. Students, both undergraduates and graduates, taking courses onglobalization and migration, world development, and gender studies will ndthis book valuable, although these collected works will best serve those with aclose knowledge and interest in the ongoing migration of women across theglobe.

STACEYG. H. YAPPlymouth State University

Multiculturalism in Asia. Edited by WILL KYMLICKA and BAOGANG HE.New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xi, 364 pp. $99.00 (cloth);$35.00 (paper).doi: 10.1017/S0021911807000113

Over the years, Western generalizations about certain Asian countries, suchas Thailand or Japan as remarkably homogenous have become less common

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sense of the ofcial recognition and accommodation of cultural diversity bynational authorities. This book offers engagements with the topic of multicultur-alism from three partially connected perspectives: historical, theoretical, and eth-nographically critical. To varying degrees, all the chapters situate cultural

diversity historically in their separate case studies. In addition to countrystudies on China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, and six countries in Southeast Asia(Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand), there is onechapter on foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Kymlickas chapter on liberal multiculturalism offers the second key elementof the book, a discussion of the fundamental aspects of multiculturalism thatjuxtaposes Asian examples with Western ones. The question of the relative t ofWestern notions in Asian societies may suggest the Asian valuesarguments ofMalaysias Mahathir Mohamad and Singapores Lee Kuan Yew, which declared

Asian speci

city to justify authoritarian rule and a disregard for certain standardsregarding human rights. The contributors sidestep that issue for various goodreasons, but many of them offer critical engagements with the topic of multicul-turalism and its Western assumptions. It is here that Ind the book most reward-ing, descriptively and analytically. It is not a given that multiculturalism, as theterm is understood, delivers on its supposed promise of liberal improvement topreviously authoritarian or unjustly monocultural societies. This expectation,which may be the crux of the matter, imports a particular understanding ofhistory (past, present, and future) and social life in terms of ethnocultural unitsas interest groups vis--vis national governments. To at least some extent, thisnotion rests on a triumphalist reading of Western history as the progressiveunfolding of democratic rights and recognition, of steps that offer guidelinesand measures of achievement (and failure) for the rest of the world.

As Kymlicka lays outthe Western experienceof multiculturalism, there hasbeen an important shift from suppressing subnational agitation for recognitionand rights toward a commitment to accommodating it in terms of multinationfederalism (p. 23). Increasingly, too, Virtually all Western democracies thatcontain sizeable substate nationalist movements have moved [toward a] combi-nation of territorial autonomy and ofcial language status for substate national

groups (p. 24). Likewise with indigenous groups, the pattern in all Westerndemocracieshas been a shift from marginalization to the idea that indigenouspeoples must have the land claims, cultural rights, (including recognition ofcustomary law) and self government rights needed to sustain themselves as dis-tinct societies(pp. 2425). In their introduction, the editors state that for thosecountries in Asia that are moving down the path of democratization, there are fewother examples of how to manage ethnic diversity in a democratic framework(p. 6). While the accommodation of multiculturalism followed democratizationin the West, in many Asian settings, the two dynamics are occurring simul-

taneously and sometimes in the opposite sequence (p. 10). Taken together,these remarks, which view Asian societies in terms of the stages of theWestern experience evoke earlier expressions of evolutionism both the

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Concepts such as multiculturalism and democracy may import various biasesthat signify and rank agendas, events, and players and may also invent historicaltrajectories. One of the basic assumptions of the theoretical overview chapter isthat multinational federalism is an achievement that indexes increased democ-

racy. This holds if identity, politics, and the potential for conict fall alongethnic lines. The books clearest examples of such a pattern are Sri Lanka andBurma (Myanmar), but in each case (by Rohan Erdisinha and Alan Smith,respectively), it appears that the political fault line of identity (ethnicity, language,and to some extent, religion) is more a product of particular recent exclusionistpolitics and prolonged warfare than a feature of multiethnic settings. Federalismmay offer a solution to problems created by certain political systems rather thanserve as an independent measure of different nations progressive policies fordealing with diversity.

