Description

Join the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies for an in depth discussion of the current situation in Burma/Myanmar, featuring three panelists and a discussion. This is the second event in the series, Rohingya in Peril, co-sponsored by the Asian Institute. This workshop features three 20-minute presentations by our panelists, followed by a discussion among the panelists, followed by a Q&A period with the audience. Register for this workshop on Eventbrite by clicking here

John Holt will discuss what contemporary Rohingya political leaders in Yangon and Sittwe are saying about the current crisis, and what progressive monks in Mandalay see to be a way forward. He may also consider a comparative perspective on Buddhist/Muslim tensions in Sri Lanka and/or Thailand.

Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière will consider the re-definition of monastic roles in the transitional Burma/Myanmar. She will focus on a new claim by a range of monks for responsibility in preserving Buddhist national identity in this context, and the rise of an extreme nationalist Buddhism.

Juliane Schober will contextualize the anti-Rohingya violence historically in terms of an extended anti-Muslim sentiment in Myanmar, and show how anti-Muslim sentiments have informed the project of the state for the past century. Specifically, her presentation will look at various registers (ethnicity, gender and law) through which prejudice have been established. She will also discuss why, in their current configuration, these social developments threaten an emerging vision of belonging to a new future for Myanmar that is multi-ethnic and multi-religious.

Panelists’ Biographies
Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière a researcher with the National Center of Scientific Research and is the current Director of the Center of Southeast Asia Studies in Paris.

John Holt has taught at Bowdoin College in Maine since 1978. He teaches courses about Asian religious traditions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as courses on theoretical approaches to the study of religion. He has received numerous research awards, including four fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, two senior fellowships from the Fulbright Program, as well as other national research awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Asian Cultural Council. He has been an editor of Religious Studies Review and was elected as a fellow to the American Society for the Study of Religion in 1995. He is the author of many influential works, including Theravada Traditions: Buddhist Ritual Cultures in Contemporary Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press (2017); Buddhist Extremists and Muslim Minorities: Religious Conflict in Contemporary Sri Lanka (NY: Oxford U. Press, 2016); Spirits of the Place: Buddhism and Lao Religious Culture (HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2009).

Juliane Schober is Director of the Center for Asian Research and Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University where she also directed the graduate program in Religious Studies (2009–2012) and developed a doctoral track in the Anthropology of Religion. She is an anthropologist of religion who works on Theravada Buddhist practice in Southeast Asia, especially Burma/Myanmar. In 2013, Juliane participated in the first IAPP delegation of U.S. universities to Myanmar, organized by the International Institute of Education. She has held leadership positions in the Association for Asian Studies, the American Academy of Religion, the American Anthropological Association, and serves on various editorial boards. Also in 2013, Juliane founded the Theravada Studies Group, an academic organization affiliated with the Association for Asian Studies. The group promotes comparative and scholarly exchanges among social scientists and humanists who work on aspects of Theravada Buddhism in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Southwest China and globally though pilgrimage and diaspora networks. Her most recent book, Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies and Civil Society, was published in 2011 (University of Hawai’i Press).

Description

As the ongoing crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program starkly illustrates, coordinating effective international responses to serious regional challenges can be extremely difficult. Part of the difficulty rests with the fact that in every major geopolitical flashpoint in the region, important countries either stand on opposite sides of the issue or have at best partially overlapping interests.  The United States, of course, has been a key player in every major security issue in East Asia since 1945. It has relied heavily both on its network of bilateral alliances and on its forward presence, primarily in Japan. Its two most important allies in the region are Japan and South Korea, which are not formal allies, but which share a broad range of values and interests. Arguably, there is considerable scope for enhancing security cooperation both bilaterally and trilaterally.  The purpose of the symposium was to explore the possibilities and limits of enhanced security cooperation in East Asia, primarily between these three countries, and in the first instance specifically with respect to North Korea, but also more broadly.  

"The American Approach to Security in Asia" by Professor Peter D. Feaver  Since the end of the Cold War, a bipartisan consensus, more or less, has guided U.S. grand strategy globally, and specifically in the Asian region.  As a candidate, Donald Trump campaigned on themes that indicated he would take U.S. foreign policy in dramatically different directions.  He has made some significant departures in policy, in particular dropping the TPP and withdrawing from the Paris Accords.  And he has made many more departures in rhetoric, in particular in the way he talks about the value of traditional alliances, the goals of international trade, and the way he wishes to confront the North Korean nuclear threat.  Yet overall, have Trump’s policies been more discontinuous or continuous?  I discussed the bidding, how we got here and where American foreign policy appears to be heading, paying special attention to the faultlines within the Trump Administration.  

Peter D. FEAVER (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1990), Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. Dr. Feaver is Director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS) and also Director of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy (AGS). Feaver is author of “Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations” (Harvard Press, 2003) and “Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States” (Cornell University Press, 1992). He is co-author: with Christopher Gelpi and Jason Reifler, of “Paying the Human Costs of War” (Princeton Press, 2009); with Susan Wasiolek and Anne Crossman, of “Getting the Best Out of College” (Ten Speed Press, 2008, 2nd edition 2012); and with Christopher Gelpi, of “Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force” (Princeton Press, 2004).  He has also authored a variety of monographs, scholarly articles, book chapters, and policy pieces on American foreign policy, public opinion, nuclear proliferation, civil-military relations, information warfare, and U.S. national security.  He is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and co-curator of the Elephants in the Room blog on ForeignPolicy.com. From June 2005 to July 2007, he served as Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and Institutional Reform on the National Security Council Staff at the White House where his responsibilities included the national security strategy, regional strategy reviews, and other political-military issues. In 1993-94, he served as Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control on the National Security Council at the White House where his responsibilities included the national security strategy review, counterproliferation policy, regional nuclear arms control, and other defense policy issues.  "History or Security?  Politics and Diplomacy over the Issue of Comfort Women among Japan, South Korea, and the United States" by Professor Naoko Kumagai   This presentation demonstrates how matters of geopolitical security have been able to override the historical issue of comfort women in the Japan-South Korea relationship.  The presentation explores the vicious circle wherein Korean and international criticism of Japan, partly fueled by Korean and international activists, stirred the “revisionist” backlash from Japan and worsened the overall Japan-South Korean diplomatic relationship. The presentation highlighted two distinctive problems in the vicious circle: the balance between reconciliation and factual accuracy and the neglect of moral or legal responsibilities. Japan’s hardliner conservatives havedenied the importance of moral responsibility, while anti-Japanese critics have overemphasized Japan’s legal responsibility. The presentation then examined how and to what extent America’s encouragement of reconciliation between Japan and South Korea, out of security concerns in the face of the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis and the rise of China, has served to ameliorate the problems and facilitate reconciliation.

 Naoko KUMAGAI (Ph.D., Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2009), Associate Professor and Director of the International Relations Program, International University of Japan, Minamiuonuma, Niigata Prefecture. Dr. Kumagai is the author of Jūgun Ianfu Mondai (Chikuma Shinsho, 2014), which was translated into English, "The Comfort Women: Historical, Political, Legal, and Moral Perspectives (English version of Jūgun Ianfu Mondai. Translated by David Noble)” (I-House Press, July 2016), selected for the 2014 LTCB (Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan) International Library for English translation. She published various papers and articles on Japan-Korea relations, forgiveness and reconciliation, international security, humanitarian law, and Japan-India relations. Among her articles are “The Absence of Consensus in Japan over the Issue of Comfort Women–With the Case of the Asian Women’s Fund from the Approach of Ontological Security” (Social Science Japan Journal, July 2015) and “Asian Women’s Fund Revisited” (Asia-Pacific Review, Vol.2, Issue 2, 2014). She is a recipient of the Nakasone Yasuhiro Award Incentive Award in July 2016. Her current research interests include disarmament and international security, weapons research and development, humanitarianism, the protection of civilians in armed conflict, and state sovereignty and transnational civil society.  

