Description

Chinese policy toward Democratic Kampuchea (DK) under the Khmer Rouge was driven by secular, pragmatic concerns on the part of Beijing, rather than because of lofty ideological or regime-specific factors that explain Beijing’s policy towards DK. This bilateral relationship is more than an interesting – if bloody – historical interlude: it suggests important continuities vis-à-vis Beijing’s relations with developing countries today. This research is based on three years of field research in China and Cambodia, drawing on interviews and archival research.

Andrew Mertha is Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University. He specializes in Chinese and Cambodian politics, Leninist institutions, and bureaucratic politics. He has published two books, The Politics of Piracy: Intellectual Property in China (Cornell University Press, 2005), and China’s Water Warriers: Citizen Action and Policy Change (Cornell University Press, 2008). His articles have been published in The China Quarterly, Comparative Politics, International Organization, Orbis. He is currently working on two books projects: Ambivalent Allies: Sino-Democratic Kampuchean Relations and the Politics of Mutual Resistance, 1975-1979; and Policy Making in the Shadow of Death: Decision-Making and Policy Dissemination in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-1979.

Description

Over the colonial period, Indian leaders and the literati were impelled to contest colonialist views of Hindu effeminacy. In the process, Hindu asceticism became, I argue, a critical site for the performance of masculinity. In this talk, I will offer a discursive history of the reconfigurations of Hindu asceticism in Indian nationalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries directing attention to select symptomatic moments in Indian nationalist history—anticolonialism, swadeshi nationalism, gandhian nationalism, and the rise of the Hindu Right. It will illuminate the misappropriations and manipulations of past histories, texts and icons by the contemporary Hindu Right and, in addition, reveal how the tension between asceticism and nationalist politics continues to haunt the Indian present.

Chandrima Chakraborty is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Canada. Her areas of research are postcolonialism, masculinity studies and nationalist politics, with a focus on South Asia. She has recently published a book, Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism: Past and Present Imaginings of India (2011).

Description

In both within and outside South Korea, Korean education has increasingly faced severe criticisms on its traditionally standardized and centralized educational system which is accused of failing to provide individualized educational opportunities and thus to nurture creativity of students: 1) Korean schools make talented students mediocre; and 2) Korean students are deprived of creativity at the expense of good scores on academic achievement tests. These critical perspectives have motivated recent educational reforms within Korea toward more differentiated and individualized educational opportunities. In this study, I assess the validity of these (and other) typical criticisms on Korean education on the basis of empirical evidence from international surveys of student achievement. The findings show that many of those critical arguments against Korean education are not consistent with empirical evidence, only perpetuating stereotyped images of Korean education. De-mystifying stereotypes reveals a “real” problem that Korean education is facing in recent educational reforms: growing inequality in student performance.

Hyunjoon Park is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. He is interested in social and educational stratification in comparative perspective with focus on Korea and other East Asian countries. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and has received several awards including Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Abe Fellowship. Dr. Park has recently published a co-edited volume on globalization and education in East Asia.

Description

Join the Asian Institute to discuss the current state of Taiwanese cinema with Lin Yu-hsien, director of this year’s Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival Centrepiece Presentation Jump Ashin!

To be followed by an informal catered reception.

Description

Integrating Hong Kong, a open capitalist society, into authoritarian China is no easy task, but since 1997, that process has been underway. While economic integration has gone smoothly, less is known about the impact of the reversion of sovereignty on the identity of the Chinese people who inhabit Hong Kong. As of 2004, over 240,000 Hongkongers were living and working on the Mainland. The number of Hong Kong students studying on the Mainland has also increased, so the overall numbers remain small.

But what is the impact of living on the Mainland on the identity of Hong Kong people? Is it a force for integration? Do they feel more Chinese and less like a Hongkonger after moving there? Their feelings may have important significance for the future of Hong Kong, the Mainland and relations between the two territories.

This study reports the findings of a major research project funded by the Central policy Unit of the Hong Kong government which was conducted in 2008-09. The survey interviewed 250 Hong Kongers working in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, as well as 230 students Hong Kong students studying in Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. We also compare their attitudes to people in Hong Kong who have never lived abroad.

Dr. David Zweig received his Ph.D. in Political Science from The University of Michigan (1983). He is currently the Chair Professor at the Division of Social Science and Director of the Center on Environment, Energy and Resource Policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He is also the Associate Dean at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and this is his second term. He is also EMBA and MBA lecturer in the School of Business Management. He was Adjunct Professor at the National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan from 2009-12. He is the author of four books: Internationalizing China: domestic interests and global linkages (Cornell Univ. Press, 2002); China’s Brain Drain to the United States (Berkeley: China Research Monograph, 1995); Freeing China’s Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Deng Era (M. E. Sharpe, 1997); Agrarian Radicalism in China, 1968-1981 (Harvard University Press, 1989).

