Description

Despite becoming a global economic force, why does India win so few Olympic medals, and why do so many of its people live in conditions of poverty? Why have opportunities not become available more broadly? How can growing individuals assist with the task of building a growing economy? In contrast to other investigations, which have taken a top-down view of developments in the country, Krishna presents a ground-up view, delving into the lives of ordinary individuals. One review in the Indian media regarded this book as “a must-read for India’s leaders in every sphere.” Another reviewer emphasizes “the micro situations...that make it so difficult to climb out of that poverty and vulnerability for otherwise highly motivated and talented people.

ANIRUDH KRISHNA (PhD in Government, Cornell University, 2000; Masters in Economics, Delhi University, 1980) is the Edgar T. Thompson Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University. His research investigates how poor communities and individuals in developing countries cope with the structural and personal constraints that result in poverty and powerlessness. His most recent book – Fixing the Broken Staircase: The Paradox and the Potential of India’s One-Billion (Penguin and Cambridge University Press, 2017) – examines why poverty persists despite rapid growth and addresses ways to overcome inequality of opportunity. He has authored or co-authored five other books, including One Illness Away: Why People Become Poor and How they Escape Poverty (Oxford, 2010), and more than sixty journal articles and book chapters. Krishna received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, Sweden in 2011; the Olaf Palme Visiting Professorship from the Swedish Research Council in 2007; the Dudley Seers Memorial Prize in 2005 and 2013; and a Best Article Award of the American Political Science Association in 2002. Before returning to academia, Krishna spent 14 years with the Indian Administrative Service, managing diverse rural and urban development initiatives (sites.duke.edu/Krishna).

Description

On August 1st of last year, Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen officially apologized to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples for “the four centuries of pain and mistreatment” they have endured. In this statement, recognition of governmental responsibility was quite clear, and actions for “true reconciliation” between the government and the indigenous peoples was fairly specific: for example, to delineate and announce indigenous traditional territories and lands in three months, or to set up an Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Commission under the Presidential Office in about four months. Reconstructing historical archives and memories was also highlighted as one of the most significant issues to “shine a light on the true history of the indigenous peoples.”

The series of actions taken by the new Taiwanese president has attracted the keen attention of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, and also gained widespread interest throughout the world. This upswell of concern, in conjunction with practices of pursuing transitional justice in Taiwan society in recent years, seeks reconsideration of Japanese colonial responsibilities as well as studies of historical injustice. This presentation is an attempt to engage in this work by focusing on the historical experiences of the indigenous peoples in Taiwan through an examination of the colonial war in records and memories.

Description

Fieldwork is one of the most thrilling, stimulating, yet challenging part of researching in geography and in social sciences. Speakers in this seminar will shift the focus away from what they found towards how they found it. Data is not given. It is produced in an empirical context through specific methods. Presenters will talk about their specific conditions of data collection in the Global South, and how they dealt with ‘the making of a field research’ – including, negotiating access to one’s field, dealing with language issues, managing relationships with interviewees, overcoming ineluctable misunderstandings with assistants and respondents, and drinking the unavoidable countless cups of bitter green tea. The presenters will reflect upon each of their field research carried out as undergraduate students, PhD students, and postdoctoral fellows.
Everyone is welcome.

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In April 1793, two Indian travelers from Gujarat landed in Marseilles. The son of the nawab of Broach and his attendant, they were heading for England but were stranded in France for a couple of months, just as the Revolution was spiralling into Terror. What happened to them? How did they manage to establish their credentials with the French authorities and get along in this strange new environment? This talk will be about social credit and the price of hospitality.

Rahul Markovits is assistant professor at the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris. His work focuses on the circulation of people, products and texts on a transnational scale in the eighteenth-century.

Description

*THE REGISTRATION FOR THIS EVENT HAS NOW BEEN CLOSED. Rush tickets will be available but entries are not guaranteed. Please come 30 minutes before the show at the Innis Town Hall.*

India/Germany 2017
76 minutes
Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Bihari with English subtitles
PG • North American Premiere

DIRECTOR
Marco Hulser

CAST
Yogesh Pavan, Mohammad Khan, Gouri Mahato, Sushanta Thapa, Subodh Pramod

In the world’s second most populated country—characterized by centuries-old caste systems, more than 2000 ethnic groups, and large sects of all major religions—the one thing that seems to connect the diverse citizens of India is their constant need for piping hot masala chai.