The classi

cation of groups in terms of political interests is complicated atbest, and the book offers excellent discussions on this topicfor example, regard-ing the Malaysian and Singaporean reproduction of the British colonial divisionamong Chinese, Malay, and Indian populations (by N. Ganesan and Chua BengHuat); the uneven marginality of Burakumin, Ainu, and Okinawans in Japan(Lam Peng-Er); and the Chinese ofcial recognition of diversity, which pertainsto culture shows and other matters that do not interfere with the governmentsagenda, described by Baogang He in a chapter that is partly focused on thecase of Tibet. Mika Toyotas case of Thailand and Vatthana Pholsenas chapteron Laos both show that the classication of peoples is a political act that invites

various politics of misrecognition. While the settings are dissimilar in manyways, both show that the assumption of shared political agenda amongmembers of ethnic categories misconstrues the social reality. Also contrary tothe assumptions of the Western liberal model, Bell and Piper show that the inter-ests of foreign domestic workers in Singapore and Hong Kong are better served bynot choosing the option of citizenship. Their analysis does not endorse discrimi-nation. Rather, it productively questions the academic and other biases abouthow peoples interests are recognized in an increasingly transnational social life.

John Bowens study of Indonesia focuses on the recognition of minority

rights in order to examine the Western liberal model, reasoning that its categor-izations import specic political biases. Like several of the other contributors, heshows that the assumptions of multiculturalists overgeneralize social life and theterms of identity and conict and, importantly, that this also applies to variousWestern cases. The lack of t with the assumptions of ethnocultural unity andpolitics is not a specically Asian matter. Bowen draws on the case of AcehProvince to show that the international categories of minorities and peoplesnot only fail to capture local histories and meanings, but in fact weigh in onone side of a conict(p. 160) between Acehnese nationalists and other residents

of the province. Assuming the primacy of residence, ethnicity, language, and/orreligion may be intrinsically partisan, independently of the analysts intentions,or the substance of the analysis (p 167)

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particular kinds of political actors (and silences others) rather than increasing therights of actors who are already there. The book charts a terrain of contemporarysocial dynamics that should be of general interest to scholars in anthropology,political science, international relations, human geography, history, and related

elds. It is accessible for upper-level undergraduate classes, and the juxtapositionof theory and description is likely to serve well for classroom discussions. Theremay be various mismatches between Western liberal theories and Asian socialrealities. Potentially, it is precisely such uneasy connections that make Asia andits scholars relevant to topics that speak to a much larger audience.

HJORLEIFURJONSSONArizona State University

Beyond Metropolis: The Planning and Governance of Asias Mega-UrbanRegions. By APRODICIOA. LAQUIAN. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow WilsonCenter Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. xxxii,488 pp. $58.00 (cloth).doi: 10.1017/S002191180700125

Beyond Metropolis: The Planning and Governance of Asias Mega-UrbanRegionsexamines policy issues concerned with planning and governance in four-teen of the largest urban regions in Asia, which houses most of the worldsmega-cities with populations of more than 10 million. This book, as part of theComparative Urban Studies Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center, focusesparticularly on policies and planning programs that would bring more viabilityand sustainability to those large, rapidly growing cities. Building on the AsianUrban Research Network project, which during the 1990s analyzed the rapidgrowth of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou-Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City,Bangkok and Jakarta, the book incorporates other large cities in the region,including Delhi, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Osaka, Seoul, and Tokyo,into its comparative analysis of urban development in Asia.

Put simply, this is one of the most comprehensive books on Asian urbaniz-ation, reecting Aprodicio Laquians detailed knowledge of individual citiesand their transformation over time. Through his work in both the UnitedNations Population Fund and the Centre for Human Settlements at the Univer-sity of British Colombia, Laquian has been extensively involved with urban devel-opment and planning issues in large cities throughout Asia. In addition, hehelped, directly and indirectly, to shape various policy agendas for MetroManila for an extended period of time stretching from the mid-1960s toearly 2000.

The book is organized into ten chapters, beginning with an introductorychapter that calls for a new concept to examine urbanization in Asia. Laquiancontends that unlike American or Western European metropolises Asian

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