Description

Engineering innovations must occur with the end user in mind. This talk will focus on engineering design for the global South and needs of users in order to support appropriate, sustainable technology. In addition to the technical design criteria of functionality, safety, robustness and maintainability, we will explore the social, cultural, economic, educational, environmental and political contexts in which Third World end users relate to technology. Examples will be drawn from healthcare technologies, energy, ICT, water and sanitation to illustrate what constitutes appropriate or inappropriate technology. The “Reinventing the Toilet” project at the University of Toronto will be discussed.

Professor Yu-Ling Cheng is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, and the Director of the Centre for Global Engineering at the University of Toronto. She is working on enlarging the impact of technologies on the developing world through both her work as a researcher and an engineering educator. Her research team received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation earlier this year. They will focus on reinventing the toilet in order to provide sustainable sanitation to the global south. This grant has brought with it considerable press coverage and excitement for the University of Toronto.

Description

Taiwan has a long history of implementing preferential policies for Indigenous students in education. These policies include lowered admission standards, admission quotas, direct admission without exams, and bonus points. The policies over the years have gone through revisions for various reasons, and before 2000 the changes were mostly made at administrative levels involved little policy debates. The most recent round of policy change, however, was a major departure from the government’s previous policies. It required indigenous students to demonstrate indigenous language proficiency and cultural literacy when receiving bonus points in high school and college entrance exams. The government implemented certificate exams on indigenous languages and cultural literacy. Bonus points rewarded to those who got the certificate would be increased, and to those who did not would be decreased. In other words, indigenous students would no longer enjoy the same preferential treatment because they legally have the same racial identity. This policy change has important implications on Taiwan’s identity politics and minority rights. The new policies unfairly and disproportionately impose the responsibility of language and cultural preservation on indigenous students, and the policies also narrowed the state’s initiatives in revitalizing indigenous languages.

Chang-Ling Huang is Associate Professor of Political Science at National Taiwan University. Her research interests include gender politics and labor politics. She is a contributor to the edited volume Gender, Culture, and Society and has published works in Developing Economy, Issues & Studies, and Anthropology of Work Review, etc. Between 2004 and 2007, she served as the director of the board of the Awakening Foundation, the earliest established feminist organization in Taiwan. She is currently working on a monograph State Feminism and Democratic Institutions.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

This event will be a panel discussion in which three panellists share their professional experience with students. The goal of this event is to encourage students to explore their career possibilities by meeting representatives of successful practitioners in business, law and media. There will be a Q&A section, followed by a brief coffee reception at the end for students to interact with the panellists.

Our Distinguished Panellists:

Justin Poy
Founder and President, The Justin Poy Agency

Justin Poy began his company, Justin Poy Graphics Inc. in 1988. After two years in graphic design, the company adopted the trade name ‘Justin Poy Media’ (1990). In November 1999, Justin launched a new interactive division call Lyche Interactive, which operated as an integral part of the agency’s full complement of services, serving clients such as Deloitte Consulting, Symantec Corporation and WarChild Canada. After winning a multitude of international awards serving clients in North America, Asia, Europe and South Africa, Justin Poy Media Inc’s trade name was changed to the Justin Poy Agency (2001) and realigned to focus on niche marketing services. Justin has been quoted in the media, such as Strategy Magazine, Marketing Magazine, AdNews Online and Automotive News (USA). He also sits on several Boards and participates in many philanthropic causes. In May 2002, Justin was honoured with the Canadian Youth Business Foundation’s first ever Entrepreneurship Champion Award for his service to helping young entrepreneurs in Canada. In September 2002, he was presented with the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal by Senator Frank Mahovlich, for the community service and philanthropy.

Clara Ho
Research Lawyer, Toronto Advocacy Centre for the Elderly

Clara Ho graduated from the University of Calgary with a B.A. (Hons) in Sociology and a B.A. in English. She has an LL.B. from Queen’s University. Clara completed her articles at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland and at a small union-side labour firm in Toronto. Since her call to the bar in Ontario in February 2002, Clara has worked as a Staff Lawyer at the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic; at the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children (METRAC) as the Legal Director; in the Prosecutions Department at the College of Nurses of Ontario and most recently at the Human Rights Legal Support Centre. She joined ACE in January 2011 as the Research Lawyer.

