This book is an in-depth analysis of the engagements of young women (school girls) with the expectations of prescribed multiculturalism and in this case, riotous behaviours. For these young women, much of their girlhood appears to be spent in observation of highly masculinised behaviours. We are, however, treated to a far more complex story.

In her most recent book geographer Jennifer Hyndman argues that government and international responses to natural disasters cannot be understood outside of global geopolitics and local histories. Hyndman makes an impassioned call for the place of a distinctly feminist geopolitical approach to understanding and practicing humanitarian aid, which takes into account relations of power wherever they occur.

This is an elegant, beautifully written book that is a must-read for anyone doing or writing an ethnography, those interested in national cultures and cosmopolitanism, specialists in Japanese and Filipino studies, and those with interests in transnational feminism and migration.