"Incompatible National Historical Narratives as an Obstacle to Security Cooperation" by Dr. Seung Hyok Lee.  In the current South Korea-Japan relations, incompatible ‘national historical narratives’ concerning certain past events at the citizen level are an influential factor binding governmental interactions in publicized bilateral issues. However, while the two societies increasingly disagree on the ‘contents’ of their respective narratives, the underlying patterns of how they permeate in each society are similar. The first pattern is a belief in ‘national exceptionalism’, and the second is a belief that their unique historical accomplishments are now being subjected to their neighbour’s distortion. Most citizens in each country, at present, are unaware that the two same ideational patterns are equally at work on the other side.  By promoting Japanese and South Korean public to recognize this fact, rather than focusing on the incompatible contents of the diverging national historical narratives, the two countries could attain a genuine ‘maturation’ in the bilateral relations. This presentation argued that in the long run, this mutual recognition at the citizen level is what will sustain a stable and lasting bilateral cooperation, including in the regional security issues.  Seung Hyok LEE (Ph.D., University of Toronto, 2011), Lecturer in Political Science, University of Toronto-Scarborough, and Associate at the Centre for the Study of Global Japan, Munk School of Global Affairs. Dr. Lee has served as Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Law, Hokkaido University, as well as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace and at the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has also been Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Renison University College, University of Waterloo, and Visiting Scholar at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs. His main research interest is domestic society’s influence on publicized foreign policy issues, with a specific focus on Japan and the Korean Peninsula. He is the author of Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat (University of Toronto Press, 2016), “North Korea in South Korea-Japan Relations as a Source of Mutual Security Anxiety among Democratic Societies,” (The International Relations of the Asia-Pacific), and “Be Mature and Distinguish the ‘Forest’ from the ‘Trees’: Overcoming Korea-Japan Disputes Based on Incompatible National Historical Narratives” (Asteion).  Chair:  David A. WELCH (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1990), Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Endowed Chair Program in Japanese Politics and Global Affairs, University of Toronto; CIGI Chair of Global Security, Balsillie School of International Affairs; Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo; and Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation. Dr. Welch is author of Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (Princeton University Press, 2005), Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge University Press, 1993), and co-editor of Japan as a ‘Normal Country’? A Nation in Search of Its Place in the World (University of Toronto Press, 2011). He has recently been researching and writing on Asia-Pacific Security, with a particular focus on confidence, trust, empathy, threat perception, misperception, North Korea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea.

Description

How can we understand the Pacific, Asia, and the broader world from indigenous perspectives–from the perspective of the people that Westerners claimed to “discover”? This paper turns the tables on stories of exploration by tracing the travels of two Native Hawaiians who traveled the Pacific in the late eighteenth century. Ka Wahine (a commoner and lady’s maid) and Kaʻiana (a male high chief who took an English captain as his lover) traveled to Macao, the Philippines, Pelau, the Aleutians, and Vancouver Island. Their motives, their experiences, and the ways they put their knowledge to use shed light on how knowledge and power were at play in the age of exploration. Placing indigenous exploration at the center of study opens up a much more sophisticated understanding of the forces at play in shaping the modern world and colonial spaces—especially if we use sources in indigenous languages by indigenous people.

Description

This pathbreaking study provides the first comprehensive examination of India-China interactions in the broader contexts of Asian and world history. By focusing on material exchanges, transmissions of knowledge and technologies, networks of exchange during the colonial period, and little-known facets of interactions between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China, Tansen Sen argues convincingly that the analysis of India-China connections must extend beyond the traditional frameworks of nation-states or bilateralism. Instead, he demonstrates that a wide canvas of space, people, objects, and timeframe is needed to fully comprehend the interactions between India and China in the past and during the contemporary period. [...] The author’s formidable array of sources, pulled from archives and libraries around the world, range from Chinese travel accounts to Indian intelligence reports. Examining the connected histories of the two regions, Sen fills a striking gap in the study of India and China in a global setting” (quoted from the blurb). Stewart Beck, former Canadian High Commissioner to India and President and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, and Professor Anup Grewal, Assistant Professor in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, UofT, will join the author Tansen Sen in a discussion of his book. The book will be available for sale at the venue.

Description

Description:

This presentation examines the spread of Chinese temples associated with the veneration of Ruan and Liang buddhas from Sihui County in Guangdong Province, China, through Southeast Asia to the Chinatown in Kolkata, India. Ruan Ziyu and Liang Cineng were followers of the sixth Chan patriarch Huineng (638–713) and are believed to have attained enlightenment and become buddhas during the Song dynasty (960-1279). In the thirteenth century temples dedicated to these two Chinese buddhas were established in the Sihui County. With the migration of people from the region in the nineteenth century, the belief in the two buddhas and the temples associated with them spread to present-day Malaysia and India. These Ruan-Liang temples in foreign settings functioned as religious sites as well as community spaces and heritage markers. By tracing the spread (and evolution) of the Ruan-Liang belief and examining the communal function of the temples through the use of photographs, this paper analyzes the relationship between migration and the diffusion of Chinese religious traditions, the role of temples in the preservation of sub-dialect identity, the mixing of Chinese and local ideas and histories, and the intimate maritime connections between China, Southeast Asia, and India in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

Biography:

Tansen Sen is Professor of history and the Director of the Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai. He received his MA from Peking University and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in Asian history and religions and has special scholarly interests in India-China interactions, Indian Ocean connections, and Buddhism. He is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (2003; 2016) and India, China, and the World: A Connected History (2017). He has co-authored (with Victor H. Mair) Traditional China in Asian and World History (2012) and edited Buddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material, Cultural and Intellectual Exchange (2014). He is currently working on a book about Zheng He’s maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century and co-editing (with Engseng Ho) the Cambridge History of the Indian Ocean, volume 1. He has done extensive research in India, China, Japan, and Singapore with grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Japan Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore). He was the founding head of the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Center in Singapore and served on the Governing Board of the Nalanda University.

Description

BRICS is an association of the world’s five largest emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. It is also an increasingly important international summit institution. Since 2009, BRICS members have met annually at leader summits to promote the interests and role of developing states in global governance. The most recent BRICS Summit in 2017 was hosted in Xiamen, China.

In an increasingly fractured world marked by rising protectionist sentiments, looming trade wars and global threats such as climate change, global health, security challenges, – what unique opportunities and potential does BRICS offer? More broadly, what role do rising powers have in addressing global challenges? What leadership potential does BRICS offer in global governance today? This panel aims to address these questions as BRICS group prepares for its tenth annual summit in July 2018, which will hosted and presided over by South Africa in Johannesburg.

At this event hosted by the BRICS Research Group and Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union, we are honored to be joined by the Consul Generals of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to Toronto. Five (TBC) BRICS Consul Generals will be addressing the U of T community on their vision and contributions to BRICS. Please join us on February 26th, 4-6pm at the Combination Room of Trinity College for this panel event. Please kindly note that only guests who have registered via the Munk School event listing will be admitted to the event.

Description

The Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union (CASSU) warmly invites you to the second event of our Research Seminar Series – “The Director’s Cut: A Historian Examines the Asia-Pacific Through the Lens of Cinema” with Professor Takashi Fujitani.

This research seminar series is brought to you by CASSU, and aims to provide a forum for students who share similar interests in Asian social, cultural, and political affairs to engage in dialogue with faculty members. We hope to provide our peers with the opportunity to better understand the practice of academic inquiry through learning about faculty-level research. In this seminar, Professor Fujitani will speak about his experience researching the history of the Asia-Pacific region, with a particular focus on his interest in cinema and his inter-disciplinary approach to history and film in the context of Asian Studies. Please join us in Room 208N of the Munk School North House on February 28th, from 3-5pm. We hope to see you there!

Speaker Biography

Takashi Fujitani is the Dr. David Chu Professor and Director in Asia-Pacific Studies. His research focuses especially on modern and contemporary Japanese history, East Asian history, Asian American history, and transnational history (primarily U.S./Japan and Asia Pacific). A graduate of UC Berkeley, Professor Takashi Fujitani came to the University of Toronto from the University of California, San Diego, where he was a professor of modern Japanese history for two decades. He has held numerous grants and fellowships, including from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Stanford Humanities Center, and Social Science Research Council. He is also editor of the series Asia Pacific Modern (UC Press). Much of his past and current research has centered on the intersections of nationalism, colonialism, war, memory, racism, ethnicity, gender and cultural production in the Asia-Pacific, as well as the disciplinary and area studies boundaries that have figured our ways of studying these issues.

