Description

This event showcases the work of students connected to the SSHRC funded Partnership Project: Gender, Migration and the Work of Care, Principal Investigator Ito Peng

-Presentation and discussion of policy options: Care Work Migration in Canada; Home Care Models and Worker Registries in Ontario; Culturally Appropriate Care for Immigrant Seniors; Immigration and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program -Video screening and discussion: Help Them Care, Make it Fair: New Organizing Strategies
Presenters: Chelsey Legge, Lina Pulido, Alexandra Pileggi, Katerina Kalenteridis (SPPG Interns) Joshua Rodriguez, Sarah lima, Melissa Nicholls, Bastian Leones (RAs)

A presentation of original research: ‘Good Care’ in the Elderly Care Sector of South Korea (Presenter: Yang-Sook Kim)

Description

Canadian Ambassador to South Korea, H.E. Eric Walsh, will share his views, via webconference, on the situation in the Korean Peninsula and the ensuing global implications.He will be joined by a group of University of Toronto experts who will engage in a wider discussion.

H.E. Eric Walsh, Ambassador of Canada

Ambassador Walsh has been serving as Ambassador of Canada to the Republic of Korea since February 12, 2015. This is his fifth overseas assignment since joining the then-Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 1995, following effective postings in Turkey, Romania, Geneva (as Deputy Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament) and Germany (as Deputy Head of Mission in Berlin). While in Ottawa, he was proud to be part of the team that negotiated the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines, and between subsequent postings he served as Coordinator for Middle East and North African Affairs, and as Director for the East Asia and North Asia divisions.

Welcome and opening remarks will be given by Professor Randall Hansen, Interim Director Munk School of Global Affairs.

Description

China’s explosive rate of urbanization has attracted attention for its unprecedented scale and speed, and for its explicit framing as a project of socio-economic development. China is trying to urbanize its way to prosperity. But urbanization has also been framed by planners and other government officials as a project of social engineering, in which new urban landscapes are thought to improve the quality of the people living in them. This talk will explore how this idea has been implemented and experienced in China’s ethnic minority regions. Although, as one scholar has noted, ‘cities in China are not meant to be ethnic,’ some urban spaces are becoming ‘ethnicized,’ while rural ethnic areas are becoming ‘urbanized’ through tourism and infrastructure development. What is the relationship between ethnic identity and urban space in China today? How has urbanization been framed as a way of re-shaping ethnic identity, and how has ethnic culture in turn influenced urbanization in minority regions? This talk will explore these questions by pursuing two related avenues of inquiry. First, I will discuss the urbanization of ethnic tourism in Guizhou: that is, the extension of an urban aesthetic to the practice and development of tourism in Guizhou’s ethnic countryside. Second, I will present recent research on the ‘ethnicization’ of cities in Guizhou Province: the deliberate transformation of urban space into ethnically-themed space.

Description

In a world before smart phones and social media, before there was human rights protection for lesbians and gays, before same sex marriage, Alan Li, a gay Asian teenager moved from Hong Kong to Canada in search for love and belonging. Amidst a world full of homophobia, racism and xenophobia, his pursuit took him onto pathways with many unexpected twists and turns, in his native and adopted countries; overcoming many challenges, and building many rewarding connections and relationships. The journey led to many inspiring experiences, including: practicing medicine in the oldest and poorest public housing neighborhood, leading Toronto gay pride parade through Chinatown, providing palliative care to his best friend who died of AIDS, becoming the first openly gay person to lead a national Chinese Canadian organization, mobilizing diverse racialized groups to fight against homophobic media, finding romance and sustaining long distance relationship before internet, fighting legislated racism with redress campaign for Chinese head tax and Exclusion Act, building the largest HIV/AIDS service organization serving Asian Canadians, founding the first public gay organization in Hong Kong and building a transformative network advocating for access and rights of immigrants and refugees living with HIV/AIDS.
Through his sharing with images and narratives of historic events and pivotal moments both personal and societal, Alan will reflect on his life journey and the complex pathways and connections that supported his nearly four decades of experiences in building chosen families and communities in the quest for love and pride.

Dr. Alan Li immigrated from Hong Kong at age 16. Since the 1980s, through his work as physician at Regent Park Community Health Centre and his many community connections, Alan has integrated his personal, professional and community work with many diverse marginalized communities and taken on roles as physician, community organizer, capacity builder, researcher and advocate to advance access and rights many issues related to immigrants and refugees, racial and sexual minorities, HIV/AIDS, and mental health. He has co-founded and played key leadership roles in many pioneering social justice and community service organizations, including as chair of Gay Asians Toronto, as National President of the Chinese Canadian National Council, the Hong Kong10% Club, Asian Community AIDS Services, and the Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment.

Description

This lecture considers the preponderance of cultural and political concern with the assimilation of Muslim minorities primarily in the US, but also in Europe. Such an emphasis on producing “good Muslims” comes from both the right and the left, and in the discussions on assimilation there is little talk of the forms of being that have to be given up, renounced, or sacrificed for the sake of assimilation. The putative promise of assimilation is that the state would extend its protections to the assimilated subject, protecting assimilated Muslims from exposure to violence. And yet the sacrifice demanded of minority subjects happens in a political and economic climate of neoliberal rationality. How might sacrifice as a historical and social problematic help us to analyze the renewed emphasis on Muslim assimilation?