The documentary follows the lives of five different tea makers: Yogesh, a US educated business owner of a posh teahouse in Pune; Mohammad, an elderly tea-maker who has worked in film production for 40 years; Gouri, an outspoken teen assisting with her family tea stall in Kolkata; and Sushanta and Subodh, who run small tea stalls in Darjeeling and Delhi, respectively.

Masala Chai offers a warm glimpse into the personal struggles of some of India’s most common and relied-upon vendors. The film is also a captivating exploration of the vast class differences of a diverse nation that is steeped in ancient traditions and societal difficulties, many of which are being rebuffed by its younger generation.

Marco Hülser was born 1992 in Hamburg and gained his “Abitur” in 2011. After a voluntary service 2011/2012 in India, Tamil Nadu Marco started the studies „Motion Pictures“ at the „Hochschule Darmstadt“, which he completed in 2016. During his studies, he directed the short film „Zusammen Allein“ which was nominated at several festivals as „Max-Ophüls-Preis“ and received the rating „valuable“ by „Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung“. Since mid-2015, he is working on his first documentary “Masala Chai” which will be released 2017.

The film screening will be followed by a conversation between the filmmaker and Professor Jayeeta Sharma.

Please note, registration opens 30 minutes before showtime. Please arrive early as all tickets become void as of 15 minutes before showtime.

Description

Modern domesticity in colonial-era Korea has generally been understood using the twin parameters of nationalism and colonialism. Much less attention has been paid to the impact of a transpacific network, mainly between the US and Korea through the Christian missionary societies, on the formation of modern domesticity before, during and after Japanese colonial rule. In this presentation, I examine the ways in which Korea’s modern domesticity was shaped by not only Japanese colonial policies but also the notion of modernity that was transmitted, reinterpreted and performed through the transpacific network that had formed among the Korean elite and American missionaries. Taking the idea of “modern home” as a key locus where national, colonial and missionary projects converged, I demonstrate how the intimate private sphere was rendered as one of the most dynamic sites for uncovering the confluence of interaction between the local, the national and the global.

Hyaeweol Choi is Professor of Korean Studies at the Australian National University. Her research interests are in the areas of gender history, religion, and transnational studies. She is the author of Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways and New Women in Colonial Korea: A Sourcebook among others.

Description

Risk, Relation, Revolution and Repair: these four concepts will serve as the basis for a conversation about how anti-colonial storytelling might disrupt hegemonic political, social and cultural discourse in critical media studies. What are the risks involved in producing subversive and inelegant subject formations that inform emerging political imaginaries, ways of being – alternative cultural geographic revolutions that pulsate with anger, love and optimism? What relations, and at what scale, are negotiated in the process? How might we highlight the risks of investing in this approach – to map out moments of uncertainty that animate social and political projects of possibility – given the colonial violence that structures and saturates mainstream media spaces? This paper will explore my personal and professional ambivalence, through struggles and unsettling moments that have occurred over the past two years, as I created and hosted a daily radio show entitled “Sense of Place.” Through a series of vignettes and radio clips, and informed by Sarah De Leeuw’s concept of “writing as righting” (De Leeuw 2017), I focus on the concepts of risk, relation, revolution and repair to share with listeners what anticolonial approaches can do to engage and refuse ongoing forms of colonial violence.

Part of the Asian Pathways Speaker Series; hosted by the Asian Pathways Research Lab.

Open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Minelle Mahtani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Geography, and the Program in Journalism at University of Toronto, Scarborough. Previously, she taught in Media Studies at Lang College at the New School. She is former President of the Association of Canadian Studies and the winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee award. She is a former national television news journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and a former associate producer with “Canada: A People’s History.” She is the author of “Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality” (UBC Press) and one of the editors of the book, “Global Mixed Race” (NYU Press). Currently, she hosts a radio programme, “Sense of Place” at Roundhouse Radio.