Description

ABSTRACT
About 45% of foreign residents in South Korea are women, and the majority of them come to South Korea on kinship-related legal status. This talk investigates gendered bordering practices in “temporary ethno-kinship visa programs” which requires migrants to provide proof and justification to immigration authorities when extending their visas. Using extensive ethnographic data, this talk will demonstrate how migrants experience and contest such bordering practices in courts, immigration offices and other government agencies, as well as in their daily lives. Through an in-depth focus on marriage migrants from Vietnam and co-ethnic migrants from China, this talk will discuss how two groups of migrant women make contested kinship claims to the South Korean state:. Using Balibar’s notion of “being a border” and Zelizer’s ideas about the intimate economy, this talk conceptualises the border as a dynamic site where notions of membership, family and speculative capital are contested. Focusing on the technical aspect of defining and adjudicating family through immigration measures will allow us to see the performative account of “governmentality” and procedural contradictions in the grey areas of the law. It will also enable us to analyse state actions and migrant responses to them organically as each traverses justifications of family, immigration and economy.

BIOGRAPHY
Sohoon Lee is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto. Her postdoctoral research project explores the ‘informal’ politics between the migrant care workers and their employers in the liminal space of immigration, social protection and labour. Building upon her PhD thesis, she is currently working on a book manuscript on the temporality of ethno-kinship migration in South Korea through a combination of ethnography, in-depth personal and group interviews and analysis of laws and policies. Her research interests also include multicultural (damunhwa) policies in South Korea, return migrants and bottom-up development in Indonesia, and NGO-Trade Union relationship in migrant movement in South Korea. Prior to her PhD studies, she worked at Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) in areas of ASEAN human rights mechanisms, indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia, and documentation of human rights violation. She has also undertaken consultancies with UN Women, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), and other NGOs to write on topics of migrant domestic workers, intersectionality and discrimination and labour rights protections in South Korea.

Description

Ever wonder why housing prices in Toronto have increased dramatically in recent times? Will housing be affordable in the future? In recent years, many foreign Chinese investors have been purchasing real estate in Canadian cities, namely Toronto and Vancouver. In 2010, Chinese investors spent about $5 billion on foreign real estate investments; in 2016, this figure grew to over $101 billion. Chinese investors around the world are expected to spend up to $1 trillion on real estate in the next decade, in which a large portion will pour into Canada. Although a common explanation for this trend is that Chinese investors are seeking to purchase luxury properties, the CBC has also found that most Chinese buyers are looking for homes under $655,050.

Furthermore, it is commonly believed that much of this real estate sits empty, while these investors are making city housing unaffordable, driving out locals, and harming the Canadian economy. As the Chinese foreign investors in Canada are believed to be reshaping the market, this panel discussion will explore what are the effects of increased foreign investment in Canadian real estate, on the economy and on other Canadians? What laws are in place to protect domestic buyers, if any? Are foreign investors driving up housing prices, or is this a racist explanation that masks other causes of increasingly expensive real estate in Canadian cities? This event will evaluate the truth in common narratives regarding increased Chinese investment in Canadian real estate, and explore what this phenomenon means for domestic buyers and renters.

Panelists:
● James McKellar, Schulich School of Business, York University
Professor James McKellar is the Director of the Brookfield Centre in Real Estate and Infrastructure Schulich School of Business at York University. He was the first Director of the Center for Real Estate at MIT and has held faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Calgary, and as an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University. Professor McKellar has consulted businesses and governments worldwide on real estate matters covering housing, development, finance and investment, asset management, and market performance.

● Lynette Ong, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto
Professor Lynette Ong is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and Director of Munk China Initiatives. Professor Ong researches authoritarian politics and the political economy of development. She is a published author on issues such as local government debt, contentious politics, protest and land reform, state-led urbanization and more.

Synergy Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/168722653772356/.

Description

There have been a number of dynamics impacting the geopolitical landscape in East Asia over the past few years. The most acute – and recent –  examples of this have been the intensifying provocations from North Korea, which continues to look at enhancing its nuclear and missile program. But, there are also a number of other critical changes in the region – from new leadership in South Korea to leadership consolidation in China. The region also continues to adapt to a new administration in the US and its changing views on trade and – perhaps – alliances. All of these factors have made Japan’s geo-strategic environment more complex. How is Japan adapting to this change and what are the tripwires to watch for?  

Speaker Biography:  Jonathan Berkshire Miller is an international affairs professional with expertise on security, defense and intelligence issues in Northeast Asia. He is currently a senior visiting fellow with the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) based in Tokyo and a Distinguished Fellow with the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada. Additionally, he is the Director and co-founder of the Council on International Policy and a Senior Fellow on East Asia for the Asian Forum Japan.  Previously, he was an international affairs fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, and held a senior fellowship (2014 – 2017) with the EastWest Institute and a fellowship on Japan with the Pacific Forum CSIS from 2013 – 2016. In addition, Miller previously spent nearly a decade working on economic and security issues related to Asia with the Canadian federal government.  Miller is a regular contributor to The Economist Intelligence Unit, Foreign Affairs, Forbes and Newsweek Japan. He has also published widely in Foreign Policy, the World Affairs Journal, the Nikkei Asian Review, the Japan Times, the Mainichi Shimbun, the ASAN Forum, Jane’s Intelligence Review and Global Asia and been interviewed extensively by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, CNN, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, the Japan Times, Asahi Shimbun, the Voice of America and ABC News.

Description

Abstract:

In recent years, the task of “restorying” has been identified as an important strategy in making space for the counternarratives of the nation-state from the perspective of Indigenous histories. Here, I use four stories to start to tell a different history of Indigenous Ainu life in Japan. The stories recount Ainu experiences of migration to Tokyo and other cities since the early 1900s. Beyond their narrative content, I explain how these stories are part of a broader political project that urban Ainu leaders have used for over forty years to contest and resist the ‘regionalization’ of Indigenous Ainu affairs to Hokkaido. Using the Ainu situation as my reference point, I develop a comparative conversation about the transformation of Indigenous geographies across the Pacific and elaborate on the fraught politics but also moral value of thinking with urban mobilities. I end with reflections on an exchange between Tokyo Ainu and Montreal Inuit in Osaka in 2003 and its relevance for my current project.

Biography:

Mark Watson is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. His main area of research concerns the comparative analysis of urban Indigenous collectivity, self-organization and mobility. This focus informs broader, on-going interest in practices and theories of action-oriented and collaborative research.

Description

Abstract:
Attempts to explain China’s capitalist revolution all suffer from a “blind men and elephant” problem: depending on when and where one looks within China, every theory is development is correct yet none is complete. In other words, one can find snapshots of evidence for every conceivable “model” within China, from the Washington Consensus, good enough governance, to authoritarian developmental states. What then is the all-encompassing picture of China’s great economic and institutional transformation? The answer, I show, lies in the trajectory or sequence of development strategies, rather than in any particular factor or model. Across China, the first step of development was that local governments harnessed normatively weak or wrong institutions to kick-start markets, in stark defiance of textbook economic prescriptions.
The book will be available for sale at the venue.

Biography:
Yuen Yuen Ang is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Her research lies at the intersection of global development, China’s political economy, and adaptive processes of change. Her book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016), won the Peter Katzenstein Book Prize, and was described by the prize committee as “a field-shifting move to non-linear complex processes.” Elsewhere, Foreign Affairs named it among the “Best of Books 2017.” Yuen Yuen has received fellowships and awards from the Smith Richardson Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, American Political Science Association, and IBM Center for the Business of Government. She has spoken at many global development forums in the U.S, Europe, and China: the World Bank, United Nations, OECD Development Center, UK Department for International Development, Center for International Knowledge of Development/China’s State Council, International Finance Corporation, among others.

