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The purpose of this paper is to review the current status of collaboration in cultural heritage preservation in East Asia, including digital projects, and to suggest practical improvements based on a cultural structuralism perspective.

Through exploratory research, the paper addresses aspects for successful collaboration in cultural heritage digitisation in East Asia.

The paper indicates the difference in collaboration of cultural heritage digitisation between regions such as Europe and the unique situation in East Asia.

If collaboration between the countries of East Asia was implemented then such a community could deal with the issues of cultural heritage by having a standard scheme or policy.

There has been little literature published on East Asian cultural heritage initiatives, particularly in the area of digitisation and digital preservation.

This paper aims to examine a copy Hiraga Gennai wrote advertising the toothpowder brand Sosekiko in terms of its target audience, product decisions pertaining to branding and packaging, pricing and advertising objectives and message appeals. A masterless samurai in the eighteenth century, Hiraga Gennai is considered Japan’s first advertising copywriter. Life of the versatile Renaissance man Gennai and the influences of his accomplishments on advertising in following generations are briefly discussed.

The research draws from a sampling of classical and contemporary literature as well as the interpretation of the images shown here. Visual content is described and analyzed as well.

Gennai’s witty and humorous advertising copy for handbills attracted the townspeople of Edo. The toothpowder market was mature and competitive, and Gennai’s copy emphasized differentiation through packaging and volume discount rather than ingredients. The advertising copy has culturally unique aspect: It appeals to the audience’s ninjo, or feelings of humanity, and explicitly solicited disseminating positive word-of-mouth by the audience.

This research shows that activities resembling more contemporary marketing practices, such as advertising and branding, for consumer products such as toothpowder existed in eighteenth-century Japan, more than a century prior to the paradigmatic development of marketing concept. The possibility for Gennai as a potential strategic marketing planner and implementer, in addition to advertising copywriter, is researched and analyzed.

The purpose of this paper is to offer novel insights into: knowledge of proto-feminism through description and analysis of the rule of the seventh century female Emperor Wu Zetian; postcolonial theory by revealing the existence and proto-feminist activities of a non-western female leader; and the literature on gender and invisibility through a study of a leading figure that is relatively unknown to western feminists and is even, in feminist terms, something of a neglected figure.

In order to examine Wu’s proto-feminist practices as recorded in historical materials, we use critical hermeneutics as a tool for textual interpretation, through the following four stages: choosing texts from historical records and writings of Wu; analyzing the historical sociocultural context; analyzing the relationship between the text and the context; and offering a conceptual framework as a richer explanation.

Wu’s life activities demonstrate proto-feminism in late seventh century China in at least four aspects: gender equality in sexuality, in social status, in politics, and women’s pursuit of power and leadership.

Future research may dig into the paradox of Wu’s proto-feminist practices, the relationship between organizational power and feminism/proto-feminism, and the ways in which Wu’s activities differ from other powerful women across cultures, etc.

The study encourages a rethink of women and leadership style in non-western thought.

The study supports Calás and Smircich’s 2005 call for greater understanding of feminist thought outside of western thought and a move to transglobal feminism.

This study recovers long lost stories of women leadership that are “invisible” in many ways in the historical narratives, and contributes to postcolonial feminism by revealing the existence of indigenous proto-feminist practice in China long before western-based feminism and postcolonial feminism emerged.

Like many other authors, Briffault recognises the immense contribution of Muslims to civilisation and its influence on the European renaissance. Unlike most other authors, however, Briffault realises that such a contribution was stimulated, motivated and guided by a “new spirit.” Insufficient attention, however, has been given to the source and roots of this “new spirit,” which emerged suddenly and powerfully in the Seventh Century initially among the Arabs who were not known for any significant contribution to science and technology. Nor was the sandy, mostly arid Arabia known as a centre of learning and research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of marketing practice in Britain from the ancient to the early twentieth century. It builds upon the author’s chapter in the 2016 Routledge Companion to the History of Marketing.

This paper is based on a review of secondary history and archaeology literature supplemented by digitised historic newspaper and magazine advertising. The literature is frameworked using a modified version of Fullerton’s 1988 periodization which has been extended to include the medieval and Roman eras.