Zahid Chaudhary, Associate Professor of English, Princeton University. Chaudhary specializes in postcolonial studies, visual culture and critical theory, and is the author of Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India.

Description

In the past year, we have seen intense leadership tussle in Beijing. There are various signs that President Xi is consolidating his power. Who will be in the next Politburo Standing Committee, the echelon of power in Beijing? Who will take over the Presidential position when Xi eventually step down, if he do so? The upcoming 19th Party Congress scheduled for mid-October, where leadership transition will take place, is an important event to watch. Our panelists, Carl Minzner of Fordham Law School and Guoguang Wu of Victoria University of British Columbia will dissect these important issues for us.

Carl Minzner is a professor at Fordham Law School, specializing in Chinese law and governance. His book, End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining its Rise, will be published by Oxford University Press in spring 2018.

Guoguang Wu, a Ph.D. from Princeton, is Professor in Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, and concurrently Professor in Department of History and Chair in China & Asia-Pacific Relations at the Centre for Asian Pacific Initiatives at the same University. He specializes in Comparative Politics, Global/Comparative Political Economy, and the Global South (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan). He is author of four books, including China’s Party Congress: Power, Legitimacy, and Institutional Manipulation (CUP 2015) and Globalization against
Democracy: A Political Economy of Capitalism after its Global Triumph (CUP 2017).

Description

North Korean wartime literature has never been valued highly by literary scholars. The lack of literary qualities in these wartime stories have deterred many from looking more seriously at this type of literature as its heroes, seemingly without any obstacles in their way, defeat the enemy and attain victory. Add this to the subservient role literature plays in North Korea and the worship of its leaders, and it is obvious why one would shy away from analysing these texts.

However, even under such conditions of prescribed rules and top-down directives, the writer still needs to imbue the story with sufficient literary qualities to make it interesting to its readers. This is because the author is still constrained by the fact that the novel should not stray too far from reality or else the reader will not be persuaded. The author, therefore, also needs to address issues that are politically and socially sensitive in society. Condemnation of these issues in itself is not enough: to make an ideological claim the issue needs to be foregrounded, and the author must give a satisfactory interpretation of the issue.

This led to the creation of quite interesting propaganda literature in wartime North Korea: The characters are imbued with heroic but down-to-earth characteristics that portray both the wartime experiences of North Korean soldiers and citizens, but also gives expression to North Korea’s wartime concerns.

Jerôme de Wit is Professor in the Korean Studies department at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He is a specialist on North and South Korean Wartime Literature and modern Korean culture. His research interest in Korean culture is focused on public discourses concerning history and society and how cultural sources can provide us with different viewpoints on debates such as nationalism, identity, and history. His recent projects deal with such topics as post-colonialism in contemporary South Korean alternate history novels, and a study on the representation and changes in identity in the literature and movies of ethnic Koreans in China.

Description

Richard McGregor’s Asia’s Reckoning is a compelling account of the widening geopolitical cracks in a region that has flourished under an American security umbrella for more than half a century. The toxic rivalry between China and Japan, two Asian giants consumed with endless history wars and ruled by entrenched political dynasties, is threatening to upend the peace underwritten by Pax Americana since World War II. Combined with Donald Trump’s disdain for America’s old alliances and China’s own regional ambitions, east Asia is entering a new era of instability and conflict. If the United States laid the postwar foundations for modern Asia, now the anchor of the global economy, Asia’s Reckoning reveals how that structure is falling apart.  With unrivaled access to archives in the United States and Asia, as well as to many of the major players in all three countries, Richard McGregor has written a tale that blends the tectonic shifts in diplomacy with bitter domestic politics and the personalities driving them. It is a story not only of an overstretched America, but also of the rise and fall and rise of the great powers of Asia. The about-turn of Japan—from a colossus seemingly poised for world domination to a nation in inexorable decline in the space of two decades—has few parallels in modern history, as does the rapid rise of China—a country whose military is now larger than those of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and southeast Asia’s combined.  The confrontational course on which China and Japan are set is no simple spat between neighbors: the United States would be involved on the side of Japan in any military conflict between the two countries. The fallout would be an economic tsunami, affecting manufacturing centers, trade routes, and political capitals on every continent. Richard McGregor’s book takes us behind the headlines of his years reporting to show how American power will stand or fall on its ability to hold its ground in Asia.  

Richard McGregor is an award-winning journalist and author with unrivalled experience in reporting on the top-level politics and economies of east Asia, primarily China and Japan, and also in Washington on national security issues.He was the Financial Times bureau chief in Beijing and Shanghai between 2000 and 2009, and headed the Washington office for four years from 2011. His book on the Chinese Communist Party published in 2010, ‘The Party’, was called a “masterpiece” by The Economist and won numerous awards in the US and overseas, including the Asia Society in New York award in 2011 for best book on Asia. A new book, on Sino-Japanese relations and the fate of US power in east Asia, tentatively titled “Asia’s Reckoning”, is due out in September, 2017, through Viking Press in the US, Penguin in the UK, and in Chinese and Japanese editions in Asia.He was a fellow at the Wilson Center in 2015 and a visiting scholar at the Sigur Center at George Washington University in 2016. McGregor has lectured widely, in the US and elsewhere, on Chinese politics and Asia.

