Description

Modern states in East Asia were formed out of traditional and colonial empires about 200 years after their European counterparts and 100 years after Latin American states. While modern East Asian states are much younger, cohesive and effective states are the norm in East Asia just as fragile and ineffective states are in Latin America. What explains East Asia’s more advanced level of state development despite its later entrance into modernity? Based on four cases (China, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam), this paper argues that war, capital and elite support for financing state building are not central to the postcolonial growth of cohesive states in East Asia. Rather, structural violence, which is violence motivated by ideologies and executed systematically with the goal of establishing long-term ideological and political hegemony, was the primary cause of cohesive states in the East Asian context.

Tuong Vu is Visiting Research Fellow, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University, and Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oregon. His book, Paths to Development in Asia: South Korea, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia (Cambridge, 2010) was selected by Asia Society as a 2011 Bernard Schwartz Award Honorable Mention.

Description

The South Asian Development Council and the Indian Students’ Society are both excited to present our first academic seminar of the new year. As both groups deal extensively with issues that matter to India and the larger South Asian region, it is imperative that we provide students with the platform needed to discuss one of the most significant issues regarding general politics and development in India. Corruption, especially in India, is characterized as a maligned parasite that has expanded in all sectors of society and politics. As we celebrate India’s 63rd Republic Day, we are all united in the hope that change will come. However, we still cannot turn away from some of the most important questions that face the nation and its people. Is the democracy in India a functioning one? Does the rampant corruption in government undermine its primacy? As citizens what can we do? From where does the anti-corruption draw its strength? Can this movement actually lead to some change? Why is it that the anti-corruption seems to have lost steam in this last month?

Our guest speakers for the evening, S. Sinha from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Mr. Sunil Sheoran of the India Against Corruption group will speak to these questions. We are certain that their insight and experience with regards to the anti-corruption movement will provide a constructive overview of potential solutions to the problem.

Following these talks, the floor will be open to a moderated discussion. We ask that you all join us and be a part of the global conversation that could prove to be revolutionary for Indian politics.

*Light Refreshments will be provided*

Description

On 16 September 2011, the still-popular Japanese band, SMAP (‘Sports, Music Assemble People’) appeared at the Worker’s Stadium in Beijing, their first concert outside Japan, and before a crowd of some 40,000s. The band had been invited to perform by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in May, after previous attempts by SMAP to appear in China had failed: they were scheduled to appear in Shanghai in September 2010, but this was cancelled by the mainland Chinese organisers because of the political problem of a Chinese trawler that had been detained by the Japanese coast guard, among the most prominent of ongoing internecine clashes between the two major East Asian states over territorial disputes and Japanese history textbooks. The concert’s theme – designed to register Japan’s thanks to China for assistance rendered after the disastrous 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami – was ‘Do Your Best Japan, Thank You China, Asia is One.’

The last phrase, while obviously meant to invoke solidarity between Japan and the now re-emergent power China, was surprising in that it was a direct quotation of a(n in)famous proclamation by the art historian and curator, Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913), from his book The Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (1903):

Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment the broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and the Universal, which is the common thought inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end, of life.

Apart from the fact that Okakura’s thinking on ‘Asia’, controversially, had been co-opted by the mid-1920s by the Japanese military to justify an expansive nationalistic imperialism, his spiritual-cultural ideal of Asian oneness that was opposed to forms of Western thinking predicated on commercial and industrial ‘machinery’ was transformed into a diplomatic placebo that could contain commercial mass-cultural forms to calm intra-East Asian tensions. This presentation is an essay on the ideals or imaginaries of ‘Asia’ (and perhaps even different forms of subjectivity) that now exist in contemporary East Asia, as manifested primarily in the form of mass culture from Japan and South Korea that, despite the complexities of language boundaries that need to be crossed, seems to have reached translocal status in East and Southeast Asia, and think through the differences from the earlier imaginaries of a modern Asia that, in many respects, Okakura shared with Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). Once, the ideal of Asia included East and South Asia; now this seems less the case, as ‘Asia’ tends to mean ‘East Asia’ in regional discourse. What is notable, though, is that the exact commercial and industrial machinery that both Okakura and Tagore were critical of – in formats and form that could not have imagined in their lifetime – comes to be that which, in some respects, is in complex counterpoint to the East Asian region’s tensions. What then, the presentation will ask, is the ‘contemporary’ (or is that ‘postcolonial’?) region, as opposed to the modernities that both Okakura and Tagore either partially accepted or rejected as normative in the colonial era?

C. J. W.-L. Wee is an Associate Professor of English at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was previously a fellow in the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. He has held visiting fellowships at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi; the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University; the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and the Humanities, University of Cambridge. Wee is the author of Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being Modern (2003) and The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore (2007), and the editor of Local Cultures and the ‘New Asia’: The State, Culture, and Capitalism in Southeast Asia (2002). Most recently, he co-edited Contesting Performance: Global Sites of Research (2010).

Description

This paper revisits child-marriage legislation in colonial India between 1891 and 1929 to re-envision the ‘child’ as a subject constituted by laws governing sex, rather than as an a priori object requiring protection from patriarchal sexual norms. I draw attention to a shift from a medical to a ‘digital’ or census-driven construction of the child at the turn of the twentieth century, to scrutinize the biopolitical impulses behind child-protection at this time. To relocate the idea of child-protection within the framework of a critique of colonial government, rather than a history of liberal rights, I draw attention to the new importance of age – as number – in the formulation of legal subjectivities, ethical values and humanitarian accounting in twentieth-century India. In doing so, I reassess some of the ideas on colonial/modern government and liberal racialism explored in my book Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire.

Ishita Pande is Assistant Professor of South Asian history at Queen’s University, Kingston. Her book Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire (Routledge: London and New York, 2010) is a study of the impact of the colonial connection on race science in Britain, the place of race in imperial liberalism, the crucial role played by medical experts in colonial government, and the use of a medicalized idiom in the fashioning of the Bengali ‘modern’ in the long nineteenth century. Her interest in a critical understanding of colonial modernity continues to drive her work on the politics of childhood, marriage and sexuality in late colonial India. As part of a larger project on the entanglement of sex and childhood, she is studying the ‘globalization’ of norms of childhood through national and international law in the early twentieth century.

Description

In recent years the importance of wild-capture inland fisheries in the Mekong River Basin to human livelihoods and food security has become increasingly evident, with estimates of fish catches rising from just 357,000 tons in 1991 to over 3 million tons in 2005, making the Mekong Basin home to the world’s most important inland capture fisheries. This rise in catch statistics is not due to fishing actually increasing, but is rather because of better understandings of the significance of wild-caught fisheries to rural livelihoods. Paradoxically, just as Mekong fisheries have gained more recognition, efforts to develop destructive large hydroelectric dams have accelerated. Dams are being planned both on the mainstream Mekong River and on large important tributaries of the Mekong River, and would block crucial fish migrations. These dams would also variously alter water quality and hydrological conditions, impacting fish habitat and leading to declines in fisheries far from where the dams would be built. Adopting a political ecology approach, this paper considers crucial geographical issues associated with fisheries and large dam development in the Mekong River Basin. In particular, I consider how national, regional and international politics; state territorialization; and power relations are affecting the geopolitical landscape as it relates to dams and fisheries.

