Description

Beginning in 1965, the Republic of China government in Taiwan began inviting the great Yomiuri Giants first baseman Oh Sadaharu to Taiwan. Oh, whose father was Chinese was presented as Wang Zhenzhi, the (half-) Chinese Superman who triumphed over Japanese discrimination with unbeatable Chinese morality, patriotism and drive. This role of Home Run King Wang was an important part of 1960s culture created by Taiwan’s population of recent mainland emigres, whose public identity was defined by a dual position of privilege and diasporic trauma. At the same time, Taiwanese fans harkened back to the Japanese colonial support of the game of baseball, and thrilled to the home run feats of Oh, who (like so many of them) was born under Japanese rule. For many Taiwanese people who were discontented under one-party nationalist rule, Oh’s rise to fame via the ‘Japanese’ game of baseball stood as proof of the superiority of Japanese culture vis-à-vis an imagined retrograde ‘China.’

Andrew Morris is professor of modern Chinese and Taiwanese history at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He is author of ‘Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan’ (University of California Press, 2010) and Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China (University of California Press, 2004; and editor of ‘Japanese Taiwan: Colonial Rule and Its Contested Legacy’ (Bloomsbury Publishing, forthcoming).

Description

NOTE: THIS EVENT IS FOR STUDENTS AND FACULTY ONLY

The Centre for South Asian Studies and the Contemporary Asian Studies Student Community presents an undergraduate/faculty conversation. This discussion hopes to explore the political and cultural meanings of transportation in a Pan-Asian context. Through the use of an interdisciplinary lens, the discussion seeks to engage the theme of urban development that the Asian Institute has embarked on this year. In touching upon the various aspects of the broader term ‘transportation’ (roads, railways, ports, rickshaws, sedan chairs, carriages, etc.), as well as the idea of mobility itself, this discussion will delve into the importance and evolution of transport, seeking to understand its impact on comparative politics, government policies, cultures and histories of various cultures in Asia.

Joshua Barker is the director of the Asia Institute, Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator in the Department of Anthropology. His research focuses on Indonesia, where he has examined various themes relating to his three main topics of interest: urban studies, crime and security, and new technologies.

Alana Boland is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Program in Planning. Her research focuses on environmental governance in urban China with particular interest in understanding how the changing relationship between the economy and environment under market reforms has influenced the management of resources and governing of spaces.

Description

Both Mao and Deng used the excuse of rejuvenating the party to “helicopter” very junior officials into the upper echelon of the party. This paper provides an analytical explanation of why Mao and Deng pursued this strategy. Furthermore, using both historical and statistical evidence will be used to illustrate how the promotion of junior officials afford the incumbent leader greater policy flexibility and less threat to their power. This talk will conclude with a discussion of how this strategy has affected contemporary politics in China.

Victor C. Shih is a political economist at the University of California at San Diego specializing in China. An immigrant to the United States from Hong Kong, Dr. Shih received his doctorate in Government from Harvard University, where he researched banking sector reform in China with the support of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and the Fulbright Fellowship. He is the author of a book published by the Cambridge University Press entitled Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation. It is the first book to inquire the linkages between elite politics and banking policies in China. He is further the author of numerous articles appearing in academic and business journals, including The American Political Science Review, The China Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, The Wall Street Journal and The China Business Review, and frequent adviser to the financial community. Dr. Shih holds a B.A. from the George Washington University, where he studied on a University Presidential Fellowship and graduated summa cum laude in East Asian studies with a minor in economics

Description

Registration required.

Filmed over 18 months, Lessons in Dissent is a kaleidoscopic, visceral portrait of a new generation of Hong Kong democracy activists. School boy Joshua Wong dedicates himself to stopping the introduction of National Education. His campaign begins to snowball when an interview goes viral on YouTube, with the new school year fast approaching; a showdown with the government seems inevitable. Meanwhile, former classmate Ma Jai fights against political oppression on the streets and in the courts. Lessons in Dissent catapults the viewer on to the streets of Hong Kong and into the heart of the action: confronting the viewer with Hong Kong’s oppressive heat, stifling humidity and air thick with dissent.