Description

*The registration for this event has now been closed. Rush tickets will be available but entries are not guaranteed. Please arrive 30 minutes before the show at the Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave (entrance off of St. George St.).*

Japan 2017
95:00
English, Japanese with English subtitles
PG • Canadian Premiere

DIRECTOR
Megumi Sasaki

CAST
Jay Alabaster

In the once quiet seaside village of Taiji in Wakayama prefecture, the local whaling practice has become synonymous with animal abuse since Louie Psihoyos’s film The Cove won the 2009 Oscar for Best Documentary.

Years later, filmmaker Megumi Sasaki offers a more balanced examination of the small fishing community, focusing on points of contact and communication between both sides of the conflict—environmentalism versus tradition—in ways that The Cove did not.

A Whale of a Tale does not attempt to resolve what will remain an ideological deadlock between the foreign activists who have devoted years to their cause, and agricultural workers who have developed a long-standing tradition passed on to the next generation. Instead, in a global climate where opposing sides are communicating at each other instead of with each other, Sasaki succeeds in allowing us to give pause—and listen to what the other side has to say.

Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Megumi Sasaki was an anchor, reporter and news director for NHK Television, Japan’s public broadcasting network. Her first feature-length documentary Herb & Dorothy (2008), about legendary New York art collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel, won top honors at the Hamptons International Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival, SILVERDOCS and others. In 2013, she directed a follow-up documentary titled Herb & Dorothy 50X50, which had nationwide theatrical distribution in the U.S. and Japan. A Whale of a Tale is her third feature-length documentary.

The film screening will be followed by a conversation between the filmmaker and Professor Takashi Fujitani, Director of the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, Asian Institute.

Please note, registration opens 30 minutes before showtime. Please arrive early as all tickets become void as of 15 minutes before showtime.

Description

As a complement to the ROM’s inaugural Annual South Asia Lecture, the Asian Institute hosts a “ROM Masterclass at the UofT” with Mumbai-based journalist Sidharth Bhatia of TheWire.in. Bhatia will be leading a two-hour session with faculty and graduate students titled “Times are Changing in Indian Journalism.”

This masterclass will focus on how, in a large and diverse country like India, the media industry (newspapers and TV channels) is doing well commercially, while professional standards are declining and large media houses have become very pro-establishment in the last three and a half years. In this context, we will discuss how a handful of small media outlets, mainly in the digital space, are upholding professional standards.

Description

For over two decades now, Japan has found itself at the forefront of economic policymaking. The bursting of the bubble economy ushered in an era of zero interest rates and unconventional monetary policy, long before such measures were widely adopted elsewhere during the Global Financial Crisis. Japan’s demographic trends presage continental Europe’s future. Many policy choices have been copied, even though their effectiveness continues to be debated in Japan as abroad. This event brought together leading members of the policy community from Japan and North America to discuss Japan’s experience. The purpose was not to take stock of Japan’s (alleged or real) malaise, but to identify common themes that provide useful lessons for other countries.

Innovation and Economic Growth in Japan: Firm-Level Approach  by Nobuyuki Kinoshita.  Slowdown in TFP and capital stock accumulation are the two main causes of Japan’s long-term economic stagnation. I analyzed this problem on the firm-level approach. Nowadays ICT innovation has changed our way of lives everywhere in the world. Under this circumstance, Japanese firms do invest in ICT and R&D too, but something is weighting down on TFP growth. Actually, they stick to their own R&D and collaborate less with other organizations. Besides, entry of innovative entrepreneurs and exit of unproductive firms are remarkably weak in Japan. As a result, Japanese firms all in all get older and less active. My presentation gave the policy implication that the Japan’s enterprise system should be reformed and that the speed up of the industries restructuring is particularly critical.   

Nobuyuki KINOSHITA (Senior Advisor, AFLAC Insurance Japan, Tokyo), formerly with the Ministry of Finance and then the Bank of Japan, is an expert on corporate governance reforms in Japan and their macroeconomic implications. He served as Executive Director at the Bank of Japan from 2010 to 2014. He is currently senior advisor to Aflac (Columbus, GA), a leading supplemental insurance provider in the US and Japanese markets. He regularly presents to academic and professional audience on Japanese macroeconomic policies.  