Sonia Sakamoto-Jog
Executive Director, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival

Sonia joined Reel Asian as Executive Director in May of 2009 after graduating from the MBA program at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Prior to being hired at Reel Asian, she worked at Maximum Films International (now a division of Entertainment One) where she was involved in all aspects of acquisitions, marketing, and sales. Her previous experience includes two years working as a strategy consultant for a branding agency in Tokyo, and contracts with both the Toronto International Film Festival and the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal.

Description

If the registration is full, please contact Aga Baranowska (asian.institute@utoronto.ca; 416-946-8996) to be added to the waiting list.

CSAS faculty discuss worlds—political, imaginative, ethical–inside/outside global space

Please click here for e-poster

9:00-9:15 | Opening Remarks
Meric Gertler, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Science
Joseph Wong, Director, Asian Institute

9:15-9:30 | Introduction: Global Designs & Designations
Ritu Birla, Director, Centre for South Asian Studies; Associate Professor, Department of History

9:45-11:45 | Visual Regimes, Technologies, Genealogies

The Aesthetics of Discrepant Globalization: Monumental Statues in Post-Liberalization India
Kajri Jain, Associate Professor, Visual Studies UTM & Department of Art

Indian Painted Photographs through a Transnational Lens: Reflections on the Status of the Photograph Today
Deepali Dewan, Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Art; Associate Curator South Asian Art, Royal Ontario Museum

Respondent: Elspeth Brown, Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Centre for the Study of the United States

11:45-1:15 | LUNCH BREAK

1:30-3:30 | Political Circuits and Mediations

The Intimacy of Human and Animal
Nais Dave, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology

Media Modern: Echoes of the Street in a Tamil Newspaper
Frank Cody, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology UTM & the Asian Institute

Respondent: Joshua Barker, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

3:30-3:45 | BREAK

3:45-5:45 | Neoliberal Environments

Recycling Urban Commons: (Electronic) Waste, Value and Labor in Bangalore, India
Raj Narayanareddy, Assistant Professor, UTSC & Department of Geography & Program in Planning

Planning, Insurgent Publics and the Cultural Politics of Governance in ‘post-conflict’ Nepal
Katharine Rankin, Associate Professor, Department of Geography & Program in Planning

Respondent: Kanishka Goonewardena, Associate Professor, Department of Geography & Director, Program in Planning

6pm | RECEPTION
Munk School of Global Affairs, The Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility

Description

PROGRAM:
4:30-5:30 Lecture by Professor Shelly Rigger
5:30-6:30 Q&A
6:30-7:30 Booking signing and informal reception

Taiwan is more than just a problem in international relations. It matters to the United States, to China, to the world — and to Taiwan itself. From its successful economic and political development to its role as a “canary in the coalmine” of a rising PRC, Taiwan is an important global actor. It matters, too, because its unique society, culture and identity oblige us to regard Taiwan as an end in itself, and not only as a means by which others accomplish their own ends.

Shelley Rigger is the Brown Professor of East Asian Politics and Chair of Political Science at Davidson College in North Carolina. She has a PhD in Government from Harvard University and a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. She has been a visiting researcher at National Chengchi University in Taiwan (2005) and a visiting professor at Fudan University in Shanghai (2006). She is the author of Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011) as well as two books on Taiwan’s domestic politics, Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (Routledge 1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001). Her current research studies the effects of cross-strait economic interactions on Taiwan people’s perceptions of Mainland China.

Description

Netina’s work examines sources of authoritarian resilience in the age of democracy. Her presentation will focus on her doctoral dissertation that investigates why hegemonic party rule persists in Singapore, while Taiwan concedes to multipartism. Building on party politics and electoral authoritarianism literature, she explains why elites unite and oppositions fail to pose a credible threat. Her comparative study of two similar hegemonic parties of different outcomes: the People’s Action Party in Singapore and the Kuomintang Party in Taiwan argues that strategic co-ordination – provision of public goods and selective coercion, represses political participation. Her findings drawn from elite interviews, archival sources and survey data show how an institutionalized oligarchic party stays cohesive overtime. In 2011, her dissertation received the Vincent Lemieux Prize for the best dissertation submitted in a Canadian institution for 2009 and 2010 by the Canadian Political Science Association.