Director Matthew Torne, born 1980, was educated at the University of Kent and Oxford University, UK, and studied film production at the Hong Kong Film Academy. In 2002 Matthew Torne went to Beijing to teach English at China University of Political Science and Law.

Www.lessonsindissentmovie.com

Description

A group of eight Contemporary Asian Studies Students , two Anthropology students and Asian Institute Director Dr. Barker will be travelling to Burma during reading week to research the country’s ‘democratization’.

They will be raising funds through a Polical Science, History, and Anthropology square off in Kitchen Stadium to determine which program has the best Iron Chef!

Entry Price: $5 (Includes one vote for favorite chef dish, and lunch!)

Description

One of the important consequences of assimilation is that migrants share common sentiments and values with the host society. Public sentiments toward recent immigrants may turn negative in many immigrant-receiving countries. These sentiments may be shared even among those immigrants who migrated in earlier times. Drawing from the concept of group boundaries, we explore the condition under which this sharing of sentiments occurs. The analysis is based on data from a survey of migrants conducted in Hong Kong last year.

Eric Fong is a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. He is currently visiting the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Fong is a former President of the Canadian Population Society and Chair of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association. He also serves as an academic advisor at various international research centres. Fong widely publishes in the areas of race and ethnic residential patterns and immigration. He is completing a book on immigration and the city.

Description

Free admission by RSVP to manager@ccil-ccdi.ca before February 20, 2015

THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT. PLEASE EMAIL INDICATED REGISTRATION CONTACT IF YOU WISH TO BE PUT ON THE WAITING LIST.

Join experts from a range of backgrounds as they provide their views and perspectives on the major legal and public policy issues arising from next generation free trade agreements. Do the TPP and CETA offer successful models of free trade agreements for a new generation of international trade? What do these next generation treaties mean for Canada?

On October 18, 2013, Canada and the 28-State European Union (“EU”) announced the conclusion of a new Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (“CETA”). Set to commence in 2016, the CETA will remove 99% of tariffs between both parties; opens Canada to a market of 500 million consumers, and a combined GDP of $17-trillion. The breadth and scope of the CETA are unparalleled in the history of Canadian-treaty making.

A year prior, on October 9, 2012, Canada also joined the formal negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (“TPP”), an agreement aimed at promoting free trade within the Asia-Pacific region. Today, the TPP counts 12 participants (Australia, Peru, the United Sates, Vietnam, Malaysia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Japan), covers 40% of the world’s economic output, and 26% of global trade in terms of GDP. Taiwan, the Philippines, and South Korea have also recently expressed an interest in joining the TPP talks.

To encourage openness and the sharing of information, this event will be held under the Chatham House Rule. Participants are free to use the information received during the event, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speakers, nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

Description

The Munk One winning team of the Dragon’s Den competition travels to the next Ashoka Exchange in Washington, DC February 26-28, 2015, which is hosted by the University of Maryland and paired with UMD’s Social Enterprise Symposium.

Description

INDePth (Interrogating Notions of Development and Progress) is an annual student-run conference hosted by the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto. INDePth is proud to feature Japan as the case study for its 2015 annual conference. Delegates will explore Japan through the theme of “Japan Embattled: A Nation in Transition,” by studying the rapidly changing state of affairs engulfing Japan both regionally and globally.

Day One – The Two Faces of Japan: Social (In)equalities

Japan is often characterized as a homogeneous and prosperous nation. However, distinct social and economic differences between urban and rural areas, youth and the elderly, and men and women raise profound questions regarding equality and fairness in contemporary Japanese society. Day One’s panel and workshops will examine these important questions and evaluate Japan’s progress in providing solutions to them. Topics such as Japanese youth culture, demographic trends, gender roles, and diaspora will be on the agenda.