Aging in Japan: A Fiscal and Macroeconomic Conundrum by R. Anton Braun.  Japan is in the midst of a demographic transition that is both rapid and large by international standards. Aging is already placing a burden on government finances. Public expenditures on pensions, medical care and long-term care are rising.  At the same time, low fertility rates in conjunction with longer life expectancies are increasing the old-age-dependency ratio and workers are facing higher tax burdens.  Moreover, Japan’s ability to confront the negative fiscal implications of future aging is constrained by its very high debt-GDP ratio. In my presentation I detailed the size of the fiscal imbalances created by aging, explained how Japan’s fiscal situation is creating a drag on macroeconomic activity and discussed the efficacy of alternative strategies for stabilizing the fiscal situation and boosting economic growth.  

R. Anton Braun is a research economist and senior adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and a visiting professor of economics at Keio University. His research topics include fiscal and monetary policy and aging. Before joining the Bank in 2010 he was a professor of economics at the University of Tokyo where he taught from 2001-2010.  Symposium chaired by Mark Manger  Mark Manger (Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto). Professor Manger is an Associate Professor of Political Economy and Global Affairs at the Munk School and the Department of Political Science.  He received his doctorate from UBC and joined the Munk School in 2012 following tenure-track appointments at McGill University and the London School of Economics.  Professor Manger’s field of specialization is international political economy, with emphasis on trade and finance, and the political economy of East Asia and Japan. He has been a visiting researcher at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo, in 2003 and in 2010, and is an alumnus of the Program on US-Japan Relations at Harvard University, where he was a fellow in 2007-2008.

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ABSTRACT
In 1970, the Park Chung Hee regime imprisoned Kim Chi-ha for publishing Ojŏk (Five Bandits), a lengthy satirical poem that dared to call the government a band of thieves. The poet on trial then turned the court into a stage for further dramatizing his resistance. Nearly half a century later, the “candlelight revolution” that brought down Park Chung Hee’s daughter from power turned the streets and social media into a fluid offline-online stage for a phenomenonal drama of resistance. But the candlelight revolution was preceded by what might be called a “podcast revolution,” launched in 2011 by the wildly parodic Nakkomsu (I am a petty cheat). Examining the role of political satire through Ojŏk and Nakkomsu, the talk will address the transformation and media-specific potency of “laughtivism” in South Korean democratization.

BIOGRAPHY
Professor Youngju Ryu is Associate Professor of Korean Literature and Director of the Korean Language Program in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. Professor Ryu specializes in modern Korean literature and her areas of research expertise include aesthetics of dissidence, cultures of authoritarianism, and philosophies of reconciliation in twentieth-century Korea. She is the author of Writers of the Winter Republic: Literature and Resistance in Park Chung Hee’s Korea (Columbia University Press, 2016).

Description

A Tale of Sub-human: The Rohingyas in Myanmar and Bangladesh

The first discussion in the event series, Rohingya in Peril: Buddhist/Muslim tensions in Myanmar and beyond.

The Rohingyas, considered by the United Nations as the world’s most persecuted people, have recently experienced unprecedented violence and brutality committed by Myanmar security forces and vigilantes. Following alleged attacks on Myanmar police posts and a military base by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on August 25, 2017, Myanmar security forces indiscriminately fired on Rohingya civilians, burnt their houses down, raped girls and women, and killed thousands mercilessly in what the United Nations termed as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” This state-sponsored violence spurred 600,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh in the past two months. The Rohingyas have experienced intense, ongoing violence because they are non-citizens in Myanmar. In fact, citizenship is a legal status conferred by the state that makes non-citizens a new ‘other,’ a vulnerable category viewed as less than human that Uddin refers to as being treated as “sub-human.” This talk will focus on the state of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh and Myanmar illuminating an intricate relation of statelessness, human rights and the paradox of the “sub-human.”

Biography

Nasir Uddin is a cultural anthropologist based in Bangladesh and a professor of anthropology at the University of Chittagong. His research interests include statelessness and refugee studies; human rights and non-citizens; indigeneity and identity politics; the state in everyday life; the politics of marginality and vulnerability; and borderlands and border people, particularly those of Bangladesh and Myanmar, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and South Asia. His publications include To Host or To Hurt: Counter-narratives on the Rohingya (Refugees) in Bangladesh (2012); Life in Peace and Conflict: Indigeneity and State in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (2017) and Indigeneity on the Move: Varying Manifestation of a Contested Concept (2017). Currently he is working on a new monograph, the Rohingyas: A Tale of Sub-Human (2018).