Ian G. Baird is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Originally from Canada, Professor Baird lived and conducted research in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand for over 20 years. His diverse research interests include political ecology, Mekong fisheries, economic land concessions, and upland peoples in mainland Southeast Asia.

Description

A panel and Q&A session for students to meet and interact with successful practitioners from different fields across Canada

Free Admission

The seminar will be followed by light refreshments.

Distinguished Panellists:

Tony Wong is a senior reporter with the Toronto Star. Over more than two decades he has reported on business and economics, politics at Queen’s Park and City Hall and crime and courts. In addition to the Star, Wong has reported for CBC Radio, CityTV, OMNI TV, and The London Free Press. But he most fondly remembers being a cub reporter for The Varsity and The New Edition at the University of Toronto. While at U of T, Wong also started a monthly magazine called Dialogue – the first English language magazine in Toronto aimed at the Asian diaspora.

Jon Silva graduated from Trinity College in the University of Toronto with an Honours B.A. in International Relations. He also completed a Master in Public Policy from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. He joined the Canadian federal government in 2006 through the Management Trainee Program (MTP), which was a leadership development program offering challenging work assignments and formal training within the federal public service. As an MTP participant, Jon worked at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) where he held analyst and project officer positions in the Philippines and Vietnam Country Programs. He is currently a Senior Development Officer with the Vietnam Country Program at CIDA.

Jing Jing Chang completed her BA in Cinema Studies and French at the University of Toronto and her PhD in modern Chinese history and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her teaching areas are Asian and world cinemas. And her research interests include Cold War film cultures, Hong Kong cinema, and postcolonial studies.

Description

Professor Jing Jing Chang’s presentation focuses on the history of the role of Cantonese film development in postwar Hong Kong in its reconstruction of Hong Kong as a new home for the ongoing influx of arrivals to the colony. In particular, she examines the cultural work of the Zhonglian film company (1952-1967), whose film artists became the new cultural elites in postwar Hong Kong. In addition to presenting a thematic analysis of the corpus of this film company, this talk deciphers the fan letters to Zhonglian’s fan magazine, the Union Pictorial, in order to re-conceptualize the role of audiences beyond Hong Kong in constructing a postwar moral universe of pan-Chinese patriotism in Cantonese style. In this very process of reinventing a moral universe amidst the new bipolar Cold War world order, Zhonglian and by extension, postwar Hong Kong, became a nodal site, where the didactic and moral message of Chinese patriotism was produced and from where such ideological ideas were disseminated to overseas Chinese communities beyond this British Crown Colony.

The seminar will include a half hour Q&A session, followed by light refreshment.

Jing Jing Chang completed her BA in Cinema Studies and French at the University of Toronto and her PhD in modern Chinese history and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her teaching areas are Asian and world cinemas. And her research interests include Cold War film cultures, Hong Kong cinema, and postcolonial studies.

Description

This paper considers the implications of recent changes in China’s death penalty legislation for understanding the nature and trajectory of political reform in that country. Extant scholarship, informed largely by the modernization paradigm, depicts changes in the administration of criminal justice as both a cause and a consequence of China’s liberalization in the post-Mao era. For those of this view, the policy of the Hu-Wen government to “kill fewer, kill carefully” represents the latest in a gradual move toward the eventual abolition of the death penalty, the further improvement of human rights, and a precursor to broader institutional change. By contrast, this paper argues that the policy amounts to the deeper institutionalization of capital punishment in Chinese jurisprudence, and that its retention, connected to key aspects of state performance and legitimacy, is in fact a greater portent of the CCP’s longevity than its demise.

Stephen Noakes is a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. A specialist in Chinese politics, he taught previously at Queen’s University, Kingston, and in 2009 was a Visiting Scholar at Fudan University’s School of International Relations and Public Affairs. His current book project examines patterns of transnational advocacy on a range of policy issues in the PRC.

Description

The 14th century mural paintings at Zhalu monastery in central Tibet are famed for their beauty and renowned for their fine state of preservation. These important mural paintings include a set of the largest and earliest surviving Tibetan depictions of the previous incarnations of the Buddha (Jataka) painted around the temple’s circumambulatory passage. These paintings of 100 previous lives represent the earlier incarnations of the bodhisattva as kings, merchants, monkeys and elephants, over the many aeons that he accumulated the ample merit necessary to become Shakyamuni. But why paint these up high in a narrow passage? What did these paintings do for the temple and its users? What texts informed these paintings? What styles and artistic awareness did they reflect? This talk will examine my current research and offer some reflections on what we can learn about 14th century Tibet from these paintings, arguing that these mural paintings can help to explain the significant relationships between religious practice, textual canon formation, patronage and art in 14th century Tibet.

Sarah Richardson is a PhD candidate in the Art History department. Her dissertation on Zhalu concerns the interface of visuality and textuality in 14th century Tibetan mural painting.

Description

Visual representations of kisses troubled censors around the world with the rise of film media in the twentieth century; a kiss was never just a kiss and the censors knew it. This talk presents the history of the kiss in modern Japan as a visible manifestation of the deepest effects of censorship. Even as censors attempt delete the trace of their work, producers continually reveal the marks of censorship.

Jonathan E. Abel is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Japanese at Penn State University. His book Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan is forthcoming from the University of California Press’s Asia Pacific Modern Series and won the Weatherhead East Asia Institute’s First Book Prize.

Description

On March 5, China’s Eleventh National People’s Congress will convene its fifth and last annual plenary session, before the Twelfth Congress begins its term next year. In the autumn, the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will convene in Beijing, at which a new group will assume leadership. Three U of T professors offer insights on recent developments and ongoing issues in Chinese politics, society, and economy as the country prepares for leadership succession.

Description

The disparity between rich and poor continues to increase even as developing countries experience economic growth. At the same time, inherent structural inequality that exists within the welfare state creates a problem of invisibility for seasonal, migrant, and informal sector workers. To successfully address the sanitation needs of the most vulnerable populations, we must consider the unique challenges associated with being “invisible.”

Joseph Wong is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is also the Director of the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs. Wong’s research interests are on public policy and political economy in East Asia. His recent research focuses on public health disasters. Wong received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001 and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Seoul National University, and the Taiwan Institute for National Policy Research. He was recently elected Senior Member of St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

Description

INDePth – Interrogating Notions of Development and Progress Conference is an annual conference on development that brings together students from a variety of fields and universities. We aim to help students share knowledge, build their network and equip in skills which will empower them to become change-makers.