Day Two – Regional Challenges and Global Futures

Japan has been, and continues to be, an important power in East Asia and on the world stage. However, with issues of history, territorial sovereignty, and constitutional reform all threatening to increase tensions and derail cooperation with neighbours, Japan is in danger of losing its privileged place in regional and world affairs. Day Two’s panel and workshops will examine Japan’s place in the Asia-Pacific region, in the global community, and the interconnected nature of all of the above. Topics such as energy security, territorial disputes, trade, and the sustainability of Japan as we know it will be addressed.

Tickets:
$25 for U of T students and faculty
$30 for General Public

Click the link below for more information and to purchase your tickets.

Description

Views on China are diverging. Some see a property bubble, a looming debt crisis, protectionism, regulatory uncertainty, a divided elite and inability to reform. Others see a desirable deceleration in growth, potential for productivity gains, an economy following a normal Asian path rather than falling into crisis, and a broad policy consensus driving structural reform. Foreign direct investment from the US, EU, and Japan is declining. The Shanghai Stock Exchange outperformed all major indexes through most of 2014 but corrected sharply in December, with no apparent link to fundamentals. Chinese outbound direct investment is rising. This talk will offer the view that the transitions China are undergoing presents major challenges that paradoxically support the likelihood of successful economic reforms.

Christian Murck is currently Interim Executive Director of the Yale-China Association, a foundation engaged in educational, medical and cultural exchange programs between the U.S and China. In 1996-2001, Murck was the Managing Director and Senior Country Officer of The Chase Manhattan Bank in Beijing. From 2001 to March 2010, Chris served as Vice Chairman-Asia, Chief Executive Officer-Asia and Managing Director-China of APCO Worldwide. In that capacity, he advised clients on government relations, public affairs and corporate communication in China and the broader Asia Pacific region. Murck was nominated in 2003 to the Board of Directors of Bank of Shanghai by the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank group, from which he resigned in 2008 to become independent director of J.P. Morgan Chase (China) Co. Ltd. From 2010-13, Murck was President, American Chamber of Commerce in China, known for its policy and advocacy work and for innovative public-private partnerships in aviation, clean energy, healthcare, agriculture and food, work safety, and export compliance. Murck received his undergraduate degree from Yale University and a PhD in East Asian Studies from Princeton University.

Description

The Centre for South Asian Studies Annual Faculty and Graduate Student Workshop is for graduate students and faculty only.
To register, please RSVP to csas.assist@utoronto.ca

PANEL 1 SITES: SLUMS AND MARKETS
2:00pm-3:30pm

Anwesha Ghosh, Department of History
The Making of New Market: A Constitutive Paradox

Sabin Ninglekhu, Department of Geography and Program in Planning
From Desirable to Feasible: Politics and Contingencies of the Right to the City Movement in Kathmandu, Nepal

Coffee Break
3:30pm-4:00pm

PANEL 2 RESOURCES: WATER AND SANITATION
4:00pm-5:30pm

Bharat Punjabi, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance
Planning the City, Demarcating the Watershed: Vision, Politics and Rule-Making in the Development of the Mumbai Water Supply System

Prasad Khanolkar, Department of Geography and Program in Planning
Kaminey (Scoundrels): On Scoundrels, Toilets and Urban Politics in Mumbai

Workshop will be followed by a reception.

Description

This talk is drawn from the newly published book, Thinking about/from “Comfort Women” Histories: Structure of Ordinary Lives beyond Military Violence (Tokyo: Iwanami, 2014). The volume is a series of attempts by historians in Japan and Korea to break through current debates. The experiences of women who were forced to serve in the military brothels of Japan during WWII require scholars to look beyond war time. The authors of the book study broader fields: Korean rural socio-economy in the pre-war period, military brothels in the post-war Korean Army, the daily lives and decisions of Imperial Japanese licensed sex workers, and the history of sexual discipline in the American military. Instead of a revisionist history of bare sexual desire at a time of emergency, this lecture proposes an understanding of the event set in the longer and broader context of colonialism. The audience is invited to review these recent studies in politically charged East Asian settings.