Description

My presentation reframes the history and logic of settler colonial capitalism through a focus on Asian racialization in Canada and the US. Drawing on an archive of Asian North American visual culture, I argue that the historical alignment of Asian bodies and labor with capital’s abstract and negative dimensions became one of settler colonialism’s defining features. My focus on the economic modalities of Asian racialized labor attempts to push beyond existing approaches to settler colonialism as a Native/settler binary to formulate it as a dynamic triangulation of Native, settler, and alien populations and positionalities.

Iyko Day is an associate professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, chair of the Program in Critical Social Thought, and co-chair of the Five College Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program. She is the author of Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism (Duke, 2016).

Description

Come join us as 10 outstanding student researchers who have participated in The Grandparent Project present their final projects, which combine oral histories of mobility from Asia to Canada with personal reflections. Over the summer, these students have been working in the Asian Pathways Research Lab to investigate the mobility histories and practices of their own family members in order to reflect on how their own life pathways are both similar and different from those of older generations. The stories presented encourage new kinds of inter-generational conversations about the changing meanings of home, belonging, mobility, identity, diaspora and citizenship. This event will be structured as a literary short story reading, and free copies of our inaugural publication Pathways will be distributed at the event. This event is open to the public and ideal for students who may be interested in getting involved in the Asian Pathways Research Lab.

Description

Abstract: Japan’s combination of economic success and conservative dominance from the 1950s into the early 1990s was the consequence of what Pempel calls “developmentalism.” The term involves more than the well-studied ‘developmental state.’ Most particularly, the Japanese success story relied on a specific and unusual socio-economic alignment; a positive sum relationship between state direction and corporate creativity; and Japan’s Cold War security and economic partnership with the United States. The combination unleashed a positive cycle of economic development and conservative political strength.  Japan’s positive cycle was challenged by two external changes: first, the breakdown in diplomatic and security bipolarity that began with the Nixon visits to China and the Deng economic reforms; and second, the challenges from increased power of global finance and multinational production networks. These external global shifts undercut the Japan’s prevailing model and opened the challenge to find a suitable substitute. That search has continued for over twenty years resulting in some successes and many false starts. Professor Pempel’s talk examined the relationship between this more complete understanding of developmentalism as the roots of Japan’s early successes and the subsequent difficulties of finding its adequate replacement.  

Biographical Sketch:  T.J. Pempel is Jack M. Forcey Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on Japan’s political economy, economic and security issues in East Asia, and Asian regionalism. His most recent book with Keiichi Tsunekawa is "Two Crises, Different Outcomes: East Asia and Global Finance" (Cornell University Press).

Description

Over the past century, ‘indigenous’ as a political concept has become internationalized and, more recently, has risen in vogue as environmental protection movements worldwide are increasingly framed as Indigenous resistance to the enduring ills of settler colonialism. However, despite its trendiness, ‘indigeneity’ remains poorly defined, historically contingent, and the answers to its most basic questions (such as ‘who is Indigenous?’) remain in flux. In Southeast Asia, both Western and internal colonialism have been instrumental in the legal and political construction of Indigeneity and its application to specific populations. Meanwhile, Indigenous concepts of indigeneity typically diverge widely from State definitions, especially where territorial sovereignty is at stake. Drawing on my field research in the Philippines (and the work of others in Southeast Asia), I will discuss the cultural and political conundrums perpetuated by this nebulous term, and why grappling with ‘Indigeneity’ – as well as pondering its future – matters more than ever today.

OONA PAREDES is Assistant Professor in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is the author of A Mountain of Difference: The Lumad in Early Colonial Mindanao (Cornell SEAP, 2013).

Description

Student Led Research Project Presentations from the Richard Charles Lee Insights through Asia Challenge, Global Taiwan Projects and CAS450H: Asian Pathways Research Practice

The Asian Institute at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs is one of North America’s leading centres of Asian research and teaching. AI’s approach to Asia balances regional specialization rooted in local knowledge with transnational, global, and interdisciplinary conversations that contextualize and transects local viewpoints on contemporary issues.
The Asian Institute prides itself on offering innovative teaching programs, as well as distinctive hands-on international learning experiences for students. In their future careers, our students will navigate a knowledge economy shaped by globalization that requires fluency across cultural, business, social, and political spheres. In order to develop this fluency, spending time on the ground in Asia is a crucial complement to classroom learning. The AI aims to offer as many of its students as possible the opportunity for an academically rooted, life-changing field research experience in Asia at least once during their studies. To that end, the AI has designed unique extracurricular programs that are on the vanguard of supporting the University’s wider goals of internationalization, redesigning undergraduate teaching, and increasing student mobility. Programs such as ITAC and Global Taiwan are uniquely on campus and are important vehicles in achieving those goals.

Description

Culture has been frequently mentioned as an explanation for Asian successes in economic development. Typical is the comment by Samuel Huntington, the author of the controversial book, The Clash of Civilisations, offered as an explanation of the economic divergence between South Korea and Ghana, two countries that were at similar levels of economic development in the 1960s, argued: “Undoubtedly, many factors played a role, but ... culture had to be a large part of the explanation. South Koreans valued thrift, investment, hard work, education, organisation, and discipline. Ghanaians had different values. In short, cultures count”.
In this talk, Ha-Joon Chang will argue that those arguments trying to explain international differences in economic development in terms of cultural differences are often ignorant, usually fail to take a dynamic view of culture, and are invariably based on simplistic theories.

Professor Ha-Joon Chang is the economist at the University of Cambridge. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he has published 16 authored books (five co-authored) and 10 edited books. His main books include The Political Economy of Industrial Policy (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1996), Kicking Away the Ladder (Anthem Pr, 2002), Bad Samaritans (Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (Bloomsbury Press, 2012), and Economics: The User’s Guide (Bloomsbury Press, 2014). By 2018, his writings will have been translated and published in 41 languages and 44 countries. Worldwide, his books have sold 2 million copies. He is the winner of the 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize and the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize. He was ranked no. 9 in the Prospect magazine’s World Thinkers 2014 poll.

Description

In 2016, Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies began preparation of a brief for the next U.S. Administration on what the American strategy should be. President Obama talked about a “Pivot to Asia” and championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). With incoming President Trump’s announcement that the USA would be withdrawing from TPP negotiations, that strategy needed an update. Join the co-author of the CSIS report “Reinvigorating U.S. Economic Strategy in the Asia Pacific: Recommendations for the Incoming Administration”, Scott Miller, as he brings us up to date on the U.S. economic agenda in Asia, and how Congress is looking at trade negotiations in the post-TPP era.

Scott Miller has been a senior adviser and the William M. Scholl Chair in International Business at CSIS since 2012. The Scholl Chair focuses on key issues in the global economy, such as international trade, investment, competitiveness, and innovation. He has led many campaigns supporting U.S. free trade agreements and has been a contributor to U.S. trade and investment policy over many years. Mr. Miller advised the U.S. government as a liaison to the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations, and he is a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy. He was the founding chairman of the Department of Commerce’s Industry Trade Advisory Committee (ITAC) Investment Working Group. He is one of the authors of the CSIS report Reinvigorating U.S. Economic Strategy in the Asia Pacific https://www.csis.org/events/reinvigorating-us-economic-strategy-asia-pacific>

Description

Raised in a Buddhist household, “the Third Way” describes the path that Kristyn Wong-Tam has found to lead to move forward in new and challenging projects. As a queer, Asian woman, who left home as a teenager, she has forged a path to becoming a successful entrepreneur, realtor, community activist, and now politician. In each stage of her life, she has utilized the principles of finding a Third Way to develop creative solutions to complex problems. Leading with values of social justice and equity, she will share her experiences of bringing people together to find collaborative, community-responsive solutions to many challenges facing Toronto residents.

Kristyn Wong-Tam is Toronto’s only openly gay, racialized City Councillor. She was elected in 2010 and has been a champion for social justice, equity. She has championed the development of Gender-Responsive Budgeting at the Municipal level, Toronto’s first LGBTQ youth shelters, and initialized comprehensive, sustainable planning policies in the downtown. She has led the way in ensuring Toronto’s downtown communities are liveable and sustainable for all residents.

Description

Following the capitalist crisis in 1997/98, Indonesia’s economic and political reforms led to increased incorporation into global capitalism. This paper examines three major issues related to such capitalist development after reformasi. First, the motor behind the development of capitalism is a remarkable exploitation of labor. Second, the accumulation of capital through land-based industries has seriously assaulted the mass of independent poor producers. Third, evidence indicates that the appropriation of nature has become the underlying feature of capitalist development. In response to such development there is a growing anti-capitalist movement in the country. Thus this paper also examines the anti-capitalist tendencies in the country. I will restrict my attention to two major tendencies among Indonesian activists today. The first is “reformist anti-capitalist” activists who advocate for a more regulated capitalism and demand a role for the state in regulating the market. The second is “revolutionary anti-capitalist” activists, whose concerns go beyond reforms to the capitalist system.

Description

While social realism dominated the scene in South Asian prose for much of the 20th century, we have been witnessing the constant rise of a new mode of writing in the last forty years or so. Blending realism with supernatural elements, Magic Realism was mostly received as world literature from South America (Márquez, Borges, etc.). Ever since Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children (1980), Magic Realism has become a strong presence in South Asian literatures, both English and vernacular.
The paper will sketch the recent genealogy of Magic Realism from South Asia and outline, through a number of examples from Hindi, Bengali and Urdu literatures, how strategies of this literary mode are deployed in South Asia. It will also look at how some Bengali authors and critics position this production. Has Magic Realism, as some critics argue, always been a part of South Asian literary heritage? Is it an invention and cultural property of the global South? What do such patterns of appropriation mean for our thinking about world literature?

Hans Ulrich Harder is Professor of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany. His research interests are modern literatures in South Asia, particularly Bengali, religious movements, and intellectual history. He is the author of “Sufism and Saint Veneration in Bangladesh” (Routledge 2011) and other books, and has edited “Asian Punches: A Transcultural Affair” (Springer 2013).

Description

Graduate students discuss their career opportunities with a great deal of gallows humour. Student lounges and faculty meeting rooms echo with stories about the saturated job market and sorrowful accounts of classmates and former students caught on the dreaded sessional treadmill. It is true that there is, in most academic fields and particularly in the social sciences and humanities, a mismatch between the number of tenure-track faculty positions and the number of PhD graduates. It is not true, however, that recently minted PhDs are destined for penury and a professional life of long-term underemployment.