INDePth reaches out to students at leading Canadian, American and Indonesian universities across a variety of disciplines. These students will collaborate and connect in workshops to understand the ways in which economic and social developments work. Following student delegations have confirmed their participation:

University of Toronto
University of Toronto-Scarborough
University of Alberta
University of British Columbia
University of Ottawa
Gadjah Mada University

INDePth Conference 2012 will look at the path of economic development in Indonesia and its 238 million population as a reference to discuss it’s social consequences on this culturally and ethnically diverse nation.

By the end of the workshops, students will gain both intellectual and practical skills to contribute their local communities and internationally. Most importantly, they will have built a network of similarity minded colleagues to support them in that endeavor.

For further detail, check our website http://indepthconference.wordpress.com/

Support INDePth by liking our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/INDePth-Conference/229238060484716

For full itinerary, visit http://indepthconference.wordpress.com/the-indonesian-experience-2012/itinerary/

Description

Emerging country National Oil Companies (NOCs) have received increasing attention within and outside the scholarly community due to the recognition that they have played an increasingly dominant role in both the exploitation of petroleum reserves and the management of petroleum sectors in their own countries since the late 1960s. By the end of the 20th century, NOCs in the developing world alone numbered over 100 and accounted for over 70 percent of world oil production. What has been largely overlooked by those outside the petroleum industry, however, is that emerging country NOCs have also sought to increase their economic influence beyond their own borders. Over roughly the past three decades, but especially since the beginning of the 1990s, NOCs have increasingly sought to internationalize their operations. Their ambitions, however, have been realized with varied degrees of success. What explains this variation? The few accounts that exist to date focus on recent changes in the structural characteristics of the international oil industry. Based on preliminary research (with Jazmin Sierra, Brown University), I argue instead that success depends on domestic political conflict surrounding petroleum sector nationalization and the NOC’s managerial independence. Understanding why some NOCs are effectively able to become IOCs not only has significant policy implications, it contributes to growing theoretical skepticism regarding the so-called “resource curse.”

Pauline Jones Luong is currently Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Previously, she held faculty appointments at Yale and Brown University. She received her Ph.D. in 1998 from Harvard University, where she was an Academy Scholar from 1998-1999 and 2001-2002. Her primary research interests include: institutional origin and change; identity and conflict; the politics of economic development, and political extremism. Her empirical work focuses primarily on the former Soviet Union. She has published articles in several leading academic and policy journals, including the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Foreign Affairs, Politics and Society, Europe-Asia Studies, and Resources Policy. Her books include: Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts (Cambridge University Press, 2002); The Transformation of Central Asia: States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence (Cornell University Press, 2003); and most recently, Oil is Not a Curse: Ownership Structure and Institutions in Soviet Successor States (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Future research will explore secularism as a form of political extremism and will focus on countries with predominantly Muslim populations, including former Soviet Central Asia. Her research to date has been supported by several organizations and institutions, including the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the United States Institute of Peace, the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation, the National Council on East European and Eurasian Research, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Description

This event is free and open to the public.

Keynote Speaker
Dr. James Keith Vincent
Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature
Boston University
“Deceptive Interiors: Rethinking the ‘Discovery of Interiority’ in Modern East Asian Literature”
A reconsideration of the emergence of interiority and the self in modern Japanese literature in terms of recent cognitive literary theory.

For further details, please visit http://groups.chass.utoronto.ca/easgsc

Description

The University of Toronto / McMaster University Yehan Numata Buddhist Studies Program supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Uof T’s Centre for South Asian Studies, present a public lecture by Steven Collins.

The phrase ‘practices of the self ’ was introduced by the French thinkers Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot, to refer to ways of life in Hellenistic Greece and Imperial Rome (Hadot speaks of ‘spiritual exercises’) where philosophical discourse was engaged in not simply to produce changes in the ideas people hold, but more importantly changes in the character of those who held them. It is only a superficial paradox to speak of Buddhist practices of the self, given that all forms of Buddhism, including that found in the Pali texts which will be the subject of this talk, claim that there is no self outside the changing psychophysical processes which make up a lifetime and a series of lives in a sequence of rebirths. The talk will end with a consideration of the varied and heterogeneous practices called (in English) ‘Buddhist Meditation’.

Steven Collins is Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he teaches in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. He is a Council Member of the Pali Text Society (London).

Description

With presentations by:
Stephen Berkwitz, Anne Blackburn, Thomas Borchert, Steven Collins, Kate Crosby, Christoph Emmrich, Charles Hallisey, Anne Hansen, Charles Keyes, Justin McDaniel, Patrick Pranke, Juliane Schober, Donald Swearer and Ashley Thompson.
And with the participation of Louis Gabaude, John Holt, Jacques Leider and Alicia Turner.

Public keynote lecture by:
Steven Collins
Pali Practices of the Self
Sunday, March 11, 6-8 pm
Campbell Conference Facility
Munk School of Global Affairs
1 Devonshire Place
Registration: http://www.munk.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?eventid=10892

Description

Places and Pathways of China’s Urban Development: The View from Sichuan’s Capital

Explorations of everyday spaces, planning, social change, built environments.

Presentations by student participants in the 2011 Chengdu Field School Internationalized Course Module (ICM) for ASI400 and GGR343.

For a description of the ICM that the Asian Institute and Department of Geography students undertook, please check http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/main/newsitems/2011-GGR-ICM-china.

Description

My research involves a critique of the concept of life as it emerged in Meiji era Japan. I argue that a central condition of possibility for thinking life in its modern form is a process of individuation that shapes bodies at an ontological level. By critiquing life and its ontology of individuation, I unearth the traces of an impossible “primary collectivism” that is not merely reducible to a congregation of individuals, but originally collective. In this presentation I will track this primary collectivism in a lineage tying the mutual aid societies of Japan’s Edo period to the life insurance industry of the Meiji 10s and 20s. I will then show how a particular affective order emerged under the Meiji state that defined, not merely the ideological or economic horizon of possibility for capitalist modernity, but reached down to the very core of political being itself.

Sean Koji Callaghan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of East Asian Studies. His interests include early modern and modern Japanese history, Meiji era literature, French and Japanese critical theory, and continental philosophy. He lives with his wife in Vancouver and currently misses her beyond any calculation the law of large numbers could provide.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

Before and After Superflat narrates the story of the Japanese contemporary art world since 1990. After 1995 and again after March 2011, art in Japan can be seen to reflect and refract the difficult issues faced by a formerly fast developing society now have to face sharp economic and political decline, demographic crisis, and social polarization. Considering the Echigo-Tsumari and Setouchi festivals, as well as local art in the city initiatives in Yokohama and North East Tokyo, we will look at how artists, squeezed out of the flattened time and restricted space of life and work in the global city, have generated new meaning for their work in both urban and rural settings.