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In his new book Outcasts of Empire, Paul D. Barclay probes the limits of modern nation-state sovereignty by positioning colonial Taiwan at the intersection of the declining Qing and ascending Japanese empires. Outcasts chronicles the lives and times of interpreters, chiefs, and trading-post operators along the far edges of the expanding international system, an area known as Taiwan’s “savage border.” In addition, Barclay boldly asserts the interpenetration of industrial capitalism and modern ethnic identities.

By the 1930s, three decades into Japanese imperial rule, mechanized warfare and bulk commodity production rendered superfluous a whole class of mediators—among them, Kondo “the Barbarian” Katsusaburo, Pan Bunkiet, and Iwan Robao. Even with these unreliable allies safely cast aside, the Japanese empire lacked the resources to integrate indigenous Taiwan into the rest of the colony. The empire, therefore, created the Indigenous Territory, which exists to this day as a legacy of Japanese imperialism, local initiatives, and the global commoditization of culture.

Paul D. Barclay teaches East Asian history at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. He is the general editor of the digital repository East Asia Image Collection and author of Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874-1945(University of California, 2017). Barclay’s research has received support from the National Endowment from the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the Japanese Council for the Promotion of Science, and the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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China’s financial system is threatened by instability from high debt levels and financial risks. The nation is caught between promoting lending for growth purposes and dampening lending to reduce financial instability. Financial reforms that the government put in place this year are not being enforced, as banks hesitate to end lucrative funding channels. Will this end in crisis or stagnation? In this talk, Dr. Sara Hsu explores China’s unique circumstances and the possibility of crisis, discussing the origins of the debt debacle and assessing the perils posed to the financial system.

Speaker Biography:
Sara Hsu is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and has published over six books and fifteen journal articles on the Chinese economy and financial sector. Hsu has published one of the only English language books on the topic of Chinese informal finance, entitled “Informal Finance in China: American and Chinese Perspectives”, as well as one of the only Chinese-language books on Chinese shadow banking. Her writings about current events in the Chinese economy have appeared in The Diplomat, the Nikkei Asian Review, East Asia Forum, China Brief, and China World. She is also a columnist with Forbes Magazine.

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“Exploring the HKSAR, China and Taiwan – What Has Changed in the Past 20 Years and a Look Ahead to the Future” is an academic conference hosted by the University of Toronto Hong Kong Public Affairs and Social Service Society (UTHKPASS).

As the first student-led academic conference at U of T focussing on Hong Kong issues, this conference serves to analyze the ever-changing social, economic and poltical dynamics in Hong Kong. The event will also consider Hong Kong’s relationship to China and the world in the post-handover era by examining the major issues of the past two decades and how these parallel issues in Taiwan and China.

Discussion Questions:

First Question/Topic: What implications does the political development of Hong Kong have on the Taiwanese Political climate?

Second Question/Topic: What role can Hong Kong play in China’s future? What are the implications for Hong Kong with a foreseeable stronger China on the world stage?

Please find the Eventbrite link here

Speakers’ Bios

Lynette Ong – Associate Professor of Political Science jointly apppinted by the Department of Political Science and the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto

Professor Lynette Ong is an expert in the politics and the political economy of China. With expertise in authoritarian politics and the political economy of development, she currently focuses on contentious politics in China and is undertaking a project on protest and land politics. Her book Prosper and Perish: Credit and Fiscal Systems in Rural China published by Cornell University Press has attracted lots of attention towards the non-sustainability of the “China Model”. Her publications have appeared or are forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, International Political Science Review, China Quarterly and China Journal, etc.

Tong Lam – Associate Professor, Department of Historical Studies; Director, Global Taiwan Studies Program, Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto

Professor Tong Lam focuses his research on the modern and contemporary history of China, amongst other interests. Lam cofounded the Critical China Studies Working Group and organized an international conference on Architectural Spectacle and Urbanism in (Post)socialist China. His current research lies in the relation between politics and aesthetics and entails the use of history, ethnography and visual arts, a cutting edge approach adopted by few others. Lam published a photo essay book and exhibited his work internationally, and continues to examine urban infrastructures, ruins and ruination, and development in post-socialist China.