Netina (Ph.D. University of British Columbia) is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs. Her upcoming book project traces institutional learning and organization adaptation in China, Taiwan and Singapore. She is also working on a series of journal articles on effects of electoral reforms on women’s political representation and implications of brain drain and immigration in Southeast Asia. Currently, Netina has three articles under review in Party Politics, Electoral Studies and Journal of Contemporary China and three chapters forthcoming on party system institutionalization, hegemonic party stability and managed liberalization in Singapore. For more on Netina, see http://www.politics.ubc.ca/graduate-program/current-phds/netina-tan.html

Description

Using qualitative data collected in three Chinese cities, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Jiangyou, and quantitative data from the 2003 China General Social Survey, this study is a sociological inquiry about institutional change. In this study, I examine the process by which the free job market has gradually replaced the traditional state-controlled job assignment system, as of 2003. By adopting a new institutionalist perspective, I focus on how individuals understood and responded to this institutional change. I argue that the interplay of state power and individuals has shaped the trajectory of China‘s employment system change in two respects. First, the abolishment of the state-controlled job assignment system by no means signalled the state‘s withdrawal. On the contrary, individuals’ preference towards state-controlled jobs persisted. This persistent preference drove individuals to consistently strive for state-assigned jobs, by pursuing higher education, accumulating political advantages, and mobilizing guanxi resources. State power has thus been strengthened by increasingly absorbing the social elite and their advantaged resources. Second, individuals’ strategies for accessing assigned jobs were benefit-driven and pragmatically-oriented. Their rational spirit paved the way for the advent of the market era. Objectively, those strategies also equipped individuals with high qualifications for market competition. This study explains the hidden rationale of the co-growth of state power and market strength in the transitional context of state socialist China.

Jing Shen is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at University of Toronto. Her research interests include stratification and inequality, labour markets, social networks, quantitative analysis, mixed research methods, and race, ethnicity, and immigration. She is now completing her doctoral thesis, entitled “Institutional Change and Its Impacts on Individual Job Search Behaviours — A Co-construction Process of Inequality.” Using both qualitative and quantitative data, in this thesis, Jing examines how the labour market of China has been re-structured since the 1970s. She argues that social inequality is best understood as a dynamic process constructed by the interaction of institutional forces and individual behaviours. An early version of her thesis won the Best Graduate Paper Award in the Department of Sociology at University of Toronto.

Description

If ever there was a long standing issue of contention in South Asia it would undoubtedly be the issue of Kashmir. There are many questions and even more answers that surround the topic and SADC wants to know some of them. Please come out and join us for our screening of “Project Kashmir” and the following moderated discussion by Professor Mariam Mufti, and voice your opinion. This award winning documentary sheds lights on some of the problems that the region faces every single day. From politicians to armies, from patriots to citizens, from journalists to scholars, from the East to the West, and from students to the general public, everyone has an opinion. SADC wants to give all of you the forum needed to discuss these views. Please take this chance and be a part of the conversation.

Description

Throughout history the Indonesian state has struggled to assert control over its national frontiers (borders) and accompanying natural resources, using the arguments of national security and promotion of development to the ‘estranged and backward’ frontier inhabitants. As part of this pragmatic strategy in frontier colonization and resource extraction successive Indonesian governments have since the late 1960s allocated large-scale timber and plantation concessions along the resource-rich national frontier on the island of Borneo to military entrepreneurs and private companies. Long stretches of the national frontier between Indonesia and Malaysia are still widely forested and contain large patches of land classified in government policy narratives as ‘sleeping’, ‘waste’ or ‘idle,’ while the sparse population is classified as ‘uncivilized.’ The presentation examines the frontier constellation that combines resource extraction and sovereign politics, which is found repeated along other resource-rich borderlands of Southeast Asia.

Michael Eilenberg is a Visiting Professor at Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto. He teaches graduate courses in Development and Global studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research focuses on issues of state formation, sovereignty, autonomy, citizenship and agrarian expansion in frontier regions of Southeast Asia. His current project, funded by The Danish Council For Free Research, focuses on the drive behind rapid agrarian expansion in frontier regions of developing states in Southeast Asia. His book At the Edges of States: Dynamics of State Formation in the Indonesian Borderlands (Leiden: KITLV Press) will be published in late 2011.

Description

From the late 1970s, paralleling the economic and social development and the fertility decline, China’s population has experienced a fast increase in the sex ratio at birth (SRB) and the female child mortality, resulting in a growing female deficit and consequently in a large amount of males with no choice but to remain single. It is estimated that annually, from the early 2010s, more than 10% of Chinese men at marriageable ages could not find a female partner to get married with. Under the background of sex imbalance followed by marriage squeeze, how will the male bachelors compensate for the absence of a regular female sexual partner? Will homosexual behaviour be a compensation for those marriage-squeezed male bachelors? Are male bachelors more likely to adopt unprotected sexual behaviours? Will an increase in the prevalence of unprotected homosexual intercourses among male bachelors put a threat on their health? Using the data from two surveys independently conducted among rural residents and rural-urban migrants, Dr. Yang Xueyan tries to understand the impacts of sex imbalance on forced male bachelors and public health.