One of the significant findings of this paper is the key role the state has played in the development of marketing practice in Britain, the construction of pavements being a good example.

Apart from Nevett’s 1982 history of British advertising and the author’s Routledge Companion to the History of Marketing chapter, this is the first survey of the historical development of British marketing practice. It assembles and presents in a useful way important information. This paper will be of interest to marketing historians, especially students and researchers new to the subject.

This paper aims to popularize information retrieval from palm leaf manuscripts among computer scientists to make available the guidance of the age-old heritage in shaping the future.

With computer technology penetrating every aspect of life, information retrieval algorithms can be exploited to help build a system which can dig into the ocean of knowledge from these manuscripts.

The knowledge in them covers all aspects of life. Be it religious beliefs, literature, science, mathematics, or any other. However, due to discontinuation of practice of copying their content on fresh leaves, they now possess a fragile life which needs to be preserved at the earliest. The modern means of digitization can help in their preservation.

The Government of India and other organizations are doing commendable job of preserving and safeguarding country’s heritage and age-old knowledge system through the movement of digitization. In the years to come, the agonizing problem of manuscripts degradation will be eradicated completely. However, next when it will come to mining the knowledge treasure out of these manuscripts, we would be confronted with another helpless situation.

The digitization process would capture the manuscripts from present physical palm leaf to digital image form by clicking high-quality pictures. All the text in a palm leaf will be available in the form of images, but on these images, a simple search for any word would not be possible.

Working towards mining the treasure of knowledge from the palm leaf manuscripts, hordes of challenges have been outlined. Over and above the problem of preventing decay to palm leaf manuscripts is the challenge of deciphering text, image analysis, information retrieval and search. Search is further associated with issues of meaningful and useful extraction through semantic analysis. This paper advocates the dire need for systematic research to be undertaken in this field opening up avenues for past knowledge to guide future prospects in several domains.

This paper seeks to shed light on Islamic perspectives on motivation and personality. It argues that original Islamic thinking in the seventh and eleventh centuries offer useful organizational insights for today's organizations.

This research contrasts an earlier Islamic writing on motivation and personality with contemporary humanistic theories on motivation. This study suggests that religion and spirituality can positively influence behavior and organizational performance.

It shows that religion may provide a potentially useful framework within which to study the relationship between faith and work. It was documented that the Islamic profile of human existence (Mutamainna) challenges most of the prevailing management assumptions on human beings.

Opens up a new avenue for viewing the nature of human existence and dispels the widely held belief that human beings by nature are destined to engage in destructive behavior.

The paper provides original conceptualizations and perspectives that are of value to researchers in the fields of spirituality and international comparative management. The paper offers a new perspective on how the degree of internalization of spiritual needs influences an individual's behavior and expectations.

This chapter focuses on the definition of the Arab World. This is followed by a treatise on the meaning and purpose of comparative education. Next, the origin and development of comparative education in the Arab World is discussed. Trends and progress of comparative education in the region receive significant attention and discussion. Finally, the research methodologies and research interests of comparative educationists are examined.

Revisiting the critical hermeneutics analysis of Wu Zetian’s case in Peng et al.’s (2015) paper, the purpose of this paper is to explore the complexity and paradox of Wu Zetian as a historical figure, and to demonstrate the potential of critical hermeneutics as an innovative methodology to study gender, diversity and history. Moreover, the authors attempt to examine some of the potential challenges and limitations of this methodology and to provide an in-depth account of the socio-politics involved in the research process.

This is a reflexive critique based on a framework of four central concepts of critical hermeneutics (Prasad, 2005): questions of author intentionality, layers of texts, hermeneutic circle and relating to texts.

Critical hermeneutics has great potential as well as considerable challenges and limitations in the research areas of gender, diversity and history.

This paper offers a lucid exposition of what critical hermeneutics is about, how it might be applied to a particular case and potential challenges and limitations of this methodology. The study is intensely reflexive and context oriented, illustrating how a deepened understanding of critical hermeneutics leads to a more informed discussion of the possibilities and limitations of the methodology, and how researchers, editors and reviewers can be influenced by the context in which the study is conducted.