Victor C. Falkenheim – Professor Emeritus, East Asian Studies, University of Toronto
With experience working on CIDA and World Bank projects in China, Professor Victor Falkenheim focuses on contemporary Chinese politics and issues concerning urbanization and migration. Serving as a Professor Emeritus of Political Science of East Asian Studies, he has been instructing a course on the dynamics of democratic transformation over the past 4 decades in East Asian states. He has often been called upon to advise the government on Sino-Canadian issues, and has spoken about the One Belt One Road policy. Falkenheim co-authored Hong Kong and China in Transition and has published in the Asian Journal of Public Administration and more.

Kui-Wai Li – Associate Professor, Department of Economics and Finance, City University of Hong Kong
As a visiting professor at the Asian Institute of the Munk School of Global Affairs, Professor Kui-Wai Li is a keen advocate of the Economism paradigm. He specializes in political economy, financial and economic development, and industry and trade, and has been acting as consultants to international institutions, foreign governments and businesses. With focuses in the Chinese and other Asian economies, he has published several books, including Economic Freedom: Lessons of Hong Kong and his articles have appeared in journals published in USA, UK, Italy, etc. Li has edited Financing China Trade and Investment and been regularly interviewed on Hong Kong, China and foreign issues. Li has also published a book entitled Redefining Capitalism in Global Economic Development in June 2017.

Jeffrey Ngo – Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto/Chief Researcher of Demosisto in Hong Kong
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’s also chief researcher for Demosisto, the Hong Kong youth pro-democracy political party. His writings have 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.

Sida Liu – Assistant Professor, Sociology, University of Toronto
With interests in sociolegal studies, Professor Sida Liu conducts empirical work on Chinese law and the legal profession and research on political sociology, criminal justice, and more. Having served and researched at different institutions, he has published extensively with articles appearing in Journal of Legal Education, Law and Social Inquiry, Law and Society Review, and others. He has been developing a theory of social space for analyzing law, professions, and other social entities following the Simmelian tradition of social geometry and the Chicago School of sociology. Liu currently teaches courses in the Criminology, Law and Society program.

William Watson – Lecturer/Undergraduate Coordinator, Centre for Criminological & Sociological Studies, University of Toronto
Professor William Watson is a lecturer and the Undergraduate Coordinator of the Centre for Criminology & Sociological Studies. His academic interests include the practice of forensic psychiatry, psychopathy, and the place of critical social science in public policy making. His articles also appeared in Sociology, The International Journal of Comparative Sociology, The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, and others. Born and raised in the United Kingdom and having his doctorate completed at the University of Cambridge, Professor Watson witnessed the negotiation between the United Kingdom and China over the retrocession of Hong Kong in the 1980s.

Description

The launch of Mobilizing without the Masses: Control and Contention in China written by Diana Fu (University of Toronto) and published by Cambridge University Press (2017).

“When advocacy organizations are forbidden from rallying people to take to the streets, what do they do? When activists are detained for coordinating protests, are their hands ultimately tied? Based on political ethnography inside both legal and blacklisted labor organizations in China, this book reveals how state repression is deployed on the ground and to what effect on mobilization. It presents a novel dynamic of civil society contention – mobilizing without the masses – that lowers the risk of activism under duress. Instead of facilitating collective action, activists coach the aggrieved to challenge authorities one by one. In doing so, they lower the risks of organizing while empowering the weak. This dynamic represents a third pathway of contention that challenges conventional understandings of mobilization in an illiberal state. It takes readers inside the world of underground labor organizing and opens the black box of repression inside the world’s most powerful authoritarian state.”

Author Bio:

Diana Fu is an assistant professor of political science at The University of Toronto and an affiliate of the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs. Fu’s research examines the relationship between popular contention, state power, and civil society in contemporary China. Her book Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China, is to be published in 2017 with Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics Series and Columbia University’s Studies of the Weatherhead East Asia Institute. It examines state control and civil society contention under authoritarian rule. Based on two years of ethnographic research that tracks the development of informal labor organizations, the book explores counterintuitive dynamics of organized contention in post-1989 China.

Articles that are part of this broader project have appeared in Governance (2017), Comparative Political Studies (2017), The China Journal (2018), among others.