Dr. Hiroyuki Matsubara is Associate Professor, Faculty of Urban Innovation, Yokohama National University, Japan, where he teaches US History. He is an editor of and contributor to the above mentioned book by the Historical Science Society of Japan. His book Undermined Ground of “Efficiency” : 1910s Social Hygienic Movement and American Political Culture (2013) won the Women’s History Association Award in 2014.

Description

This workshop consists of two groups and four panelists exploring contentious politics in both Koreas. Dr. Adam Cathcart (University of Leeds) and Christopher Green (Leiden University) will present work on contentious politics in North Korea during the Kim Jong-un era, focusing on the government’s use of information strategies, namely “re-defector” press conferences and the Moranbong Band, to maintain a “domain consensus” (i.e, its legitimacy). Professors Jennifer Chun and Judy Han will present their latest work on contentious politics in South Korea, focusing on politically active conservative religious groups and the social and political activities of South Korea’s more precarious workers.

Click the link below to register.

Description

This information session will be insightful for students interested in applying for Dr. David Chu Travel grants. For more information on the Dr. David Chu Scholarships visit the website link listed below.

This event is for students only; Tcards will be checked at the door.

Description

Join Professor Barker and students of the International Course Module (ICM) in a research discussion panel where students will have a chance to present their individual research findings. The panel will be followed by a Q&A session for students interested in the process of which ICM proposals are drafted. There will be an introductory address by Professor Joshua Barker, the students will present research from Burma in the following four themes:

Ethnic/Peace issues
Political Parties/Institutional Power
Development
Technology

Please note that this is a student and faculty event; Tcards will be checked at door.

Description

The Asian Institute is pleased to welcome all undergraduate students within the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto to join us on March 20, 2015 for the Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union’s inaugural WORK + ASIA Conference. Recognizing the increasing importance of Asia as a trade and diplomatic partner to Canada, and noting the number of alums who have moved to Asia after their studies, or are employed in Canada in sectors that interact with Asian counterparts, we aim to build on this and explore the many avenues of professional and academic relationships in and with Asian countries and why Asia is an important region to be invested.

We are pleased to announce our Keynote Speaker, David Mulroney. Mulroney is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. He served as Ambassador of Canada to the People’s Republic of China from 2009 to 2012. Mulroney will offer remarks on his role and experience as a co-chair and drafter of the “Asia Competence” report published by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

The conference will also include three panels:
Professionals + Asia
Career Guidance, Resumes, + Asia
Graduate Field Work in Asia

Registration is required. This event is for undergraduate students within the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto; Tcards will be checked at the door.

Description

Chinese political succession literature on Xi Jinping’s accession to becoming general secretary tends to emphasize patronage and factional politics (power struggle, factional balance, etc.) whereas other equally significant factors, such as the deliberate grooming by the Chinese Communist Party CCP) and Xi’s own performance and policy-making records, are often neglected. By focusing on Xi’s career in Zhejiang from 2002-2007, this paper attempts to describe and explain Xi’s performance and policy-making record and the extent to which this had contributed to a “perfect resume” for the CCP’s top position. Specifically, the paper discusses how Xi dealt with the challenging issues of development, economic growth, political participation, rural/urban gap, and environmental degradation. It will also evaluate Xi’s contribution to the modification of the “Zhejiang Model.”

Alfred L. Chan, PhD (Toronto), is professor and chair of political science at Huron University College, Western University. An alumnus of the University of Toronto, he has maintained his affiliation with the university (and the Asian Institute) since graduation. Current research projects include one book on Hu Jintao and China in the 21th Century, and another one on Chinese political recruitment and succession.

Description

In the 15th century, the Buddhist king Dhammacetī sponsored a sīmā (ordination hall) reform that was to become the most famous of its kind in mainland Southeast Asia. Having wrangled with the hairs of monastic law concerning sīmās, Dhammacetī sent monks from his kingdom centered in what is now lower Myanmar to Sri Lanka in order to return with a pure ordination line. In a most significant historical decision, Dhammacetī had an account of these reforms inscribed on ten large stone slabs, which became known as the Kalyāṇī Inscriptions. While addressing matters of law, history, and political order, the inscriptions are also at their heart a sīmā text, that is, a text about the regulation of ritual boundaries and religious land. Drawing especially on these inscriptions, this paper explores elements of the ideational and border-making and border-crossing world Dhammacetī and others participated in and helped cultivate, even as they established innovations that would dramatically shape future memory, religio-political culture, and transregional identity.

Jason A. Carbine is the C. Milo Connick Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Whittier College. His research and teaching about religion and society combines historical and ethnographic approaches, and draws from an interdisciplinary body of research pertaining to the history and sociology of religions, textual studies, anthropology, and comparative religious ethics. His publications include Sons of the Buddha: Continuities and Ruptures in a Burmese Monastic Tradition (2011) and the co-edited volume How Theravāda is Theravāda? Exploring Buddhist Identities (2012). Carbine is currently preparing a new text and translation of the famous Kalyāṇī Inscriptions.

For information please contact Christoph Emmrich at christoph.emmrich@utoronto.ca.

Description

Against the backdrop of the phenomenal international successes of governance feminism, my paper considers governance feminism in the post- colony. In particular, the paper uses the wide-ranging law reforms on rape and trafficking in India in the wake of the rape and murder of a Delhi student in December 2012 to make two arguments. First, that Anglo-American governance feminism has a rather limited and contingent influence on postcolonial feminism. Second, that a mapping of Indian feminist interventions on the law of rape over the past three decades suggests that Indian feminism displays key characteristics of governance feminism. Viewing the 2013 reforms as the culmination of decades of feminist lobbying of the state for rape law reform, the paper argues that Indian governance feminism is deeply committed to a highly gendered understanding of sexual violence. Further, that Indian feminism has increasingly resorted to the use of the criminal law to address sexual violence even as its historical suspicion of postcolonial state power has reduced considerably and is now mostly evident in its opposition to the death penalty for rapists. On the pathway to increased influence, Indian governance feminism has faced challenges from advocates of the LGBT community, children’s rights groups and sex workers’ groups. The paper considers in detail mobilizational efforts of one such group, namely, sex workers to illuminate both aspects of governance feminism, namely, the politics of feminism in relation to sex work but also the challenges for governance feminism as sex workers have mobilized outside the folds of the Indian women’s movement and in the space of what Partha Chatterjee calls political society. Brought together in the struggle for the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, I compare and contrast the ways in which Indian feminists and sex workers approached law reform. This illuminates ways in which governance feminism relates not just to juridical power but also to highly mobile forms of governmentalised power. This paper thus tells a highly contextual story of fragmentation, partial reception, partial rejection, and the local production of feminist ideas and stances towards governance.

Prabha Kotiswaran is Senior Lecturer in Law, King’s College London where she teaches criminal law, transnational criminal law, jurisprudence, law and social theory and sociology of law. She is the author of Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor: Sex Work and the Law in India. Published by Princeton University Press (2011) and co-published by Oxford University Press, India (2011), Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor won the SLSA-Hart Book Prize for Early Career Academics in 2012. She is also the editor of Sex Work, an anthology published by Women Unlimited (2011) for a series on issues in contemporary Indian feminism. Current projects include an edited volume on Shaping the Definition of Trafficking in the Palermo Protocol, a co-authored book on Governance Feminism and a co-edited Handbook on Governance Feminism (both with with Janet Halley, Rachel Rebouche and Hila Shamir). She is also the Co-Convener (with Peer Zumbansen) of the King’s Summer Institute in Transnational Law and Governance.

Description

The Munk Graduate Student Conference (MGSC) is run collaboratively by students in the Master of Global Affairs Program and the Master in European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. An internationally recognized centre of excellence, the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto brings together leading experts and dedicated students to engage across disciplines as they tackle global problems. It is in the spirit of collaborative study and civic engagement that the MGSC presents this year’s theme of “Ill with Illness: Economic, Social and Security Barriers to the Provision of Global Health“.