Description

Abstract:

Max Weber famously characterized the state as the entity holding the monopoly on legitimate violence in the polity. What if, instead, the state is formed through the exercise of impunity, or the persistent and repeated failure to be held to account for illegitimate violence? In this paper, I develop a framework of impunity as state formation grounded in a new history of post-absolutist Thailand. Three key moments since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932 – a 1958 coup that claimed to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an investigation into state violence at the height of the Cold War that enhanced its cover-up, and the emergence of a dialectic of who can be killed with impunity and who cannot be impugned in the late reign of Rama IX – are key components of this history and invite new approaches to the study of law, human rights, and sovereignty.

Biography:

Tyrell Haberkorn is an Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and writes about state violence and dissident cultural politics in Thailand. She is the author of Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law and Violence in Northern Thailand (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011) and In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018). Her essays and translations have appeared in Dissent, Foreign Affairs, openDemocracy, and Prachatai.

Description

Abstract:

China’s 19th Party Congress of October 2017 is a landmark in Xi Jinping’s leadership. Predictably Xi was “re-elected” as general secretary and he began his second term in a new position of strength, although he is still subjected to a number of constraints. The important personnel changes at the Party Congress will be fleshed out at the National People’s Congress in early March 2018 when Premier Li Keqiang forms his cabinet. This will provide more clues to the continuities and changes in China’s leadership changeover, decision-making specifics, and the pattern of political succession. In addition to these issues, the paper will also attempt to address the opportunities and challenges confronting the Xi Jinping leadership. As such, the paper is a third in a series of talks about the 19th Party Congress sponsored by the Asian Institute.

Biography:

Dr. Alfred L. Chan is professor of political science at Huron University College, London, Ontario. An alumnus of the University of Toronto, he has maintained his affiliation with the university (and the Asian Institute) since graduation. Current research projects include one on power and policy during the Xi Jinping era and another one on the Hu Jintao era.

Description

Stephen P. Groff, Vice President of Operations for Southeast/East Asia and the Pacific at the Asian Development Bank will discuss how regional cooperation and integration, technology, and value chains all help contribute to trade and economic growth in Asia and the Pacific.

Stephen P. Groff is responsible for the full range of ADB’s operations in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. His mandate includes establishing strategic and operational priorities in his areas of responsibility, producing investment and technical assistance operations.

In addition, Mr. Groff supports ADB’s President in managing ADB’s overall operations, represents ADB in high-level multilateral fora, and contributes to managing its relationships with its 67 member country shareholders, other multilateral financial institutions, and key government, private sector, and civil society partners.

Prior to joining ADB, Mr. Groff was Deputy Director for Development Cooperation at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He also served as OECD’s envoy to the G20 Working Group on Development and was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council. Prior to this he was the Deputy Vice-President for Operations at the Washington-based Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), where he helped set up the agency and led MCC programs while advising the CEO on development issues, strategy, and policy.

Mr. Groff has worked across Asia, Africa, and Latin America and writes regularly on development issues. He also serves on a number of advisory boards for development-related organizations.

Mr. Groff holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Biology from Yale University.

Description

Abstract:
This talk introduces the updated Chinese edition of The G20: Evolution, Interrelationship, Documentation (original edition published by Ashgate/Routledge 2014) and the fully revised second edition being prepared for publication by Routledge). The book provides a historical overview and analysis of the evolving agenda, methods of performance evaluation, relationship with structured international organizations and other external actors (civil society, the business sector, non-member states); an analysis of G20 documentation and other sources of information; and a comprehensive bibliography. The aim is to present an updated, accurate analysis of the current state of the G20 and the challenges it faces. It is also intended as an authoritative work of reference.
The book traces the origins and predecessors of the G20; surveys the G20 finance ministers’ meetings since 1999 and the series of G20 summits since their launching in 2008; reviews the evolution of the G20 agenda; discusses the question of G20 membership; surveys the components of the G20 system (ministerial meetings, working groups and other sub-summit entities); analyses the relationship of the G20 with external actors; surveys and analyses reform proposals and reforms already achieved; looks at the relationship between the G7/G8 and the G20; examines the question of evaluating G20 performance; surveys the pattern of documentation of G20 summits and sub-summit groups; and reviews other sources of information (writings about the G20, think tanks focusing on G20 research, memoirs of prominent G20 participants, creative works, and websites and social media).

Biography:
Peter Hajnal is a Fellow of Senior College and Research Associate, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He has been a member of the G7/G8/G20 Research Groups since 1988 and attended fourteen G7/G8/G20 summits as a media correspondent. He is also a member of the Academic Council on the United Nations System, the Union of International Associations, the Association of Former International Civil Servants and the American Library Association. Before his retirement he was Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto for 11 years. He also served as librarian for 25 years at the University of Toronto and 10 years at the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library in New York. He was consultant at the United Nations, in post-Yugoslavia Macedonia, at the Civil G8 project in 2006 in Russia, and the Graham Library, Trinity College, University of Toronto, and assessor of the 2005 G8 Stakeholder Consultation for Chatham House.
In addition to a number of articles, book chapters and conference presentations, he is author or editor of ten books, including Civil Society in the Information Age (Ashgate, 2002); Sustainability, Civil Society and International Governance: Local, North American and Global Perspectives (Ashgate, 2006; co-edited with John Kirton); and The G8 System and the G20: Evolution, Role and Documentation (Ashgate, 2007, also published in Russian and Chinese editions). His latest book is The G20: Evolution, Interrelationships, Documentation (Ashgate/Routledge, 2014); an updated Chinese edition was also published. His current research focuses on preparing a substantially updated second English-language edition of The G20 (referenced above), to be published by Routledge. He is also a participant in the Canadian National Security Archive, a project of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History. In addition, he continues to play an active role in Senior College of the University of Toronto as a member of the Program Committee, and co-chair of the refugee support group.

Description

INDePth is an award winning annual student-run conference hosted by the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.

We are excited to present this year’s conference theme “ASIAN CITIES”.

In order to analyze ASIAN CITIES, we are using multidisciplinary—especially historical, anthropological, and geographical—theoretical frameworks to present our theme in a comprehensively textured manner. We challenge current narratives which present the development of Asian Cities as a standardized model by problematizing the idea that these spaces across the continent represent a similar type of growth.

Conference attendees will gain insight into how national and global discourse intersects with and shapes the standardized model of development of Asian Cities. We also focus on thinking critically about the structures and actors supporting or countering the progress of this standardized model.

We hope to disrupt these notions and offer a more holistic view of these living and breathing spaces. We do so by showcasing the transformative, evolving subjectivities and experiences of those who actively inhabit, build, and create Asian Cities.

Please join us for an invigorating day of panel speakers and workshop discussions while we explore critical perspectives of cities from the ground up!

Check out our website for more detailed information about the conference themes, conference agenda, and conference speakers.

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Speakers by topic:

INTERPRETATIONS OF MODERNITY
Shiaoshiao Chen, Undergraduate Student, Contemporary Asian Studies and Anthropology
Tori Sheldon, PhD Candidate, Anthropology
Dr. Kristin Bright, Assistant Professor, Anthropology

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF THE CITY: URBAN VS RURAL
Deniz Yilmaz, Undergraduate Student, Diaspora and Transnational Studies, Political Science
Zixian Liu, PhD Student, Department of History
Dr. Tong Lam, Associate Professor, History; Director, Global Taiwan Studies Program

MIGRATIONS AND SOLIDARITIES
Anna Aksenovich, Undergraduate Student, Anthropology and Religion
Siddhartha Sengupta, Undergraduate Student, Political Science
Symon James-Wilson, Research Assistant, Department of Geography and OISE
Dr. Deborah Cowen, Associate Professor, Geography and Planning
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INDePth Conference 2018: ASIAN CITIES
March 16, 2018, 10:00AM-7:00PM

PROGRAM:
10:00am – 10:30am: Light Breakfast and Registration

10:35am – 10:55am: Opening Remarks
10:35am – 10:40am: Professor Rachel Silvey
10:40am – 10:50am: Co-Chairs