Diana Fu graduated with distinction from Oxford University (M.Phil. in Development Studies and D.Phil in Politics), where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to joining the department, she was a Walter H. Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. She was also a Predoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fu’s research has been supported by the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, the Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation, and the Rhodes Trust.

Fu’s writing and research have appeared in The Economist, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Boston Review, Nick Kristof’s On the Ground Blog (The New York Times), PostGlobal, and Global Brief.

To purchase the Kindle copy of the book follow this link

Visit Diana Fu’s website by clicking here

Description

South Korean and Japanese citizens have become increasingly influential in shaping their bilateral relations. The society-level influence on government interactions is especially clear when a publicized bilateral issue linked to national security prompts emotional involvement of mainstream citizens. For better or worse, democratic political structures of Japan and South Korea enable the two domestic societies to perform a “watchdog” function of limiting policy options available to government officials involved in publicized bilateral interactions.  This presentation focused on the Japan-South Korea bilateral relations during the last decade in order to illustrate this point. In the midst of the fast-changing regional security environment during this period, the two societies started to re-evaluate and re-examine their respective national security identities of the Cold War period.  Interestingly, these identity-shifts in both countries were first fueled by the changing domestic public attitude toward North Korea.   

The normative transformations initially sparked by the ‘North Korea factors’, however, also led to a ‘mutual security anxiety’ between Japanese and South Korean citizens, as they started to embrace a sense of uncertainty about the other side’s possible future trajectory as a potential threat to their own state. This societal-level mutual distrust from the last decade continues to provide a powerful ideational limit to the government-level bilateral interactions even up to today.

 Biography  Seung Hyok Lee is currently a Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, and an Associate at the Centre for the Study of Global Japan, Munk School of Global Affairs. Previously, he was a short-term Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Law, Hokkaido University, Japan, 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, Israel.  He also worked as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Renison University College, University of Waterloo, and as a Visiting Scholar at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs. Dr. Lee received his doctoral degree in Political Science (International Relations) at the University of Toronto in 2011. His research interest is domestic society’s influence on publicized foreign policy issues, with 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)

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TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT please go to the separate eventbrite page HERE

On January 20, 2009, a commercial building in Yongsan, a central district of Seoul, South Korea, erupted into flames. It was during a police crackdown of the building’s tenants-turned-evictees who were staging a protest against the redevelopment of the neighbourhood by occupying the building. During the fire, five protesters and one police officer died. In the aftermath of the tragedy, a heated debate ensued over who was accountable for the deaths – a debate that unfolded in courtrooms, in parliament, and on the streets. The Remnants 공동정범 follows the life of the evictees, who were incarcerated on a charge of the death of the policeman, raising questions about state violence, urban space, and democratic citizenship. Today, 9 years since the Yongsan tragedy, we hope this showing of the documentary the Remnants and the discussion with Min Sook Lee (documentary filmmaker and academic) and Jesook Song (urban anthropologist of Korea) will help us think through these important questions.

Min Sook Lee has directed numerous critically-acclaimed feature documentaries, including: Donald Brittain Gemini winner Tiger Spirit, Hot Docs Best Canadian Feature winner Hogtown, Gemini nominated El Contrato and Canadian Screen Award winner, The Real Inglorious Bastards and most recently, Canadian Hillman Prize winner Migrant Dreams. Lee is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Cesar E. Chavez Black Eagle Award, and the Alanis Obomsawin Award for Commitment to Community and Resistance. Lee is an Assistant Professor at OCAD University, her area of research and practice focuses on the critical intersections of art+social change in labour, border politics, migration and social justice movements.

Jesook Song is Professor of Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. She is an urban anthropologist with interests in housing, finance, welfare, labor, gender, and sexuality. Her first book, South Koreans in the Debt Crisis (Duke University Press, 2009) deals with homelessness and youth unemployment during the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s to early millennium. Her second book Living On Their Own (SUNY Press, 2014) is about single household and informal financial markets through single women’s struggle in South Korea.