Adrian Favell is Professor of Sociology at Sciences Po, Paris, and was formerly Associate Professor and Professor of Sociology at UCLA. He is a specialist on international migration and mobilities, global cities, and multiculturalism. A 2006-7 Abe Fellow in Tokyo, he has since then also been involved in the Japanese contemporary art world as an observer, writer and occasional curator. Further info: http://www.adrianfavell.com

Description

Many books and conference panels offer advice on how to turn a dissertation into a successful first book. There is almost no guidance for how to plan and write a subsequent book, even though the conditions of writing are almost always completely different. For a first book that begins as a dissertation, there are committees and advisors to help a scholar choose and shape their topic, to guide the research and direct the writing, and to give advice on how to reshape the resulting thesis into a book. The second book does not usually begin with a dissertation or the advice of a committee. Instead a scholar has to find the appropriate size of a project, plan for the research, and choose a style and genre of writing on his or her own. For many scholars the second book will be more ambitious in theoretical aspiration, style, and scale than their first, multiplying the challenges of the task. My talk will explore some useful ways to go about planning out a second book, along with some pitfalls to avoid. The advice should also be useful for those working on their thesis or first book.

Ken Wissoker is the Editorial Director of Duke University Press, acquiring books in anthropology, cultural studies, and literary theory; globalization and post-colonial theory; Asian, African, and American studies; music, film and television; race, gender and sexuality, and other areas in the humanities, social sciences, media, and the arts. He moved to Durham to join the Press as an Acquisitions Editor in 1991; became Editor-in-Chief in 1997, before being named Editorial Director in 2005.

Among the authors whose books he has published are Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jane Gallop, Charles Taylor, Lisa Lowe, Lauren Berlant, Judith Halberstam, Brian Massumi, Ann Stoler, Aihwa Ong, Rey Chow and Arjun Appadurai. He is especially proud of the number of first book prizes that have gone to Duke University Press authors — a sign that the Press continues to have its pulse not simply on current scholarship, but on the most promising new intellectual developments.

Description

In the international context of heightened state efforts to ‘secure’ borders and control migration, migrants and labor brokers continue to find creative ways to escape state surveillance, mobilize laws for their own goals, and maneuver around regulations. This workshop focuses on labor brokers, migrant domestic workers, sex workers, and marriage migrants from and to various parts of ‘Asia’ (East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Gulf States). As such, it is interested in the perceptions, experiences and negotiations of moving populations with the modern security state.

Speakers will examine the specific legal, regulatory, and disciplinary pressures that shape migrants’ work/lives in home and host countries, and trace the ways that migrants and brokers engage, inhabit and rework these pressures. The workshop pays particular attention to the definitions of intimate roles, domestic responsibilities, and sexual identities that migrants invoke and subvert in their interactions with national securitization campaigns, border policing practices, labor brokerage relationships, and the formal and informal regulation of transnational and national labor markets.

This event will be a pre-workshop in preparation for the international Association of Asian Studies Conference which will be held in Toronto in March 2012. Among the participants in the workshop are University of Toronto faculty affiliated with the Asian Institute, as well as scholars presenting papers at two panels at the AAS conference: “Movement, life course and temporalities: migrant lives across time and space” (organized by Mark Johnson and Nicole Constable) and “In/secure intimacies: Inter-Asian migrations in the shadow of the state” (organized by Rachel Silvey).

Description

This event is free and open to the public.

If you would like to attend the morning sessions, please register at the top of this page.

9 a.m.
I. Opening Session
Chair: Larry ALFORD, Chief Librarian, University of Toronto Libraries

A. Welcome Remarks: Cheryl MISAK, Vice-President & Provost, University of Toronto
B. Co-Organizer’s Opening Speech: Wei ZHAO, Rector, University of Macau
C. Book Donation Ceremony

10 a.m.
II. Overviews of the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) First 12 Years
Chair: Jack LEONG, Director, Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library

A. A Macanese Perspective, Jorge RANGEL, President, The International Institute of Macau
B. Macao from Luso Twilight to Sino Glow, 1999-2012, Ming CHAN, Stanford University

Coffee break

11 a.m.
III. University of Macau Cross-Border New Campus as Pearl River Delta (PRD) Integration Breakthrough
Chair: Simon HO, Vice Rector, University of Macau

A. UM Visions & Missions, Simon HO
B. UM in MSAR-PRD Integrative Dynamics, Bill CHOU
C. UM in MSAR-PRD Human Resources & Societal Advancement, KY CHOI
D. UM-Canada Links, Newman LAM

To register for lunch, please click on the following link:
http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=11827

To register for the afternoon sessions, please click on the following link:
http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=11828

Description

This event is free and open to the public. Please register for individual sessions below.

9 a.m.
I. Opening Session
Chair: Larry ALFORD, Chief Librarian, University of Toronto Libraries

A. Welcome Remarks: Cheryl MISAK, Vice-President & Provost, University of Toronto
B. Co-Organizer’s Opening Speech: Wei ZHAO, Rector, University of Macau
C. Book Donation Ceremony

10 a.m.
II. Overviews of the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) First 12 Years
Chair: Jack LEONG, Director, Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library

A. A Macanese Perspective, Jorge RANGEL, President, The International Institute of Macau
B. Macao from Luso Twilight to Sino Glow, 1999-2012, Ming CHAN, Stanford University

Coffee break

11 a.m.
III. University of Macau Cross-Border New Campus as Pearl River Delta (PRD) Integration Breakthrough
Chair: Simon HO, Vice Rector, University of Macau

A. UM Visions & Missions, Simon HO
B. UM in MSAR-PRD Integrative Dynamics, Bill CHOU
C. UM in MSAR-PRD Human Resources & Societal Advancement, KY CHOI
D. UM-Canada Links, Newman LAM

Lunch Break
12 p.m – 1 p.m.

1 p.m.
IV. MSAR Governance & Economy
Chair: Susan HENDERS – York Univesity

A. E-politics & Elections, Eilo YU, University of Macau
B. Law and Order, Lawrence K. K. HO, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
C. Economy in Global Financial Crisis, Yang ZHANG, University of Macau
D. Social Tension & Regime Response, Zhidong HAO, University of Macau

2 p.m.
V. MSAR Identity, Culture & Heritage
Chair: Ruth HAYHOE, University of Toronto

A. Macao’s Changing Identity, Malte KAEDING, University of Surrey, UK
B. Macao’s Cultural Interface: Historical Roots & Future Prospects, Tze-ki Hon, State University of New York-Geneseco
C. Macao Media, Agnes LAM, University of Macau
D. Heritage Conservation, Tourism & Urban Planning, Derrick TAM– Sun Yatsen University, Guangzhou

Coffee break

3:15 p.m.
VI. MSAR/Macanese External Links
Chair: Manuela MARUJO, University of Toronto

A. Macao in Sino-Lusophone Links, José Carlos MATIAS, Teledifusion de Macao, Macao
B. Portugal’s Vision of China’s Macao, Antonio SALDANHA, Technical University of Lisbon
C. The Portuguese in China, Antonio M. JORGE da SILVA, The International Institute of Macau
D. MSAR-Singapore/ASEAN Links, Yoong Yoong LEE, Policy Study Institute-Singapore
E. Macao’s Lessons From Singapore, Bryan HO, University of Macau
F. The Macanese in Canada, Gustavo da ROZA. OC, University of Manitoba

4:30 p.m.
VII. Concluding Observations
Chair: Rick GUISSO, University of Toronto
Panelists: T. W. NGO, University of Macau; Jack LEONG; Ming CHAN

Description

This event is free and open to the public.

If you would like to attend the lunch, please register at the top of this page.

To register for the morning sessions, please click on the following link:
http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=11826

To register for the afternoon sessions, please click on the following link:
http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=11828

Description

This event is free and open to the public.

If you would like to attend the afternoon sessions, please register at the top of this page.

1 p.m.
IV. MSAR Governance & Economy
Chair: Susan HENDERS – York Univesity

A. E-politics & Elections, Eilo YU, University of Macau
B. Law and Order, Lawrence K. K. HO, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
C. Economy in Global Financial Crisis, Yang ZHANG, University of Macau
D. Social Tension & Regime Response, Zhidong HAO, University of Macau

2 p.m.
V. MSAR Identity, Culture & Heritage
Chair: Ruth HAYHOE, University of Toronto

A. Macao’s Changing Identity, Malte KAEDING, University of Surrey, UK
B. Macao’s Cultural Interface: Historical Roots & Future Prospects, Tze-ki Hon, State University of New York-Geneseco
C. Macao Media, Agnes LAM, University of Macau
D. Heritage Conservation, Tourism & Urban Planning, Derrick TAM– Sun Yatsen University, Guangzhou

Coffee break

3:15 p.m.
VI. MSAR/Macanese External Links
Chair: Manuela MARUJO, University of Toronto

A. Macao in Sino-Lusophone Links, José Carlos MATIAS, Teledifusion de Macao, Macao
B. Portugal’s Vision of China’s Macao, Antonio SALDANHA, Technical University of Lisbon
C. The Portuguese in China, Antonio M. JORGE da SILVA, The International Institute of Macau
D. MSAR-Singapore/ASEAN Links, Yoong Yoong LEE, Policy Study Institute-Singapore
E. Macao’s Lessons From Singapore, Bryan HO, University of Macau
F. The Macanese in Canada, Gustavo da ROZA. OC, University of Manitoba

4:30 p.m.
VII. Concluding Observations
Chair: Rick GUISSO, University of Toronto
Panelists: T. W. NGO, University of Macau; Jack LEONG; Ming CHAN

To register for the morning sessions, please click on the following link:
http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=11826

To register for lunch, please click on the following link:
http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=11827

Description

This essay examines the importance of Chinese nation-building in the contemporary era. Defining nation-building in terms of processes that help to bridge local differences especially but not only when also distinguishing China from the rest the world, I argue that a focus on globalization has masked the importance of Chinese nation-building to contemporary social change. I analyze three very different societal arenas in which national forms of commonality are being constructed: the consolidation of the education system, the expansion of the urban built environment and the spread of the Chinese internet. Though each arena illustrates a very different aspect of the nation-building process, they all result in an increased degree of commonality in lived experience and communicative practice across China.

Dr. Andrew Kipnis is a Senior Fellow in the (CAP) Department of Anthropology at the Australian National University. In addition to Governing Educational Desire (University of Chicago Press, 2011), he is the author of Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self and Subculture in a North China Village (Duke University Press, 1997), China and Postsocialist Anthropology: Theorizing Power and Society after Communism (Eastbridge, 2008), and over forty articles and book chapters. With Luigi Tomba, he is co-editor of The China Journal.

Description

In the aftermath of World War II, the global housing crisis was immense and seemingly insurmountable: whether in the developed or developing world, decent shelter was in scarce supply, savings limited, and development funds in hot demand. Americans understood well the danger of slum proliferation, and acted promptly in key hot spots. Specifically, the International Housing Service within the Housing and Home Finance Agency targeted Taiwan and South Korea as the two most urgent sites for experimentation beginning in 1948 and 1953, respectively; technical assistance programs, mortgage guarantees, and support for new savings and loan institutions could potentially instill capitalist values of self-help while making good use of short-term foreign and local government aid. Results did not match expectations, however, as Taiwanese and Korean housing programs became increasingly dependent on state aid. This paper explores some of the causes and consequences of “bootstraps capitalism” in American overseas housing aid programs.

Nancy Kwak is interested in the evolution of cities and urban spaces in the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the role of planners, architects, and policymakers in reshaping neighborhoods and communities. While trained specifically in US urban history, Prof. Kwak currently pursues transnational, international, and comparative approaches to American urban history; in her current manuscript, Homeownership for All: American power and the politics of housing aid post-1945, she examines the impact of traveling American experts and advisers on housing policies in the developing world after 1945. Prof. Kwak has published various articles and coauthored a special edition of the Journal of Urban History on public housing in the Americas.

Description

PROGRAM:
4:00-6:00 Roundtable & Discussion
6:00-7:00 Book signing & Informal reception

This book offers a major challenge to our understandings of nationalism, racism, colonialism and wartime mobilization during the Second World War. In parallel case studies – of Japanese Americans mobilized to serve in the United States Army and Koreans recruited or drafted into the Japanese military – T. Fujitani examines the U.S. and Japanese empires as they struggled to manage racialized populations while waging total war. Fujitani probes government policies and representations of these soldiers (including in film, in literature, and in archival documents) to reveal how characteristics of racism, nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, gender politics, and the family changed on both sides of the Pacific, with repercussions that remain with us today. Writing against the grain of conventional historiography the author demonstrates that the U.S. and Japan became increasingly alike during the course of the war, perhaps most tellingly in their common attempts to disavow racism even as they reproduced it in new ways and forms.

To order the book online with a 20% discount log on to www.ucpress.edu/9780520262232 and use discount code 12M0402.

Takashi Fujitani is Professor of History and the Dr. David Chu Professor and Director in Asia Pacific Studies at the University of Toronto. Much of his past and current research has centered on the intersections of nationalism, colonialism, war, memory, racism, ethnicity, and gender, as well as the disciplinary and area studies boundaries that have figured our ways of studying these issues. His numerous publications include: Splendid Monarchy (UC Press, 1996; Japanese version, NHK Books, 1994; Korean translation, Yeesan Press, 2003); Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Koreans in WWII (UC Press, 2011; Japanese version forthcoming from Iwanami Shoten); and Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (co-edited, Duke U. Press, 2001). He is also editor of the series Asia Pacific Modern (UC Press). He has held grants and fellowships from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Stanford Humanities Center, Social Science Research Council, Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto U, Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine, University of California President’s Research Fellowship in the Humanities, American Philosophical Society, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard U, and other institutions. He has served on numerous editorial and institutional boards including for the International Journal of Korean History, Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, Japanese Studies, University of California Press, Stanford Humanities Center, SSRC, and Association for Asian Studies.

Description

Registration and Breakfast begins at 8:30am

Key countries in the Asia-Pacific region are leading most of the developed world in terms of their growing commitment to scientific and technological development. Sustained economic growth over the past two decades has enabled key Asian markets such as China and India to enhance their investments in research and development. These investments, together with institutional reforms and globalization forces are changing the innovation landscape, with a growing participation of Asia. Several countries including China, India, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have made considerable progress in high-tech innovations in information technologies (IT), biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and others. The key questions to be addressed are what the rising innovation capacity in Asia means for Canada? What public policies and business strategies can allow us to capitalize on emerging opportunities? How can we be a participant in the Asian innovation story?

Please join us for a networking reception after the lecture from 11am-12pm.

Description

Johannes Bronkhorst did his Indological studies in India, where he obtained his first doctorate (Pune 1979). He did a second doctorate in Leiden (1980), and was appointed Professor of Sanskrit and Indian studies at the University of Lausanne in 1987, where he taught until 2011. Some of his recent books are Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India (Brill 2007), Buddhist Teaching in India (Wisdom Publications 2009), Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism (Brill 2011), Language and Reality: On an Episode in Indian Thought (Brill 2011) and Karma (University of Hawai’I Press 2011). Bronkhorst has been concentrating on the history of Indian thought in the broadest sense, but has in recent years also tried to get a clearer picture of the circumstances in which these forms of thought could arise and develop.

Description

This lecture will critique standard narratives of Asian American and U.S. history that tend to treat Asian Americans as “immigrants” deserving or striving for inclusion (citizenship) in the U.S. nation-state. By exploring how Asians came to be radicalized and racialized subjects of the U.S. empire before World War II, I will seek to reframe our notions of movements across the Pacific. In particular, my talk will trace the historical origins of the national security state, the heart and soul of the U.S. empire, to a series of U.S. “foreign” and “domestic” policies targeting Asians on both sides of the Pacific.

Moon-Ho Jung is Associate Professor and the Walker Endowed Family Professor of History at the University of Washington. He is the author of Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), which received the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians and the History Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies.

Description

This lecture discusses the aesthetics of sound and the ethics of bodily practice in South Korean Christian culture. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Seoul’s Protestant churches and colleges of music, I focus specifically on the way European-style classical singing (sǒngak) has emerged an emblem modern Christian personhood and national advancement. In particular, I explore how sǒngak singing in Korean churches has moved away from the coded affect of suffering and hardship that pervaded Korea’s 20th century expressive culture, thus presenting a stark contrast to styles of vocalization normally associated with the past.

Nicholas Harkness received his PhD from the University of Chicago, specializing in the semiotic anthropology of communication. His dissertation, “The Voices of Seoul: Sound, Body, and Christianity in South Korea,” was an ethnographic study of singing and the aesthetics of progress among Korean Evangelical Christians. He also has written on language and religion, paralinguistics and affect, performance and ritual, and the role of language structure in social differentiation. His research on the human voice in culture has led him to a more general interest in the anthropology of qualitative experience, and he currently is co-editing a special journal issue on this topic. Future research topics include intimacy and status in urban South Korea, and Korean linguistic “sound symbolism” as a semiotic window into social and material change.

Description

‘Not a Drop to Drink: Water Scarcity and Politics in the 21st Century’ will explore the causes of water scarcity, current accessibility and ownership of water as a resource, and how water diplomacy will impact future relations between states.

For more information, and to register, please go to: https://www.munkschool.utoronto.ca/mgc/

Thursday, March 29, 2012
5:15 pm Registration Begins
5:45 pm Opening Remarks (Munk School of Global Affairs)

6:00 pm Keynote Address:
The Current Global Water Crisis: Brian Stewart & Dr. Zafar Adeel
One of Canada’s most experienced journalists, Brian Stewart (CBC), sits down for an in-depth conversation with Dr. Zafar Adeel, former Chair of UN-Water and Director of United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health for a discussion on the current Global Water Crisis facing the World today.

7:00 pm Reception
(Refreshments Served)

Friday, March 30, 2012
9:00 am Registration Open (Water, Coffee, Tea and Refreshments Served)

9:30 am Panel 1: The International Water Agenda
Representatives of International Organizations, Government, and Civil Society will discuss the ways in which each sector is engaging within the International Water Agenda.

Panelists:
Dr. Zafar Adeel (Director, UNU-INWEH, Former Chair, UN-Water)
Tony Maas (Director Freshwater Program, WWF-Canada)
Scott Vaughan (Commisioner of the Environment, Government of Canada)
Marcus Wijinen (Senior Water Expert, World Bank)

Chair:
Dr. Adèle Hurley (Director, Program on Water Issues)

11:00 am Water Break

11:15 am Breakout Sessions
Focused panel sessions that will include a variety of presenters and geographically diverse perspectives. Designed to engage discussion with experts and academic focusing on Water Issues in the following fields:

1. Water, Politics and Conflict

Panelists:
Dr. Galai Ali (Senior Technical Advisor, Canadian International Development Agency)
Dr. Christine Bischel (Senior Researcher, Department of Geosciences, University of Friburg)
Dr. Peter Bosshard (Policy Director, International Rivers Network)
Thomas Juneau (Senior Strategic Analyst, Department of National Defense)

2. Global Health and Water in a World of 7 Billion
(Presented in Partnership with the Graduate Students for Global Health)

Panelists:
Dr. David Fisman (Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Dalla Lana School of Public Health)
Dr. Stephen Sharper (Associate Professor, Center for the Environment)
George Yap (Executive Director, WaterCan)

3. The Role of Technology and Innovation in Solving the Global Water Crisis

Panelists:
Karyn Dyck (Samaritan’s Purse)
Fabian Papa (Principal, HydraTek & Associates)
Dr. Rod Tennyson (Director, Trans Africa Pipeline Solution)

1:00 pm Lunch

2:00 pm Special Address: Dr. Vandana Shiva

2:30 pm Panel 2: The Future of Canadian Water
This panel will explore some of the critical questions regarding the future of Canadian Water. Some of the critical questions that will be discussed will include: Is Water a Human Right or Commodity? Will water dictate future Canadian foreign and/or trade relations? Do Aboriginal communities have access to safe water in Canada? What are the issues of Water in the Arctic?