10:55am – 11:55am: Topic 1: Interpretations of Modernity (Student: Shiaoshiao Chen; PhD Candidate Tori Sheldon; Professor Kristin Bright)
11:55am – 12:10pm: Topic 1 Q&A

12:10pm – 1:30pm: Lunch
12:40pm: Film Screening – PUSO NG LUNGSOD, by filmmaker Ilang-Ilang Quijano; Supported by the York Centre for Asian Research as part of their Emerging Asian Urbanisms Series

1:35pm – 2:35pm: Topic 2: Conceptualizing the City: Urban vs Rural (Student Deniz Yilmaz; PhD Student Zixian Liu; Professor Tong Lam)
2:35pm – 2:50pm: Topic 2 Q&A

2:50pm – 3:05pm: Coffee Break

3:10pm – 4:10pm: Topic 3: Migration and Solidarities (Student: Anna Aksenovich; Symon James-Wilson, Research Assistant, Department of Geography and OISE; Professor Deb Cowen)
4:10pm – 4:25pm: Topic 3 Q&A

4:25pm – 4:30pm: Break out into Groups for Workshops
4:30pm – 5:30pm: Workshops: Topics 1-3

5:35pm – 5:55pm: Co-Chairs Closing Remarks

6:00pm – 7:00pm: Reception

Description

Abstract:

Who watches over the party-state? In this engaging analysis, Maria Repnikova reveals the webs of an uneasy partnership between critical journalists and the state in China. More than merely a passive mouthpiece or a dissident voice, the media in China also plays a critical oversight role, one more frequently associated with liberal democracies than with authoritarian systems. Chinese central officials cautiously endorse media supervision as a feedback mechanism, as journalists carve out space for critical reporting by positioning themselves as aiding the agenda of the central state. Drawing on rare access in the field, Media Politics in China examines the process of guarded improvisation that has defined this volatile partnership over the past decade on a routine basis and in the aftermath of major crisis events. Combined with a comparative analysis of media politics in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, the book highlights the distinctiveness of Chinese journalist-state relations, as well as the renewed pressures facing them in the Xi era.
The book will be available for sale at the venue.

Biography:

Maria Repnikova is a scholar of political communication in illiberal contexts, with a focus on Chinese media politics. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Global Communication and a Director of the Center for Global Information Studies at Georgia State University. Maria’s work examines critical journalism, political propaganda, cyber nationalism, and global media branding in China, drawing some comparisons to Russia. Her work appeared in the China Quarterly, New Media & Society, Journal of Contemporary China, as well as in Foreign Affairs andForeign Policy, amongst other venues. Her book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism, is just out with Cambridge University Press. In the past, Maria was a post-doctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication. Maria holds a PhD in Politics from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

Description

Abstract:
SINCE THE REFORMS that have taken place in Burma/Myanmar since 2011, the tempo of archaeological research has increased, and, in 2014, three Pyu cities (Sri Ksetra, Halin and Beikthano) were awarded World Heritage status. Pyu cities, dating to about the 4th century CE, present early, regionally important examples of settlements that evolved from the late Iron Age into early urbanism in a context of spatial continuity. Sri Ksetra is the prototype of the type of urbanism found at Angkor and Pagan centuries later, where water management was imbedded in extended urban space. This talk will present results from recent archaeological excavations at the Yahanda Mound, which reveal the long sequence of cultural change in the early city from ancestor worship to early Buddhism on a popular level.

Biography:
JANICE STARGARDT, Professor at the Department of Archaeology of the University of Cambridge, works on the historical geography and archaeology of South and South East Asia. The over-arching theme of her research has been the transition of societies in South East India, Burma and Thailand from Iron Age villages to complex, literate and urbanized communities. She explores a range of factors involved in this transition: the natural environments – resources and stresses; the role of ancient irrigation in mitigating the latter; the contribution of maritime trade to prosperity; and the cultural cargoes that travelled with trade.
Her publications include The Ancient Pyu of Burma. Vol. I, Early Pyu Cities in a Man-Made Landscape. Cambridge and Singapore, 1990; Tracing
Thought through Things: the Oldest Pali Texts and the Early Buddhist Archaeology of India and Burma. Amsterdam, 2000, and The Sea Unites. Essays in the maritime archaeology and remote sensing of South East Asia. Cambridge, 2008. Her latest book Relics of the Buddha, Relic Worship and Other Rituals of Veneration, in Ancient India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma, to be published by the British Museum, is currently in press.

Description

The Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union (CASSU) Presents: “Leadership and Empowerment: Asian Women in the 21st Century”

In a time when dominant racial and gender-specific narratives are being challenged, the “Leadership and Empowerment: Asian Women in the 21st Century” panel event provides a unique forum for female leaders to discuss their experiences working within the intersectionality of femininity and Asian identities. The purpose of this panel is to highlight the voices of Asian female leaders, and to acknowledge the unique challenges and opportunities Asian women face in the professional workplace, in the public sphere, and in positions of leadership. This panel will feature a range of speakers from a variety of disciplines.

Opening Remarks:
Prof. Rachel Silvey, Richard Charles Lee Director, Asian Institute

Moderator:
Aparna Sundar, Instructor, Asian Institute

Panelists:
City Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, City of Toronto
Dr. Julie Nguyen, Director, Canada-Vietnam Trade Council
Justine Abigail Yu, Founder and Editor, Living Hyphen
Dani Magsumbol, Capacity Builder, Kapisanan Philippine Centre of Arts and Culture

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Paneliest Bios:

Kristyn Wong-Tam is a second-term Toronto City Councillor and Chair of the Toronto Accessibility Advisory Committee. She has an extensive career investing in the City of Toronto through both the public and private sectors. Her contributions have led to the development and support of improved homelessness policies, new affordable housing, innovative economic development programs, community art projects, and investments in diverse, family-friendly neighbourhood planning. She is a long-time advocate for gender equity at the municipal level and has successfully moved motions to incorporate a gender equity lens in the City’s Budget. Councillor Wong-Tam’s activism is reflected through her continued work of advocating for human rights and championing for sustainable living and environmental health. She was the Past Vice President of The 519 Community Centre, founder of Asian Canadians For Equal Marriage and has been a long-time supporter of numerous Toronto-based HIV/AIDS organizations. She plays a vital role in ensuring the vibrancy of our city and its economic and social development. Currently, Councillor Wong-Tam is in partnership with the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation to create Toronto’s first urban Indigenous District.

Dr. Julie Nguyen is currently a professor and program coordinator in international business at Centennial College, and a co-founder / director of the Canada Vietnam Trade Council (www.canada-vietnamtrade.org). She has a Bachelor of Commerce, Honours Economics (1995) from Concordia University, a M.A. in Economics (1996) and a Ph.D. (2004) in Interdisciplinary Studies and Asian Research both from the University of British Columbia (UBC). She was a consultant for the United Nations in Hanoi in 1997 to co-write Vietnam’s first Human Development Report, and a research associate at the Centre for Southeast Asia Research at UBC (1996-1999). Dr. Nguyen conducted her post-doctoral research funded by SSHRC at the Munk School of Global Affairs (2004-2006), and taught courses in Political Science, Asia-Pacific Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto (2005-2010). She is a board member of the Organization of Women in International Trade – Toronto Chapter, the Canada Vietnam Society and the McCormick Arena, City of Toronto.

Dr. Aparna Sundar teaches in the Contemporary Asian Studies program at the Asian Institute. She is a political scientist by training, and works in the broad areas of political economy, comparative politics, and the politics of development, with a focus on South Asia and the South Asian diaspora in Canada. She has been active in South Asian community organizations in Toronto, and has carried out collaborative community-based research that looks at the challenges of political organizing by immigrant and racialized communities, in particular around issues of work and labour.

Justine Abigail Yu is a communications and marketing strategist for the social impact space and has worked with organizations operating in North America, Central America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. She is currently the Communications and Marketing Director for Operation Groundswell, a non-profit organization that facilitates international service learning programs for youth. She is also the Founder and Editor of Living Hyphen, an intimate journal that explores the experiences of hyphenated Canadians and examines what it means to be part of a diaspora. Her mission is to stir the conscience and spur social change.
Social Links:
www.justineabigail.com / www.livinghyphen.ca
IG+TW: @justineabigail / @livinghyphen
FB: facebook.com/livinghyphen

Dani Magsumbol is currently in the second year of the MSc in Planning Program at the University of Toronto’s Department of Planning and Geography. Her work is guided by her mission to work with and give back to the Filipino community. Her research is centred on the ways in which female temporary foreign workers, specifically Filipino live-in caregivers, define and experience safety within urban settings. Dani is currently a Capacity Builder at Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture, a Filipino charity and non-profit that employs a led-by-youth-for-the-youth framework in their leadership and programming, an organisation with whom she has been involved in various capacities since 2014.

Description

In a region where the Cold War has not ended; in a world where liberalism seems to be losing its appeal–how and why do young people enter politics in East Asia’s dynamic societies? How do these young political activists and their huge followers engage issues of colonial legacies, contested sovereignty, and global capitalism?

In this roundtable conversation, prominent young leaders LIN Fei-Fan 林飛帆 (Taiwan), EKyeong KWAK 곽이경 (South Korea), and Jeffrey NGO 敖卓軒 (Hong Kong) will discuss their mutual concerns and shared aspirations in this generational struggle.

Moderator: Ching-Fang HSU 許菁芳 (PhD Candidate, Political Science, UofT)

Faculty discussants:

Jennifer Chun (Sociology, UofT)
Tong Lam (History, UofT)

Interpreter for EKyeong KWAK 곽이경: Ju Hui Judy HAN (Gender Studies, UCLA)

Event Details:
PANEL DISCUSSION: 2:00 – 4:00PM
RECEPTION: 4:00 – 5:00PM
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Panelist Bios:

Ekyeong KWAK
EKyeong Kwak is the Director of External Relations & Solidarity at the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). In 2016-17, Kwak served on the coordinating committee for the Emergency National People’s Action for the Dismissal of Park Geun-Hye which mobilized millions of candlelight protesters over 6 consecutive months, leading to the impeachment of South Korea’s former president. In her capacity at KCTU, Kwak has worked in solidarity with human rights and social justice movements including the bereaved families of the Sewol ferry disaster and Nam-ki Baek, a former student-activist-turned-farmer who was killed by a high-power police water cannon at a national labour rally. Kwak is a leading queer social justice activist, spearheading efforts to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other sexual minority and gender non-conforming persons. She has previously served as the Policy Director of the National Korean Women’s Trade Union and the Chairperson of Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights of Korea.

LIN Fei-fan (林飛帆)
Lin Fei-fan is one of the leaders of Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement and the founding president of the Taiwan March Foundation, which mainly advocates for the rectification of the Referendum Act of Taiwan. He is also a member of the Network of Young Democratic Asians (NOYDA), formed by young activists across Asia in April 2016. He began as a student activist during the 2008 Wild-strawberry Movement, and he participated in the Anti-Media Monopoly Movement in 2012 among many other civil movements. He also contributed to several of the campaigns of the third-parties’ candidates during the election of 2016. He received his MA degree in Political Science from National Taiwan University in 2017 and is currently undertaking another graduate degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the UK.

Jeffrey NGO
Jeffrey Ngo is a visiting scholar jointly affiliated with the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library and the Munk School of Global Affairs who studies the history of Hong Kong’s sovereignty. He is also chief researcher for Demosisto, the Hong Kong youth pro-democracy political party. His writing has appeared in, among others, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from New York University.

Description

Since the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, housing has been a topic of much debate. Rising inequality and high housing prices have been the core of urban crises around the world. Skyrocketing housing prices since 2005 led to a social housing movement in Taiwan. The concept of social housing, formerly unfamiliar to most, became a buzzword and quickly gained popularity. It has become an important campaign issue and started gradually transforming Taiwanese housing policies in 2010. Under public pressure, the central and local governments announced several future housing projects and enacted housing policy reforms. In the process of policy implementation, the concept of social housing was constantly under contestation and in need of clarification. The complex process of policy reform has exposed many structural problems within Taiwan’s housing system.

Speaker Bio:
Yi-Ling Chen is the director of International Studies and an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Wyoming. Her works are on city development, housing, gender, and urban movements in Taiwan. She recently expanded her research to compare East Asian cities, Amsterdam, and Denver in their implementations of social housing.

Description

Abstract:
During the February Reading Week, seven undergraduate students visited Bandung and Jakarta in Indonesia to develop a deeper understanding of Islam’s political and social expression. Led by Professor Jacques Bertrand and PhD candidate Alexandre Pelletier, this International Course Module (ICM) aimed specifically at visiting a range of Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) and Islamic organizations to understand the motivations behind their missions and the role they play in the broader Islamic community. Students will be presenting reflections and observations on various aspects of the social and political activism of these pesantren and organizations. Among others, they have found that there is a vast diversity of activity and missions associated with these “pesantren”, in part due to the vast diversity and loose structure of the Islamic religion. There are surprisingly tolerant, innovative and creative aspects to several of these “pesantren”, even within conservative Islamic organizations. The ICM group’s reflections offer an important corrective to some of the messages and images of Islam often portrayed in the media.

Description

Live streaming of this event will begin at 5pm EST, April 3, 2018.

Abstract:
French describes the foundation of a resilient Pax Sinica as “a basic proposition that was reasonably consistent: accept our superiority and we will confer upon you political legitimacy...”, a tribute system that dates back as far as the Han dynasty. Through its nine-dash- line diplomacy and beyond, is China is now “increasingly determined to brook no rivals in the region”, including the USA? Join Howard French in an insightful discussion of how, based on its history, China might exercise its growing national power in the decades ahead.
The book will be available for sale at the venue.

Biography:
Howard French reported from Africa for The Washington Post and at The New York Times was bureau chief in Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa; Japan; and China. He has also written for The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and Rolling Stone, among other U.S. publications. His work has earned him two Overseas Press Club awards and two Pulitzer Prize nominations. He is the author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa and China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa. Mr. French is on the faculty of the Columbia University School of Journalism and lives in New York City.

Description

Abstract:
In 1995, at a UN meeting on indigenous rights, China and Japan each declared that there were no indigenous people in Asia because indigeneity was a product of European colonialism. Yet, their statements belied China’s past and Japan’s future. In the past, China had been a consistent and ardent supporter of global indigenous rights, inviting more indigenous groups than any other country. Thirteen years in the future, the Japanese government reversed its position and declared that its Ainu citizens were indigenous peoples. This talk explores the hidden history of China’s role in mobilizing indigenous groups throughout the Asia Pacific. We focus on how China’s repeated invitations to Ainu led them to transform their own identity, as well as radically challenge Japanese society itself. China was perhaps the Ainu’s most important catalyst for becoming important players in global indigenous dynamics.

Biographies:
Michael Hathaway is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His first book, Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China (California, 2013), explores the intersections between China’s emergence on the stage of global conservation and the rise of questions of indigeneity within China itself.

Scott Harrison is Program Manager at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, a not-for-profit organization focused on Canada-Asia relations. His research examines global Indigenous peoples and Cold War history, Canada-Asia business and policy issues, and building Asia-related competencies for Canadians. He obtained a PhD in History from the University of Waterloo.

Description

Abstract:
The growing “diversity-turn” in the social scientific study of migrant-led urban change is an exciting opportunity for geographers. While much has been said about encounters with difference and diversity in public spaces, there has been a silence on the very nature of incorporation within these spatial negotiations and transformations. While Stuart Hall is right in pointing out how the “capacity to live with difference” is one of the key questions of the 21st Century (1993: 361), many Asian urban contexts demonstrate that co-existing and managing difference have always been a fundamental dimension of historical reality. Urban diversification in this part of the world is led largely by carefully calibrated labour migration. Drawing upon ethnographic data collected through mixed methodology in Singapore, this paper both reflects and questions existing literature on urban diversity and coexistence. I examine the spatial and political implications of migrant incorporation by identifying two key strands of geographical imaginations in these two growing fields. The paper, thus, has two objectives. First, to retain critical analytical purchase on what living with difference in shared spaces specifically through “incorporation” means at both the governmental and everyday levels. Measures of inclusion can carry out the political work of management that can structure what form belonging takes and, consequently, stratify who belongs and who does not. Rather than being intriniscally open or opposed to exclusion, the aggregate processes of “incorporation” alluded to above render people subject to particular imaginaries of diversity. The second objective of this paper is to outline the agenda for future research. There needs to be the prompt address of the impact of structural differentiation on the spatial practices of migrants in diversifying contexts and the nature of diversifying spaces themselves. What, indeed, is the migrant sense of place?