Description

How do religious movements promote or hinder transitions to ecologically sustainable societies in Asia? This talk considers the interaction of religion and ecology in the greater China region, focussing on Daoists in mainland China, Buddhists in Taiwan, and Mazu as the goddess of the marine bioregion connecting Taiwan, Fujian, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. From these three cases, the talk engages arguments from Duara and Latour concerning the intersection of culture, nature and modernity, and argues for a specifically East Asian approach to the theorization of religion in the anthropocene.

Speaker Bio:
James Miller’s research focuses on the intersection of religion, culture and ecology in China, with a focus on Daoism, China’s indigenous organized religion. He is professor of humanities at Duke Kunshan University, and has published six books including, most recently, China’s Green Relgion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustaianable Future (Columbia 2017).

Description

Are you interested in working in Asia? Wondering how to best prepare for a global career after your undergraduate degree? With the support of the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs, the Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union (CASSU) is proud to present its annual Global Careers Through Asia conference.

We will be hosting an exciting list of speakers, including professionals and academics. Our speakers span numerous sectors and fields, including government, business, film, journalism, and more.

Program:

9:00AM-9:30AM Registration and Coffee
9:30AM-9:40AM Opening Remarks
9:40AM-12:00PM Industry Panel Speaker Sessions

9:40AM-10:20AM
1. Media: Journalism and Film
• Panelist #1: Betty Xie – Development Manager & International Programmer, Reel Asian Film Festival; Asian Institute Alumna
• Panelist #2: Aaron Wytze Wilson – Journalist; Masters of Global Affairs Candidate, University of Toronto
• Audience Q&A

10:20AM-11:00AM
2. Government and International Trade
• Panelist #1: Don Campbell – Former Deputy Minister and Ambassador to Japan and Korea
• Panelist #2: Julie Nguyen – Director, Canada-Vietnam Trade Council
• Panelist #3: Victor Hong Min Liu, Director, Taipei Economic & Cultural Office, Toronto
• Audience Q&A

11:00AM-11:10AM Health Break

11:10AM-12:00PM
3. Not-for-Profit and Public Awareness
• Panelist #1: Jordan Dupuis – Project Manager, Toronto Office Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada
• Panelist #2: Marcia Iwasaki – Culture & Ed. Coordinator, Consulate General of Japan, Toronto
• Audience Q&A

12:00PM–1:30PM Networking Lunch

1:30PM-3:00PM Workshop on Academia and Applied Research
• Speaker #1: James Poborsa, PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto
• Speaker #2: Joseph McQuade, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow Centre for South Asian Studies, Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs
• Speaker #3: Scott McKnight, PhD candidate in Political Science (international relations and comparative politics)
• Speaker #4: Aaron Wytze Wilson – Journalist; Masters of Global Affairs Candidate, University of Toronto
• Speaker #5: Professor Yiching Wu, Director, Dr. David Chu Program in Contemporary Asian Studies; Associate Professor, Asian Institute and Department of East Asian Studies (TBC)

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

“The Walkers” (行者) is a documentary film whose director took over 10 years to make. It presents the story of renowned Taiwanese choreographer Lin Lee-chen and her Legend Lin Dance Theatre. Extracting the essential details of Lin’s daily life, the film explores the origins of her dance, contemplates the poetic and ritualistic movements she creates, and delineates her lifetime pursuit of aesthetic concerns.

For more information about the film please click here.

Country: Taiwan
Year: 2015
Genre: Documentary
Runtime: 141 min
Director: Singing CHEN
Producers: Singing CHEN, LIN Leh-Chyun

January 30, 2018 Screening – Schedule of Events:

5:00PM REGISTRATION OPENS – Reception with Taiwan inspired cuisine
5:30PM WEBSITE LAUNCH – The Taiwan Gazette (Global Taiwan Studies Program, Asian Institute)
6:00PM FILM SCREENING
8:30PM POST-SCREENING DISCUSSION

MODERATOR:
PROF. ANTJE BUDDE, Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies, University of Toronto

DISCUSSANTS:
LIN LEE-CHEN (林麗珍), Artistic Director, Legend Lin Dance Theatre

Legend Lin Dance Theatre will perform at the following Canadian venues in January and February 2018:
“Canadian Dance Festival”, January 20 at the National Arts Center in Ottawa
“Danse Danse”, January 24 to 27 at the Theatre Maisonneuve in Montreal
“PuSH International Performing Arts Festival”, February 3 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver