Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / Gregory S. Poole and Ya-chen Chen -- Introduction / Gregory S. Poole and Ya-Chen Chen -- The Japanese Professoriate / Roger Goodman -- Administrative Work as Reform in Japanese Higher Education / William Bradley -- Faculty Members at a Japanese Private University / Gregory S. Poole -- Ideologies and Practices of Naming in a Cross-Cultural Educational Context / Debra J. Occhi -- Retooling Japan for the 21st Century / Philip Maclellan -- Hong Kong Chinese Professors within the “Western” University Model / Gordon Mathews -- The Narrowing of Intellectual Space by Western Management Discourses / Angel Lin -- Toward a More Complete Understanding of Chinese Academic Feminism / Ya-Chen Chen -- From “Instructors” to “Researchers” / Hongli Li -- Local Thinking, Global Dreams / J. S. Eades -- About the Authors / Gregory S. Poole and Ya-chen Chen -- Index / Gregory S. Poole and Ya-chen Chen.

Although scholars in various academic fields have a keen interest in the social institutions that reproduce the university system, generally their gaze has been averted from a close analysis of the professors themselves. This volume aims to initiate a project of describing academic traditions at universities in East Asia. The present neoliberal discourses of university reform amplify the need for just such an ethnographic study of the professoriate. How does change toward institutional models resembling the Western university affect the traditional, local cultures of the professoriate in Asia? The ten authors first document changes to both the workplace and workers and then analyze how these reforms have affected the very nature of academic work and scholarship in East Asia. This volume is of special interest to scholars in the fields of comparative education, Asian Studies, and sociocultural anthropology as well as academic and administrative staff employed at universities in Asia.