This half-day seminar examines key stages and strategies in the professional lives of individuals who are completing or have completed their PhDs. It reviews the nature of academic employment in North America and internationally, and covers such topics as:

* Making the most of your time in graduate school;
* Establishing an academic and professional persona;
* Professional engagement and creating contacts outside the academy;
* Converting your PhD research into scholarly interest in your career;
* Is there a “publish and prosper” strategy?
* Breaking out of the (academic) comfort zone: considering jobs in non-traditional places.
* Knowing when to switch to a non-academic career.
* Succeeding in the academy: from tenure-terror to professional success.

The seminar aims to provide graduate students and junior faculty members with a practical guide to managing expectations and developing strategies for career success.

The seminar is led by Dr. Ken Coates, former President of the Japan Studies Association, with assistance from Dr. Carin Holroyd, University of Saskatchewan, and Dr. David Welch, University of Waterloo. Dr. Coates is currently the Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation, University of Saskatchewan. He has held senior administrative roles at the University of Waterloo, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of New Brunswick at Saint John, the University of Waikato and the University of Northern British Columbia. He has diverse and interdisciplinary interests in such fields as Japan studies, science, technology and society, Indigenous rights, northern development, and Northern Canadian history.

Lunch will be provided.

Description

The University of Toronto—in conjunction with the new Centre for the Study of Global Japan at the Munk School, and the Japan Futures Initiative—is pleased to host the 2017 Japan Studies Association of Canada Annual Meeting, October 12-15, 2017.

The theme of the conference will be Future Uncertain: Economic, Environmental, Social and Political Challenges Facing Japan. Panels and presentations will draw from a full range of social science and humanities approaches to understanding Japan’s past, present, and future. Speakers will come from across Canada, Japan, the United States and Europe. Presentations will provide the most recent updates on political, social and economic events and trends occurring in Japan. Speakers will address a diverse range of topics that place Japan at its centre, including lifetime employment in the 21st century, agricultural policy, popular culture, infrastructural aid to developing countries, science and technology policy, Tohoku’s recover from the 3/11 disaster, and Japan’s relationship with the U.S. A major theme of this year’s conference will be Japan’s approach to environmental and energy issues. Concerns about climate change, nuclear energy, Japan’s disaster risk and the country’s economic future have sparked a concerted effort in the development of renewable energy, smart communities and smart cities, and the integrated policymaking necessary to support these initiatives.

Although designed for academics with a serious interest in Japan, JSAC is a welcoming and warm conference that encourages attendance from not only undergraduate and graduate students, but also the general public.

FOR TICKETS: CLICK LINK AT THE END OF THE PROGRAM

PROGRAM [draft 8.22.17]

Thursday, October 12

12:00–16:00 Professional development: A Seminar for Graduate Students and Junior Faculty Members [Registration required: https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/csgj/event/23594/]

15:00–18:00 JSAC Conference Registration

18:00–21:00 Opening Reception

Welcoming Remarks
• Professor Randall Hansen (Interim Director, Munk School of Global Affairs)
• Professor Louis Pauly (Interim Director, Centre for the Study of Global Japan, University of Toronto)
• Professor Carin Holroyd (President of JSAC)
• Consul‐General of Japan in Toronto

Opening Keynote

Maria Toyoda (Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Professor of Government, Suffolk University)
“The Political Economy of Things: Some Considerations for Japan’s Infrastructure Aid to Developing Economies”

Friday, October 13

08:30–09:00 Breakfast

09:00–10:30 Session 1: Keynote

Joseph Caron (Former Ambassador of Canada to Japan)
“Being Ambassador to Japan”

10:30‐10:45 Break

10:45–12:15 Session 2A: Society and Culture (I)

Mark Rowe (Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University)
“Ghosts and Spirits in Contemporary Japanese Buddhism”

Josh Trichilo (Ph.D. Candidate, Humanities, York University)
“3.11, Interspecies Trauma, and Kawakami’s ‘Kami‐sama’ Story(ies): Mobilizing Limits to (Not) Represent What it is Like to Whisper Across Finitudes”

James X. White (Ph.D. Candidate, School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, UK)
“Josei no(!) osake no(!) nomikata‐‐How Women Drink: The Perception and Evaluation of Women’s Alcohol Consumption in popular media”

Sheri Zhang (Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literature, University of Ottawa)
“Inspiration of Japan: Silence, Avoidance and Positive Approach Tackling Prejudice and Racial Discrimination”

Session 2B: Politics

Scott Harrison (Project Specialist, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada)
“Canada and Japan‐Canada Relations”

Jacob Kovalio (Associate Professor of History, Carleton University)
“Japan in the 21st Century: A Model Pacifist Liberal‐ Democracy Coping with a Corporatist Chinese Regime’s Lebensraum Foreign Policy”

Matthew Linley (Designated Professor, International Education and Exchange Center, Nagoya University)
“Explaining the Gap in the Provision of Disaster Preparedness Information to Foreign Residents in Japanese Cities”