AGENDA:

THURSDAY, MARCH 26TH, 2015

4:30 –5:00pm
Registration
Vivian & David Campbell Conference Facility, 1 Devonshire Place

5pm – 6pm
Keynote Address
The Honorable Stephen Lewis, Founder & Co-Director of AIDS-Free World

FRIDAY, MARCH 27TH 2015

8:30 – 9:00am
Registration
Vivian & David Campbell Conference Facility, 1 Devonshire Place

Morning Panels

9:00 – 10:30am

Under Isolation: Vulnerable Populations & Social Barriers to the Provision of Global Health
(Vivian & David Campbell Conference Facility)
&
Opening the Medicine Cabinet: Economic Limitations on Public Health Provision
(Room 108 North)

10:30 – 10:45am
Coffee Break

10:45 – 12:00pm
Breakout Sessions

Comparative Case Study: Healthcare Systems of China, Taiwan & South Korea and the Implications for Population Health
(Vivian & David Campbell Conference Facility)
&
Working Group: Developing Interventions for Socially Marginalized Demographics
(Room 108 North)

12:00 – 1:00p
Lunch

Afternoon Panel

1:00 – 2:30pm
Global Health Security – Understanding the Success & Failures of International Intervention within Global Health
(Vivian & David Campbell Conference Facility)

2:30 – 2:45pm
Coffee Break

2:45 – 4:00pm
Breakout Session

Global Health Security Simulation
(Vivian & David Campbell Conference Facility)

4:00 – 4:30pm
Closing Remarks (Speaker TBD)

Description

Since the last years, the Great Leap Forward Famine (1959-1962) has become a “hot topic” in the China Studies. Felix Wemheuer will show that we can learn about the Chinese case by comparing it to the Soviet famine under Stalin (1931-33). He will analyze the historical and political roots of these socialist-era famines, in which overambitious industrial programs created greater disasters than those suffered under prerevolutionary regimes. Focusing on famine as a political tool, Wemheuer systematically exposes how conflicts about food among peasants, urban populations, and the socialist state resulted in the starvation death of millions. Furthermore, he will examine the long-term effects of the great famines on the relationship between the state and its citizens and argues that the lessons governments learned from the catastrophes enabled them to overcome famine in their later decades of rule.

Felix Wemheuer is professor for Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne. This last book “Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union” was published with Yale UP (2014). He published several journal articles on the Great Leap Forward and coedited the volumes Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and the Famine (2011) and Hunger and Scarcity under State-Socialism (2012). He is also the author of two popular books in German: a biography of Mao Zedong (2009) and The Great Hunger: Famines under Stalin and Mao. From 2000 to 2002, he studied Chinese and “History of the Communist Party of China” at the People’s University in Beijing. During various field studies in China, he held oral history interviews with older peasants, intellectuals, and local cadres on the Great Leap Forward famine. In 2006, he received his PhD from the University of Vienna for his thesis on rural memories of the famine in Henan Province. From 2008 to 2010, Felix Wemheuer was a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center.

Description

Not only is Jakarta the largest metropolitan area in Southeast Asia, it is the also one of the most dynamic, though beset with most of the urban problems experienced in twenty-first century Southeast Asia. Batavia, colonial capital of the Netherland Indies in the first half of the 20th century was a small urban area of approximately 150,000 residents. In the second half, Batavia became Jakarta, the 28 million megacity capital of independent Indonesia. Among many urban problems, one major problem plagued Jakarta in the last two decades is floods. Despite several infrastructure development projects to alleviate flooding, the severity of flooding in many parts of Jakarta has not decreased. Floods have become a threat and brought woes for Jakarta residents every year. This presentation will describe the transformation of Jakarta and discuss infrastructure development projects and annual flooding in Jakarta. All efforts of mitigating the annual flooding will also critically analyzed.

Dr. Deden Rukmana is an associate professor and coordinator of Urban Studies and Planning Program at Savannah State University, USA. He is currently a member of the Governing Board of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. He received a PhD degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Florida State University and completed master’s degrees from the University of Southern California as well as Bandung Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Savannah State University, he worked as a planning analyst with the Florida Department of Community Affairs. He also has eight years of experience as urban planner in Indonesia. He has authored a book (Residential Origins of the Homeless), a number of journal articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and dozens of Op-ed pieces in various publications, newspapers and magazines in the US, Indonesia, Singapore and the UK. His works appeared in many academic journals including International Planning Studies, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Area and Planning Theory and Practice. His current research centers on health disparities, homelessness and poverty in the US, and spatial planning, housing and development challenges in Indonesia. His works had been cited by many media including AFP, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Jakarta Globes, and Public Radio International. His blog Indonesia’s Urban Studies is one of the world’s best city blogs by the Guardian Cities.

Description

This article examines current debates for and against Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA) in Burma/Myanmar. The analysis, based on interviews with key local, national, and international actors involved in HMA, reveals why so many of them regard the mapping and removal of “nuisance” (i.e. non-strategic) mines to pose a security threat to the peace process. These same debates also shed light on the growing role risk management approaches now take in Burma/Myanmar as a response to decades of authoritarian misrule by a succession of military regimes. The land mines, although buried in the ground, actively unsettle such good governance initiatives and the neoliberal development projects to which they are often linked, most often by re-territorializing military, political, economic, and environmental authority in overlapping and conflicting ways at multiple scales. The findings reveal why HMA actors resist labeling the crisis mine contamination poses to civilians a “crisis” that requires immediate humanitarian action.

Ken MacLean, an Assistant Professor of International Development and Social Change at Clark University, has more than two decades of experience working with NGOs on issues related to human rights violations, conflict-induced displacement, extractive industries, and territorial disputes across South East Asia. He is currently preparing a book on the impact NGO archival practices have upon human rights “fact” production related to Burma/Myanmar. He has published widely on Vietnam in addition to Burma/Myanmar.

Description

After centuries of virtual isolation, during which time international sea travel was forbidden outside of Japan’s immediate fishing shores, Japanese shogunal authorities in 1862 made the unprecedented decision to launch an official delegation to China by sea. Concerned by the fast-changing global environment, they had witnessed the ever-increasing number of incursions into Asia by European powers—not the least of which was Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan in 1853–54 and the forced opening of a handful of Japanese ports at the end of the decade. The Japanese reasoned that it was only a matter of time before they too encountered the same unfortunate fate as China; their hope was to learn from the Chinese experience and to keep foreign powers at bay. They dispatched the Senzaimaru to Shanghai with the purpose of investigating contemporary conditions of trade and diplomacy in the international city. Japanese from varied domains, as well as shogunal officials, Nagasaki merchants, and an assortment of deck hands, made the voyage along with a British crew, spending a total of ten weeks observing and interacting with the Chinese and with a handful of Westerners. Roughly a dozen Japanese narratives of the voyage were produced at the time, recounting personal impressions and experiences in Shanghai. The Japanese emissaries had the distinct advantage of being able to communicate with their Chinese hosts by means of the “brush conversation” (written exchanges in literary Chinese). For their part, the Chinese authorities also created a paper trail of reports and memorials concerning the Japanese visitors, which worked its way up and down the bureaucratic chain of command.

This was the first official meeting of Chinese and Japanese in several centuries. Although the Chinese authorities agreed to few of the Japanese requests for trade relations and a consulate, nine years later China and Japan would sign the first bilateral treaty of amity in their history, a completely equal treaty. East Asia—and the diplomatic and trade relations between the region’s two major players in the modern era—would never be the same.

Joshua Fogel is Professor of History and Canada Research Chair in the History of Modern China at York University. A leading scholar of modern East Asian history, Professor Fogel is the author of numerous books and articles on China and Japan and their reciprocal interaction from the fourteenth through to the nineteenth century.