Panelists:
Scott Vaughan (Commisioner of the Environment, Government of Canada)
James Stauch (Vice President, Programs&Operations, Walter&Duncan Gordon Foundation)
George Yap (Executive Director, WaterCan)

4:00 pm Closing Address:
Margaret Trudeau (Honorary President, WaterCan)

Description

Planning Approaches for a Family-Friendly Central Edmonton

Thousands of people have moved to Edmonton’s urban core over the last decade, but one group of people remains conspicuously
underrepresented: families with children. As part of the new Capital City Downtown Plan, Edmonton’s City Council adopted the policy goal of a “family-friendly” urban core, but there is little direction as to how this will be achieved. Based on the findings of a series of thirteen key informant interviews, this paper explains why few families currently live in central Edmonton, identifies the key challenges, and evaluates possible planning approaches to making central Edmonton more family-friendly. Topics considered include amenity space provision, adult-only housing, and incentive programs to encourage the creation of family-oriented residential developments.

Thomas Beck is a second year student in the Masters of Science in Planning (MScPl) at the University of Toronto. He received his BA in Geography from Queen’s University in 2009.

Developing Complete Communities in the Suburbs: The Role of Retail

One of the guiding principles of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe is to “build compact, vibrant, and complete communities,” where people can live, work, play and shop. The Growth Plan barely mentions retail, but shopping is a fundamental human activity and a major structuring force in people’s everyday lives. Unfortunately, recent retail development has seemingly been moving in the opposite direction to that which the Growth Plan promotes; vast power centres, where shoppers cannot even walk between stores, let alone to home or work, have been appearing at many highway interchanges, while efforts to create fine-grained, street-related retail have often failed. This presentation explores retail planning in Ontario and abroad with the goal of identifying how the public sector can promote the retail component of complete communities in the suburbs.

Anna Iannucci is a second year student in the University of Toronto’s Masters of Science in Planning Program. She received her B.A. in 2009, also from the University of Toronto, with a major in geography. Her primary research interest is retrofitting the suburbs to create more sustainable communities.

Building Communities to Live and Work: Evaluating Balance and Self-Containment in New Towns, Seoul Metropolitan Area

New towns in the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) have been criticized for functioning as bedroom communities. Responding to the criticism, development actors and policy makers have attempted to create balanced, self-contained new towns with sufficient local employment opportunities. This paper explores how new town policies in the region have pursued jobs-housing balance and self-containment and examines the viability of the policies. Findings from key informant interviews suggest that the commitment towards local job creation derives from the development framework of new towns that sets out barriers toward a balanced growth by discouraging employment in new towns. Although much effort has been made, policies and strategies for promoting local employment remain ad-hoc and face challenges and constraints imposed by the legal and financial framework of the new town development.

Dukhee Nam is a second year student in the Masters of Science in Planning (MScPl) at the University of Toronto. He received his B.A. in Urban Planning at Yonsei University in 2010.

Description

How can policymakers effectively reduce poverty? Most mainstream economists advocate promoting economic growth, on the grounds that it generally reduces poverty while bringing other economic benefits. However, this dominant hypothesis offers few alternatives for economies that are unable to grow, or in places where economic growth fails to reduce or actually exacerbates poverty. This presentation focuses two Chinese provinces, Yunnan and Guizhou, that are exceptions to the purported relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction. In Yunnan, an outward-oriented developmental state, one that focuses on large-scale growth-oriented development, has largely failed to reduce poverty. Provincial policy shaped roads, tourism, and mining in ways that often precluded participation by poor people. By contrast, Guizhou is a micro-oriented state, one that promotes small-scale, low-skill economic opportunities—and so reduces poverty despite slow economic growth. It is no coincidence that this Guizhou approach parallels the ideas encapsulated in the “scientific development view” of China’s current president Hu Jintao. After all, Hu, when Guizhou’s leader, helped establish the micro-oriented state in the province. The conclusions have implications for our understanding of development and poverty reduction, economic change in China, and the thinking behind China’s policy decisions.

John Donaldson, Associate Professor of Political Science at Singapore Management University, is the author of Small Works: Poverty and Economic Development in Southwestern China (Cornell University Press, 2011). His research focuses on seeking effective solutions to rural poverty reduction around the world, local rural poverty reduction policies in China, the transformation of China’s agrarian system, and central-provincial relations. His research has been published in such journals as World Development, International Studies Quarterly, Politics and Society, China Journal, China Quarterly and Journal of Contemporary China.

Description

A Simple Life (2011)
with English subtitles

Directed by Ann Hui
CAST: Andy Lau, Deanie Ip

Since her teenage years, Chung Chun-Tao has worked as an amah – a servant – for the Leung family. Known as Ah Tao, she witnessed every aspect of the family’s life. Now, after 60 years of service, she is looking after Roger, who works in the film industry and is the only member of the family still resident in Hong Kong. One day Roger comes home from work to find that Ah Tao has suffered a stroke. He rushes her to hospital, where she announces that she wants to quit her job and move into a nursing home. Roger researches the possibilities and finds her a room in an establishment run by an old friend. Ah Tao moves in and begins acquainting herself with a new ‘family’. Giving ever more time and attention to Ah Tao’s needs and pleasures, Roger comes to realize how much she means to him. Roger’s mother visits from California and suggests reclaiming an apartment building the family owns to provide Ah Tao with a final home of her own. But Ah Tao’s health begins to deteriorate rapidly.

A Simple Life has won many international awards, including the Best Actress Award at the 2011 Venice International Film Festival, and the Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress awards at the 2011 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival.

There will be a Q & A session after the screening conducted by Professor Bart Testa, Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto, and film critic Alice Shih, Fairchild Radio.

Description

PROGRAM:
4:00-6:00 Lecture & Discussion
6:00-8:00 Reception

Leela Gandhi is the author of Postcolonial Theory (1998), Measures of Home (2000), Affective Communities (2006) and the coauthored, England Through Colonial Eyes (2002). She is a founding coeditor of the journal Postcolonial Studies and Professor of English at the University of Chicago.

The talk will consider the practical and written work of some of the gurus of early-twentieth-century South Asia as an effort to transform democracy itself into an art (or spiritual exercise) of becoming-common. This endeavor becomes properly visible, I’ll hope to argue, when read in context of the complex, transnational field of anticolonial antifascism in this period.

Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Asian Heritage Month

Description

PROGRAM:
2:00-4:00 Lecture & Discussion
4:00-6:00 Reception

Surabhi Sharma will discuss the varied impulses that have inspired her film practice over the years. Each of her works posed distinct challenges that helped transform her notions of the documentary aesthetic and form. Surabhi will also explore the vibrant independent documentary scene in India today.

Surabhi Sharma is an independent documentary film maker living and working in Mumbai. She studied anthropology and psychology, and trained to be a director at the Film and Television Institute of India. She has been making films since 2001 and her feature length films have addressed a range of themes including Cities, Globalisation and Labour, Music and Migration, Gender and Health, Environment.