Yves Tiberghien (Associate Professor of Political Science, UBC)
Title TBA

12:15–13:30 Lunch

13:30–15:00 Session 3: Keynote

Atsushi Sunami (Vice President and Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS))
‘‘Society 5.0’ as Japan’s Science and Technology, Innovation Strategy”

15:00–15:15 Break

15:15–16:45 Session 4A: Disaster Recovery

Millie Creighton (Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia)
“Difficulties, Disasters, Dams and the Backside of Japan: Re‐Ordering People, Place, and Pollution in Precarious Times”

David Edgington (Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia)
“The Road Back: Arrangements for Recovery of Population and Jobs in the Futaba District of Fukushima Prefecture”

Shinya Nagasaki (Professor and Canada Research Chair in Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Management, Department of Engineering Physics, McMaster University)
“Uncertainty in nuclear policy in Japan: A Comparison of Japanese and Ontarians’ Opinions on Nuclear Energy”

Maxine Polleri (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, York University)
“Commodifiable Phantasm: The Politicization of the Native Land in a Post‐Fukushima Context of Radioactive Contamination”

Session 4B: Art and Language

Norio Ota (Professor, Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, York University)
“Uncertainties of the future of the Japanese language: A Case Study of Conditionals”

Cary Takagi (Adjunct Professor, Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, York University)
“Future Uncertain for the Early Japanese Diaspora in Canada: Challenges and Responses to Religious Identity”

Noriko Yabuki‐Soh (Associate Professor, Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, York University)
“Images of Japanese women: An Analysis of Language Use in Advertisements”

X. Jie Yang (Professor, School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures, University of Calgary)
“Life Scenes in Classical Painting: A Research Approach with Digital Technology”

19:00–21:00 Dinner and Keynote
John Nilsson‐Wright (Fuji Bank University Senior Lecturer in Modern Japanese Studies, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge University)
Title TBA

Saturday, October 14

08:30–09:00 Breakfast

09:00–10:30 Session 5: Keynote

Patricia Maclachlan (Associate Professor, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin)
“Cultivating Institutional Change in Japan: Globalization, Demographic Decline, and the Future of Farming”

10:30‐10:45 Break

10:45–12:15 Session 6A: Education and Tourism

Teri Bryant (Associate Professor Emerita, Haskane School of Business Leighton Wilks Instructor, Haskane School of Business)
“Developing Cross‐Cultural Skills in Undergraduate Students through a Group Study Program to Japan: Design and Implementation Issues”

Atsuki Hashimoto (Department of Geography and Tourism Studies, Brock University)
David Telfer (Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Tourism Studies)
“A Comparison of Historic Tourism at the Villages of Shirakawa‐go and Gokayama”

Saeko Suzuki (Ph.D. Candidate, University of British Columbia)
“Digital Humanities: Electronic Resources or Print Resources”

Gregory Wheeler (Assistant Professor, Center of Medical Education, Sapporo Medical University)
“Morality or Neo‐nationalism? Examining Concerns Over the Implementation of
Moral Education as an Official Subject in the Japanese Elementary and Junior High Schools”

Session 6B: Roundtable on the Japan Futures Initiative
• Ken Coates (Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation, Johnson‐Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan)
• Carin Holroyd (Associate Professor of Political Studies, University of Saskatchewan)
• Seung Hyok Lee (Adjunct Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto)
• Masayuki Tadokoro (Professor of International Relations, Keio University)
• David Welch (CIGI Chair of Global Security and Professor of Political Science, Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo)

12:15–13:30 Lunch and Business Meeting

13:30–15:00 Session 7: Keynote

Andrew DeWit (Professor, School of Policy Studies, Department of Economics, Rikkyo University)
“Japanese Smart Communities as Industrial Policy”

15:00–15:15 Break

15:15–16:45 Session 8: Greening Japan

Teri Bryant (Associate Professor Emerita, Haskane School of Business, University of Calgary)
Iain Macpherson (Assistant Professor, MacEwan University)
“Colouring Japanese Organizations Green: Environmental Image‐Making Strategies for the 21st Century”

Jay Goulding (Professor, Department of Social Sciences, York University)
“Tokugawa’s Environmental Philosophy”

Sachiyo Kanzaki (Department of Anthropology, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM))
“Yusuhara: regional autonomy, revitalization and green energy”

Thomas Waldichuk (Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies)
“Green Space and Suburban Planning”

Sunday, October 15

08:30–09:00 Breakfast

09:00–10:30 Session 9: Society and Culture (II)

Fumiko Ikawa‐Smith (Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, McGill University)
Title TBA

Evan Koike (Ph.D. Candidate, University of British Columbia)
“‘If the Top Changes’: Nonprofit Organizations’ Attempts to Raise Japan’s Low Birthrate by Educating Company Managers”

Brian Pendleton (Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies, Langara College)
“‘My Generation are Lost Sheep ... We Must Worship Democracy’: The 1961 Garden
Club of America Tour to Japan”

Bill Sewell (Associate Professor, Department of History, Saint Mary’s University)
“Realism and Recollection: the Perils of Recalling Historical Figures”

10:30–10:45 Break

10:45–12:15 Session 10: Economy and Business

Dick Beason (Professor of International Business and Business Economics, Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta)
“Lifetime Employment in 21st Century Japan: Employment Trends in Research Intensive Firms”

Derek Hall (Associate Professor of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University)
“Japanese Overseas Agricultural Investments”

Shigenori Matsui (Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law, UBC)
“AirBnB and Uber in Japan: Is Law Killing the Development of New Technology?”

