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ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For the precious opportunity to finally sit down and work on this collection of papers, I am most grateful to the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University, which awarded me a visiting research fellowship that I enjoyed from 1 August 2010 to 31 January 2011, and the Ateneo de Manila University, which granted me a sabbatical leave during the 2010–11 academic year. I thank Fr. Ben Nebres SJ for unhesitatingly endorsing my application for the CSEAS fellowship. In Kyoto Juliet, Isaac, and I were recipients of the warmest hospitality , friendship, and intellectual camaraderie of Carol Hau, Hiromo Shimizu, yoko Hayami, Mario Lopez, Kusaka Wataru, Jafar Suryomenggolo , and other colleagues at the CSEAS. Members of the center’s administrative staff, particularly Chiaki Abe and Mami Hamada, were very gracious and helpful with my needs and those of my family. Nick tiongson, tesa tadem, Ed tadem, Shu-yuan yang, and Ambeth ocampo were also affiliated with the center during the period of my visiting fellowship , and I am grateful to them for the many fun times we shared. The six months in Kyoto, where we resided in a rather traditional apartment, brought challenges and great opportunities for a family with a five-year-old as the seasons went from sweltering summer to cool and colorful autumn and finally freezing winter. My wise, devoted, and lovely wife, Jua, was a hands-on mom, creative homemaker, and indispensable soul mate, even as she worked hard on chapters for a pediatrics textbook under conditions not entirely conducive to the task. Initially excited about kindergarten but soon disappointed by his inability to communicate , Isaac endured and eventually broke through the language barrier, intelligently deciphering and adjusting to a strange world where he developed a fondness for karē raisu and the shinkansen. out of our comfort zone, our family thrived by the amazing grace of God. I thank Jua and Isaac for accompanying me to Kyoto, sealing a marvelous experience we would replicate in Barcelona in the summer of 2013. The teachers, parents, and Isaac’s classmates at Futaba yochien openly welcomed the only non-Japanese student in the entire school, x Acknowledgments in the process enabling us to experience and appreciate Japanese society from an exceptional angle. our friends at the Kyoto Christian Fellowship Center were a profound source of delight, comfort, and help at crucial moments, especially Mercy Nuamah, Lois Karhu, tony and Kayoko Barrera, Misae Mamiya, Hiroko James, Leena and Hayato Fukui, and Alayne Madore. Juliet, Isaac, and I were also privileged to have had a special sanctuary in Nagoya in the cozy home of Masa Satake and Angie Da-anoy. The publication of this book received the much-needed momentum that only yoko Hayami and Paul Kratoska could give. I thank the CSEAS Publication Committee and NUS Press for their commitment to pursue this co-publication without further delay. Sunandini Arora Lal was an outstanding and meticulous editor, who rescued me from many errors. My thanks go also to the anonymous referees for comments and suggestions that helped sharpen the introduction to this book. over the years, Ben Anderson has been a beacon of intellectual scrutiny and adventuresomeness. My understanding of nations and nationalism is owed to him, and I hope I do his mentorship some justice. Gavin Kitching’s lessons on class analysis and his later turn to Wittgenstein continue to hold me in good stead. Charles Hirschman, who introduced me to demography and whose broad interests made the field an exciting one, is the pioneer in the analysis of colonial censuses in Southeast Asia. As a peripatetic scholar, I gained true friends and collaborators in Hing Ai yun, Surin Maisrikrod, and Walter Dixon during my teaching careers in Singapore and townsville from 1993 to 2003. I was at the receiving end of many favors from my migrant friends—first in London, then in Madrid, and later in Singapore and townsville. All very different from each other, and even in any one place quite varied, they gave me many happy moments of companionship; I learned a lot from them, my fellow travelers. In townsville this circle of sojourners included Evelyn; Sofia and Peter Chu; John and Jill Logan; Michael and Margie Win; as well as the true locals Geoff and Lorraine Shannon. In writing each of the chapters here I have collected many debts of gratitude. I cannot forget that Brenda yeoh sent me a most encouraging e-mail after she read, on the train to oxford...

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