Description

The Global Ideas Institute brings together teams of high school students led by U of T student mentors to address a pressing global health issue. Over many months, the students learn about the complexity of the problem from multiple disciplinary angles. Seminars by leading scholars and experts inspire and challenge their search for an innovative solution. This year the GII focuses on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s challenge to reinvent the toilet.

The problem: Flush toilets are unavailable to the vast majority in the developing world, and billions of people lack a safe, reliable sanitation system. Students have considered the technical dimensions of an affordable toilet that is off the electricity and water grids, as well as the social, political, and economic factors of implementing a sustainable sanitation program.

The pitch: The student teams will pitch their proposed solutions to a panel of experts in the health and development field. In a complementary poster exhibit open to the public, find out how they approached this pressing problem.

Description

An international and interdisciplinary conference
Victoria College in the University of Toronto
19–21 April 2012

The early modern period witnessed a dramatic increase in the migration, expulsion and exile of social groups and individuals around the globe. The physical movements of religious refugees triggered widespread, ongoing migrations that shaped both the contours of European colonialist expansion and the construction of regional, national and religious identities. Human movements (both real and imagined) also animated material culture; the presence of bodies, buildings, texts, songs and relics shaped and reshaped the host societies into which immigrants entered. Following exiles and their diasporic communities across Europe and the world enables our exploration of a broad range of social, cultural, linguistic and artistic dynamics, and invites us to reconsider many of the conceptual frameworks by which we understand ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Reformation’.

This conference invites a sustained, comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of the phenomenon and cultural representation of early modern migrations. It also aims to consider how the transmission and translation of material, textual and cultural practices create identity and cross-cultural identifications in contexts animated by the tension between location and dislocation. While often driven by exclusion and intolerance, the exile/refugee experience also encouraged emerging forms of toleration, multiculturalism and notions of cosmopolitanism. In a period in which mobility was a way of life for many, identifications rooted in location were often tenuously sustained even as they could be forcibly asserted in cultural representation.

For more information please contact

Nicholas Terpstra: nicholas.terpstra@utoronto.ca
Marjorie Rubright: marjorie.rubright@utoronto.ca

Description

This panel explores how attention to specific technologies, infrastructures and materials might illuminate our multi-sited conversations on Asian Futures. Technology and infrastructure have been associated with futurity in particular ways in discourses of modernization and development, and in some sense these associations have continued in popular imaginations of Asia as the privileged site of a global future. The panel considers such associations, as well as how they might be challenged or modified through close examinations of the assemblages and imaginaries through which they have been deployed within (and not merely about) Asia.

The Developmental State and the Innovation Economy
Joseph Wong
Director, Asian Institute; Professor and Canada Research Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto

The postwar Asian developmental state confounded theories of modernization. As both “planned” and “market-regarding” economies, the state-led model of economic development in Asia neither fit neatly with state-socialist theories of modernization nor with neoliberal orthodoxy. The Asian experience was at once considered the ideal type Weberian bureaucracy; a culturally bounded style of state capitalism; a temporally fixed benefit of Cold War realpolitik; a legacy of Bismarckian influences on Meiji era Japanese political economy; and/or the exemplar of strategic and “smart” economic policymaking. I frame the discussion about Asian developmental statism around the concepts of risk and uncertainty. The developmental state effectively mitigated the risks of industrial upgrading. However, confronted with the challenges of managing primary uncertainty in first-order innovation, the developmental state model has proven to be deficient. The state is no longer particularly strategic or smart, a revelation that has both prompted serious reflection about the uniqueness of Asia’s economic past and future, and raised profound concerns about Asia’s presumed success in the knowledge-intensive economy.

Questioning Technology and the Mental/Manual Labor Division: Tosaka Jun’s 1930s intervention in Marxism
Ken Kawashima
Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

I will talk about a pre-war Japanese marxist philosopher, Tosaka Jun, his analysis of technology and intellectuals, and how Tosaka tried to break down the binary oppositions of mental and manual labor, subject and object. I’ll then ruminate on contemporary approaches to the question of production and ontology.

A Material Ethnography of the Shimshal Road, Gojal, Pakistan
David Butz
Professor, Department of Geography, Brock University
Nancy Cook
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Brock University

Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, we discuss a local road-building project in northern Pakistan, and reflect on the implications of the new road for local people’s daily lives, their understandings of themselves and their community, and their hopes and prospects for the future. In examining this new “mobility platform” we hope to say something about the interface between infrastructure and everyday life in one local Asian context.

Description

Presentations by U of T student delegates to Taiwan
Sneak peek of the forthcoming documentary
Followed by a Q&A discussion and a brief coffee reception

Opening Remarks:
Professor Joseph Wong
Director, Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs
Canada Research Chair, Political Science
University of Toronto

Presentations by:
Melinda Jacobs, International Relations
Remi Kanji, International Relations & Asia Pacific Studies
Mimi Liu, International Relations & Peace and Conflict Studies
Aaron Wilson, Asia Pacific Studies & Political Science
Betty Xie, Asia Pacific Studies & Cinema Studies

In January 2012, five undergraduate students from the University of Toronto went to Taiwan to observe the 2012 ROC Election. Through interviews with representatives from both the Kuomingtang and the Democratic Progressive Party, social activists, scholars specializing in Taiwan politics, students and local Taiwanese, they gained much insight about the process of democratic deepening in Taiwan, Taiwan’s critical position in the international space and prospects of Taiwan’s future. Alongside their academic research, they also produced a documentary that sets to explore the complexities of Taiwanese identity politics. In this session, the students will share their field research experiences as well as raw footages from the forthcoming documentary.

For more background information about the project, refer to:
https://www.munkschool.utoronto.ca/news/view/91

Description

China’s foreign policy behavior has been rather confusing in recent years. On the one hand, China continues to vow to adhere to peaceful development, to support international cooperation in addressing various global challenges, and to insist on dialogue and negotiation to deal with international conflicts. On the other hand, its actions on such issues as the South China Sea, Korea, and Syria appear to suggest that it is becoming more assertive and less cooperative in its foreign policy. This talk seeks to explain this contradiction from the perspective of China’s changing identities and interests.

Jia Qingguo is Professor and Associate Dean of the School of International Studies of Peking University. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1988. He has taught in University of Vermont, Cornell University, University of California at San Diego, University of Sydney in Australia as well as Peking University. He was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution between 1985 and 1986, a visiting professor at the University of Vienna in 1997 and a CNAPS fellow at the Brookings Institution between 2001 and 2002. He is a member of Standing Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the China Democratic League. He is also the Vice President of the Chinese American Studies Association and board member of the China National Taiwan Studies Association. He is serving on the editorial board of several established domestic and international academic journals. He has published extensively on U.S.-China relations, relations between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, Chinese foreign policy and Chinese politics.