James Tiessen (Associate Professor and Director, School of Health Services Management, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University)
“Strategies of Japanese for‐Profit Long Term Care Providers: How do Firms Compete?”

12:15–12:30 Closing Remarks
Carin Holroyd (President, JSAC)

Description

This keynote lecture was a part of the 2017 Japan Studies Association of Canada conference (https://archive.munkschool.utoronto.ca/csgj/jsac2017/). The JSAC conference was a paid event, and this keynote was offered free of charge.  

Biography:  Honorary Professor, Institute of Asian Research, UBC. Joseph Caron joined the Trade Commissioner Service in 1972, and served abroad in Saigon and Ankara. In 1975, he began Japanese language studies, and subsequently served three times at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, including as Minister and Head of Chancery. During the 1980s, he undertook private sector assignments involving China, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. In Ottawa, he has held several positions related to Asian and international economic affairs, including G8 summitry. In 1998, he became Assistant Deputy Minister for Asia Pacific and Africa, and served as Canada’s Senior Official for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. Until 2005, Mr. Caron served as Canada’s Ambassador to China, with concurrent accreditation to North Korea and Mongolia. From 2005 to 2008, he was Canada’s Ambassador to Japan. In 2008, Mr. Caron was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Meiji Gakuin University. From August 2008 to June 2010, Mr. Caron was High Commissioner to the Republic of India, with concurrent accreditation as Ambassador to the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal and the Kingdom of Bhutan.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

This keynote lecture was a part of the 2017 Japan Studies Association of Canada conference (https://archive.munkschool.utoronto.ca/csgj/jsac2017/). The JSAC conference was a paid event, and this keynote was offered free of charge.  

Abstract:  What is “Society 5.0” (“ a super smart society”) and why is it important for Abenomics as its main pillar of the economic growth strategy? Can Japan go through socio-economic reforms necessary to realize a world-leading “super smart society”? Now, the Party of Hope (a new party led by Governor Koike) is campaigning against Prime Minister Abe and the LDP to “reset” and to “create a new political structure that is not tied down to vested interests.” Is this an indication of the difficulty in realizing Society 5.0 without facing a most dramatic political change?  

Biography:  Professor Sunami holds BSFS from Georgetown University. He obtained MIA and PhD in Political Science from Columbia University. He is currently Professor, and Vice President at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan. He is serving as Special Advisor, Cabinet Office responsible for Science and Technology and Innovation and President and Executive Director, the Ocean Policy Research Institute , the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.  Before joining GRIPS, he was a Fellow at Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry established by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan between 2001 and 2003. He also worked as a researcher in the Department of Policy Research at Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. From 1989 to 1991. He was a visiting researcher at Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, and Tsinghua University, China.　He is also a members of the Advisory Board for the Promotion of Science and Technology Diplomacy in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, the Council for Science and Technology in Ministry of Education, Culture ,Sports, Science and Technology and the Expert Panel on Basic Policy in Council for Science, Technology and Innovation of Cabinet office.

Description

In 1985, Japan established a law called the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL/雇用機会均等法), which created a framework to promote gender equality in the workplace in Japan. This also generated conversations about the culturally ingrained sexism and gender inequality in the country. With the combination of this law and the recent economic strategy (Abenomics) instigated by Prime Minister Abe, the cabinet pledged to empower women by increasing the number of women in the workforce and creating a safe work environment. However, despite the implementation of the law and the active promotion of the economic plan, female representation in the workforce is still not visible and sexism does not appear to be either decreasing or well addressed. A group of Japanese students with diverse backgrounds discussed and tackled both socially and culturally embedded issues of gender inequality and sexism in Japan from their perspectives and experiences.

Description

This keynote lecture was a part of the 2017 Japan Studies Association of Canada conference (https://archive.munkschool.utoronto.ca/csgj/jsac2017/). The JSAC conference was a paid event, and this keynote was offered free of charge.  

Biography:  Patricia Maclachlan, who arrived at UT in 1997, is now Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies.  She received her Ph.D in political science and Japan studies in 1996 from Columbia University and spent one year as a research associate in the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University. Her research and teaching interests include the politics and political economy of East Asia, with a focus on Japan. Her current book project explores the political economy of Japanese agriculture and the politics of agricultural policy reform in comparative perspective. Professor Maclachlan is the author of The People’s Post Office: The History and Politics of the Japanese Postal System: 1871-2010 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)andConsumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Advocacy (NY: Columbia University Press, 2002). She is a co-editor of and contributing author to The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), and has written several articles and book chapters on consumer-related issues in Japan and the West, Japanese civil society, and Japanese postal politics.

Description

This keynote lecture was a part of the 2017 Japan Studies Association of Canada conference (https://archive.munkschool.utoronto.ca/csgj/jsac2017/). The JSAC conference was a paid event, and this keynote was offered free of charge.  

Biography:  Andrew DeWit is Professor in the School of Policy Studies at Rikkyo University and an Asia-Pacific Journal editor. His recent publications include “Energy Transitions in Japan,” in Ted Lehmann (ed), The Geopolitics of Global Energy: The New Cost of Plenty and “Climate Change and the Military Role in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response,” in Paul Bacon and Christopher Hobson (eds),  Human Security and Japan’s Triple Disaster(Routledge, 2014).