Bio:
Dr Junjia Ye is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Nanyang Technological University who completed her PhD in Geography at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests lie at the intersections of cultural diversity, critical cosmopolitanism, class, gender studies and the political-economic development of urban Southeast Asia. Alongside extensive ethnographic research methods, she also uses techniques of film and photography to create visual narratives through her work. The fundamental question that underlies her research is what accounts for how social and economic differences are constituted through people’s mobilities to, through and from diversifying cities? Her recent work has been published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Annals of the American Association of Geographers and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Her first monograph entitled Class inequality in the global city: migrants, workers and cosmopolitanism in Singapore (2016, Palgrave Macmillan) won Labour History’s annual book prize.

Description

Burma, or Myanmar as it was renamed in 1989, is largely ignored within the discipline of South Asian studies despite its cultural, religious, economic, and strategic significance for the wider worlds of Asia. Colonial scholarship on Burma, like nineteenth and early twentieth century European interest in Southeast Asia more broadly, with its strong Indological orientation, included Burma within the larger picture of India. With the demise of orientalist India, Burma found its new home in Cold War Southeast Asia, and Burma’s historical and contemporary affiliations with the South Asia that replaced British India seem to have been largely lost in the transfer. The re-reading of both South and Southeast Asia within a globalized, Indian Ocean vision of Asia should allow for a critical assessment of what was lost in a creation of a South Asia that is still largely without Burma and what could be gained by questioning the premises for such locations and relocations.

This roundtable brought together specialists working on a range of issues in Burmese studies from the premodern period up to the present day, with a focus on Burma’s relationship to the discipline of South Asian studies. The goal of this roundtable was not to ‘reclaim’ Burma from the field of Southeast Asian studies, nor to essentialize South Asia as a unitary umbrella into which Burma can be neatly slotted, but rather to discuss how a Burma-sited scholarly approach can problematize the neat compartmentalization of Asia into predetermined geographical categories and how a projected mobility of Burma-related research, which such a problematization may facilitate, may open new perspectives of inquiry.  

Panelists:  Professor Christoph Emmrich (University of Toronto): Christoph Emmrich (PhD Heidelberg 2004) is Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto and Director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the Asian Institute. He works on Nepalese and Burmese Buddhist and South Indian Jain ritual and literature, engages with Newar, Burman, Mon, and Tamil ritual specialists, literati, and girl children, and is interested in questions of childhood, gender, time, and memory.  

Dr. Joseph McQuade (University of Toronto): Joseph McQuade (PhD Cambridge, 2017) is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Centre for South Asian Studies and an Affiliate Researcher at the Canadian Network for Terrorism, Security and Society. His research focuses on genealogies of political violence and counter-terrorism legislation in twentieth century India and Burma.  

Professor Sana Aiyar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Sana Aiyar is a historian of modern South Asia. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 2009 and held an Andrew Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in 2009-10.  From 2010 to 2013 she was Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her broad research and teaching interests lie in the regional and transnational history of South Asia and South Asian diasporas, with a particular focus on colonial and postcolonial politics and society in the Indian Ocean. Her first book, Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora (Harvard University Press, 2015), explores the interracial and extraterritorial diasporic political consciousness of South Asians in Kenya from c. 1895 to 1968 who mediated constructions of racial and national identity across the Indian Ocean. Her research has appeared in several journals including the American Historical Review, AFRICA: Journal of the International African Institute, and Modern Asian Studies. Professor Aiyar is currently working on two projects. One is a study of the everyday encounters of African soldiers and South Asian civilians during the Second World War when over a hundred thousand military recruits from East and West Africa were stationed in India and Burma. The second, "India’s First Partition", is an examination of migration, religious and ethnic politics, nationalism, and anticolonial activism across India and Burma in the 1930s.  

Professor Thibaut D’Hubert (University of Chicago): Thibaut d’Hubert is assistant professor in the department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) at the University of Chicago. He published several articles in various periodicals and collective volumes, and contributed entries on Bengal for Brill’s Encyclopedia of Islam, THREE. In his recently published book titled In the Shade of the Golden Palace: Ālāol and Middle Bengali Poetics in Arakan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), d’Hubert studies the encounter of Persian, Sanskrit, and vernacular poetics in the courtly milieu of the kingdom of Arakan (Bangladesh/Myanmar).  

Professor Patrick Pranke (University of Louisville): Patrick Pranke is associate professor of Religion in Comparative Humanities at the University of Louisville. His area of specialization is Theravada Buddhism with a focus on Burmese monastic history and Burmese popular religion. He has also conducted research in North India on vernacular Hinduism and Buddhism in the Indian imagination.

Description

Abstract:
Each talk is expected to take an hour or a bit more. The presentations are divided into three sessions each in order to allow communication at an early moment. Interruptions are welcome.

1. Domestic Space (Thursday, April 26 10am – 12pm)
An introduction into the anthropology of habitation (German “Wohnen”, “Behausung”) or dwelling which in a western context has to do with changing demands and aspirations, with taste and life style. The 20th century turned the obvious into a question of education.
The presentation reflects the recent experience in the western world (1), in contrast to the way the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley use domestic space, inside and outside (2) and how much this changed within the present generation (3).

2. Urban Space and Ritual of Bhaktapur (Thursday, April 26 2pm – 4pm)
The Mesocosm of the city, a term used by Robert Levy to describe an “organized meaningful world intermediate to the microcosmic worlds of individuals and the culturally conceived macrocosm, the universe, at whose center the city lies”. The presentation focusses on the Navadurga and Astamatrka in their manifold manifestations: the definition of urban space by the aniconic seats (pitha) of the Eight Mother Goddesses (1), the Nine Durgas as human actors, their rebirth on the Victorious Tenth Day (in October) (2), and their representation as a group (gana) of Virgin deities, Kumaris (3).

3. Earthquake and Rebuilding (Friday, April 27 4pm – 6pm)
Earthquakes causes renewal in regular intervals. The last earthquakes in 1833, 1934 and the most recent one in 2015 resulted in loss of domestic structures, temples and human life (380 in Bhaktapur 2015). In historic times, new temples replaced the lost ones at the same place, fragments were discarded. At present the philosophy (or ideology) of architectural conservation demands the rescue of the smallest fragments in order to ensure the material authenticity. Repairs and replacement are mandatory. The presentation recalls earlier projects of conservation in 1971 and 1990 (1), and focusses on the craftsmen (whose ancestors once shaped the originals) as the embodiment of “authentic, living heritage” (2), and the act of recreating lost iconographical details (3), considered in the west as the fall in conservation practice.

Biography:
Niels Gutschow, born in 1941 in Hamburg, Germany, studied architecture in Darmstadt and completed his PhD in 1973 about the early 17th century urban history of Japan (The Castle Town – Jokamachi). He visited Nepal first in 1962 and since 1970 he keeps working there as a conservation architect and architectural historian focusing of urban space and ritual (publications in 1974, 1975, 1882 and 2017) and architecture (The Nepalese Caitya, 1997 and The Architecture of the Newars, 2011). At present he is associated with the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust, aiming at the rebuilding of ten buildings at Patan’s Darbar Square, of which four totally collapsed in the 2015 earthquake. As Honorary Professor he is associated with the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University.

Description

This conference proposes to look anew at issues concerning migration and Southeast Asia. Migrations have characterized Southeast Asian lives and livelihoods in different ways in different eras; they have affected work, settlement patterns, resource use, small and large investments, religion, and culture. Migrations have formed and changed the composition of Southeast Asian societies and given rise to complex cultural, social, environmental, and political problems and opportunities. Past and present, migrations have been both forced and voluntary: forced to make way for certain kinds of development; triggered by violence and war; but also intentional and, at times, pioneering: to change lives, secure new livelihoods, or explore new ecologies. Contributors to this conference will discuss continuities and changes in migration practices, patterns, and personnel, addressing a wide range of historical periods, disciplines, and themes.

(Schedule)

FRIDAY, APRIL 27
180 Doe Library

Registration

Welcome & Opening Remarks

Pheng Cheah, Professor of Rhetoric; Chair, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UC Berkeley

Nancy Lee Peluso, Henry J. Vaux Distinguished Professor of Forest Policy, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, College of Natural Resources; core faculty, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UC Berkeley

Rachel Silvey, Professor of Geography; Richard Charles Lee Director, Asian Institute, University of Toronto

PANEL 1: Migrant Labor and the Law

Democracy and Indonesian Migrant Workers: Rising Political Salience and Contestation at Home and Abroad
Ann Marie Murphy, Seton Hall University

Development and Nation: The Evolution of Malaysian Immigration Laws
Oanh Nguyen, University of Minnesota

Absurd Journeys: The Costs of Becoming Legal
Maryann Bylander, Lewis & Clark College

Citizen, Refugee, Muslim?: A Preliminary Typology of Rohingya Migration and Membership Politics across Polities
Nabila Islam, McGill University

Break

PANEL 2: Repressive Labor and Forced Mobilities

Deportable Refugees, Transnationalism and Cambodian-Americans
Jennifer Zelnick, UC Irvine

From Sea to City: Migration and Social Wellbeing in Coastal Cambodia
Furqan Asif, University of Ottawa

Blood Bricks: Debt-bondage, Carceral Geographies and the (Im)mobile Lives of Brick-kiln Laborers in Cambodia
Katherine Brickell, Royal Holloway, University of London

Migration and Refuge in Central and East Java during the Violence of 1965-66
Siddharth Chandra, Michigan State University

Chair & Discussant: George Dutton, UCLA

Lunch Break

PANEL 3: Place-making and Networks

The Things They Carried (and Kept): Socialist Mobilities and Vietnamese Remittances from East Germany
Christina Schwenkel, UC Riverside

Urban Footprints: Migration, Place-making and the Politics of Presence in Hanoi, Vietnam
Timothy Karis, Western Oregon University

Tracing Mining Migration through Indonesia’s National Gold Networks
Matt Libassi, UC Berkeley

Labor Migration and Agrarian Change in Indonesia’s Industrial Rural Landscapes
Lisa Kelley, University of Hawaii-Manoa (co-authored with Nancy Peluso, UC Berkeley; Kim Carlson, University of Hawaii-Manoa; and Suraya Afiff, University of Indonesia)

Chair & Discussant: Emily Hertzman, Asian Institute, University of Toronto

Break

PANEL 4: Imaginaries and Transformations of Home

Flexible Filipinas: Global Economic Restructuring, Gendered Labor Migration and the Feminization of Overseas Work in Contemporary Philippine Anglophone Literature
Alden Sajor Wood, UC Irvine

Art and the Rantau: Tracking Minangkabau Migration
Katherine Bruhn, UC Berkeley

Migration and Da’wa: Exploring the Nexus in the Pen Circle Forum
Monika Arnez, University of Passau

‘Kisah Sukses’: Stories of Indonesian Migrant Worker Returnees Living in Greater Jakarta
Kilim Park, University of British Columbia

Chair & Discussant: Sylvia Tiwon, UC Berkeley

KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Migrant Worker Protection in ASEAN [tentative title]
Anis Hidayah, Migrant Care (Indonesia)

SATURDAY, APRIL 28
Morning session
180 Doe Library

Registration

PANEL 5: Brokering, Labor and Bodily Controls

The Policing of Female Marriage Migrants: Case Studies from Southeast Asia
Gwenola Ricordeau, CSU Chico

Unbound and Bound Spheres of Globalization: The Regional Pocket of Free Travel in Asia and Asymmetries in Global Mobility
Maria Cecilia Hwang, Rice University

Manufacturing Global Care Workers: Regimes of Labor Control in Indonesia’s Transnational Migrant Industry
Andy Chang, UC Berkeley

The Ethnic H-Rê Experiences: Labor Migration from Vietnam to Malaysia and Return
Angie Ngoc Tran, CSU Monterey Bay

Chair & Discussant: Catherine Ceniza Choy, UC Berkeley

Lunch Break

Afternoon session
Geballe Room
220 Stephens Hall, Townsend Center for the Humanities

Plenary Panel 1
Migration in Southeast Asia – Structural Shifts, Patterns and Continuities

Michele Ford (University of Sydney), Johan Lindquist (Stockholm University),
Aihwa Ong (UC Berkeley), Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore)

Moderator: Rachel Silvey, University of Toronto

Break
Plenary Panel 2
Political Ecology and Migration in Southeast Asia

Nicole Constable (University of Pittsburgh), Rebecca Elmhirst (University of Brighton),
Deirdre McKay (Keele University), Christine Padoch (NY Botanical Garden)

Moderator: Nancy Peluso, UC Berkeley

Description

This keynote speech is presented as part of the CSEAS conference Migrations and New Mobilities in Southeast Asia, co-sponsored by UCLA’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto. See the CSEAS conference page for the program.

Originally from East Java, Indonesia, Anis Hidayah began advocating for migrant workers in 1995 while studying at Jember University. She founded Migrant Care, a non-profit organization for Indonesians working abroad, in 2004, with an advocacy emphasis on policy change at the national and regional level and on redressing human rights abuses of overseas workers. She has been a particular advocate for Indonesian overseas workers on death row in Saudi Arabia. Her work in this area was also instrumental in supporting Mary Jane Veloso, a domestic worker from the Philippines who was sentenced to death in Indonesia for drug smuggling, but who received a last-minute stay of execution in 2015. Veloso’s case, extensively covered in the press in Indonesia and the Philippines, highlighted the vulnerability of overseas domestic workers to pressures from recruiters linked to criminal syndicates. Anis Hidayah received an Alison Des Forges Award from Human Rights Watch in 2011 and Indonesia’s prestigious Yap Thiam Hien Award for her human rights work in 2014. She is currently head of Migrant Care’s Migration Study Center (Pusat Studi Migrasi) based in Jakarta.

Description

Pathways Magazine presents collections of diverse stories of peoples’ mobilities and identities from, between, and within Asia and Canada, produced by undergraduate students working in the Asian Pathways Research Lab. In the Spring 2018 volume of Pathways, we delve into the stories of thirteen pairs of Chinese-Canadian mothers and daughters, exploring their relationships, their mobilities, and their process of negotiating specifically gendered Chinese-Canadian identities across generations and geographies. This research is inspired by the work of Harriet Evans, whose research about the transformation of mother-daughter relationships in the context of post-Cultural Revolution urban China taught us about the connections between political change, social restructuring, and changing family dynamics and intimate relationships. To this body of knowledge, we contribute these thirteen stories, all of which add to the aforementioned context the additional experience of transnational family immigration to Canada. In this session, our undergraduate researchers will present their findings and experiences working at the Asian Pathways Research Lab.

PRESENTERS:
EMILY HERTZMAN, Manager, Asian Pathways Research Lab, Asian Institute
AILIN LI, Research Assistant, Asian Pathways Research Lab, Asian Institute
ANGELAH LIU, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
JAMIE CHEN, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
JEEBY SUN, Mandarin Translator, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
KATE CHEN, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
KELLY LEUNG, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
MIRAGE WU, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
NANCY QIN, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
NATALIE BELL, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
XIAOHAN XU, Mandarin Translator, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
YIRAN LI, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
ERIN LI, Mandarin Translator, undergraduate student, University of Toronto
CYNTHIA JUTRAS, undergraduate student, University of Toronto