Description

Abstract:
Pollution is one of the most pressing issues facing contemporary China and among the most prominent causes for unrest. Much of industry and mining takes place in rural areas, yet we know little about how rural communities affected by severe pollution make sense of it and the diverse form of activism they embrace. This talk draws on my new book to describe some of these engagements with pollution touching on three in-depth case studies. It argues for a more encompassing, holistic and diachronic study of pollution as it is experienced in its local contexts. It promotes an anthropological study of how villagers experience pollution, what socio-economic and political relations exist between communities, local officials and polluting firms, how patterns of action and inaction develop and how they relate to shifting definitions of health, environment, development and a good life. The term “resigned activism” serves as a conceptual tool to attend to subtle shifts in parameters and expectations and to the diverse forms of environmental engagement that they support. It encapsulates a spectrum of perceptions and practices comprising acts that may fit the conventional label of collective environmental contention, such as protesting at the factory gates and filing petitions. But it also includes less confrontational and more individualised or family-oriented tactics aimed at minimising pollution in one’s immediate surroundings.

Bio:
Anna Lora-Wainwright is Associate Professor of the Human Geography of China in the School of Geography and the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China (2017) and Fighting for Breath: Living Morally and Dying of Cancer in Rural China (2013), and director of the project ‘Circuits of Waste and Value: Making E-waste Subjects in China and Japan’, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Description

The Wild Lily movement of March 1990 and the Sunflower movement of March 2014 were arguably the two largest student protests in Taiwan’s post-war history. The former, a six-day sit-in at CKS memorial square, aimed to reform the non-democratic national assembly while the latter, a 24-day occupation of parliament, was against trade liberalization agreements with China. In this talk, professor Fan will analyze the differences and sameness of these two student-led protests as well as their respective roles in Taiwan democratic transition.

Yun Fan received her PhD from Yale University and currently is associate professor of sociology at National Taiwan University. Her research interests include social movements, civil society and gender politics. Her work has been published in Sociological Theory, Social Justice, Taiwanese Sociology, Taiwanese Journal of Political Science and a few edited books. Her forthcoming book entitled “Activists Matter: Social movements during Taiwan’s democratic transition, 1980s-1990s” will be published by Routledge. Besides her academic work, she has been actively involved in the Taiwanese student movement, women’s movement and political reform movement for more than twenty years.

Description

Talk Abstract:
Despite playing a key contributory role in China’s recent economic reforms and the Party’s regime durability, there has been a noted reduction in central-level policy experimentation under Xi Jinping’s administration. Recent studies have further noted an empirical reduction in policy innovation at the subnational level, and question whether local officials will continue to experiment in the foreseeable future.

This talk suggests that although these changes at the central-level are filtering down to local officials, a great deal of variation in policy experimentation exists. Thus, the puzzle motivating this talk is how do local officials filter these institutional changes to the extent of observed variations in local policy innovation?

Using recent fieldwork evidence, this talk presents three potential explanations: (1) the ineffectiveness of the vertical reward and punishment systems operated by the Party-state; (2) differing base preferences of local officials; and, (3) the presence of a cohort effect, viz. a communities of practice. While some officials are still conducting policy experimentation, the overall reduction in innovation strongly suggests that potential solutions to governance problems remain trapped at the local level, and that the central government will lose this “adaptable” governance mechanism that has contributed to its past economic and political successes.

Biography:
Reza Hasmath (Ph.D., Cambridge) is a Professor in Political Science at the University of Alberta. His award-winning research is currently supported by various multi-year grant schemes, notably from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. His recent journal articles appear in the Journal of Social Policy, International Political Science Review, Voluntas, Development Policy Review, Journal of Civil Society, The China Quarterly, Current Sociology, and the Journal of Contemporary China.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

In late 2016, South Korea saw a series of Internet-born street protests demanding that then-President Park Geun-hye step down, eventually leading to her impeachment in March of 2017. These candlelight protests were only the newest iteration of the youth-driven candlelight protest that originated online in 2002, which has now become a standard repertoire for activism. Drawing on Kang’s recent book Igniting the Internet (2016), this presentation attends to the cultural dynamics that allowed the Internet to so rapidly bring issues to public attention and exert influence on South Korea’s domestic and international politics. Kang will discuss the cultural dynamics of online politics and media-driven popular politics, situating them in the legacies of South Korea’s authoritarian and post-authoritarian eras. This presentation will consider the interplay among local historical context, structural variation across different societies, and the role of chance in the dynamics of mass movements and the “cultural ignition process”—speculating about the future of Internet-driven youth activism in South Korea and beyond.

Jiyeon Kang is an associate professor of Communication Studies and Korean Studies at the University of Iowa. Her research interests include South Korean social movements, Internet activism, youth culture, globalization, and the mobility of Asian university students.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

An interactive discussion with Samir Saran of New Delhi’s Observer Research Foundation and Shuvaloy Majumdar, Munk Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Anchored around China’s unprecedented rise, the discussion will be broken into three parts, including 1) India, Canada and the Liberal Order; 2) Himalayan Faceoff: India and China; and 3) Hacking Democracy: Internet & the State.