Dr. Xueyan Yang, Associate Professor of Institute for Population and Development Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China, post-doctorial fellow at Dalla Lana School of Public Health, visiting scholar at Asian Institute of Munk School, University of Toronto. She obtained a PHD from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2007. Her interests are mainly focused on sex imbalance in China and its governance. She has published articles on gender and health in English journals such as Biodemography and Social Biology, American Journal of Men’s Health, Population, Genus; Chinese journals such as Journal of Public Administration, Social Science Abroad, Collection of Women’s Studies, Systems Engineering: Theory and Practice etc.

Description

The festival will consist of feature films based on stories by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and documentaries regarding this extraordinarily gifted poet, writer and educator whose 150th birth anniversary is being celebrated worldwide in 2011. A highlight of the festival will be the North American premier of Shey (He) a feature film by award-winning poet and filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta of India based on Rabindranath’s mischievous satire by the same title (never previously rendered as cinema). Mr. Dasgupta has won several national awards and a special jury prize for directing at 2000 Venice International Film Festival for his film The Wrestlers (Uttara). Recently he received the best feature film award at the 2011-54th Asia Pacific Film Festival held in Taipei for his latest Bengali movie, Window (Janala).

An additional attraction of the festival will be the first Canadian showing of Noukadubi (“Boat wreck”), a Bengali film directed by award-winning filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh released on January 2011. The movie is a period film set in the 1920s, based on a novel by Rabindranath Tagore.

Tickets: $10 one day; $15 both days

For information or to order tickets contact:
Kathleen or Joseph O’Connell: prof_oconnell@yahoo.ca
Soumidh (Somu) Mondal: smondal@gmail.com

Saturday, December 3:

12:30 – 2:00pm
Opening
Tagore Documentary by Satyajit Ray

2:00 – 4:30pm
Premier Canadian screening of Noukadubi (“Boat wreck”) by Rituparno Ghosh

4:30- 5:30pm
Documentary on Jorasanko the Tagore family mansion by Buddhadeb Dasgupta

6:00 – 9:00pm
Premier North American screening of Shey (“He”) by Buddadeb Dasgupta

Sunday, December 4:

1:00 – 2:00pm
Introduction
Gitanjali documentary by Reba Som

2:00 – 4:30pm
Shey (“He”) by Buddadeb Dasgupta

5:00 – 5:30pm
Documentary on Jorasanko, the Tagore family mansion by Buddhadeb Dasgupta

5:30 – 8:00pm
Noukadubi (“Boat wreck”) by Rituparno Ghosh

Description

Integrative thinking can be used to solve complex problems. It involves considering conflicting ideas and perspectives simultaneously in order to explore alternative solutions that may not be obvious at first. Developing integrative thinking skills will allow students to generate novel, innovative ideas that are appropriate for large-scale, global challenges. In this workshop, school groups will anticipate tensions they may come across as they prepare for the symposium. Using integrative thinking, students will work through one identified tension to see what ideas become possible when the either / or frame is lifted away.

Ellie Avishai, MBA, is Founder and Director of I-Think, a unique initiative at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. I-Think adapts Rotman’s pioneering curriculum, which aims to engender self-refl ective thinking and problem-solving in MBA students, to the K – 12 world. Ellie has taught for over a decade in both public schools and education focused NGOs. She was a 2005 recipient of the Bealight Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurs.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

Thinking of getting a Master’s degree? Have an interest in the Asia-Pacific? The Master’s in Asia-Pacific Studies (MAPs) program allows you to add a specialization designation to your degree upon graduation. You are invited to an informal information session with the program director, administrator, current MAPS students and alumni. You can learn more about the program, how to apply, as well as possible entry awards and scholarships for eligible students that will support language study or field research in East and Southeast Asia. Learn about unique resources and opportunities available to MAPs students, such as coordinating graduate conference with fellow Munk School Graduate students, or co-editing an exciting e-journal. Come to the info session to meet other students and have your questions answered.

Description

“When differences are too jarring, man cannot accept them as final; so he either wipes them out with blood, or coerces them into some kind of superficial homogeneity or he finds out a deeper unity which he knows to be the highest truth”.
Rabindranath Tagore, 1912

“Canada is too young to fall a victim to the malady of disillusionment and skepticism, and she must believe in great ideals in the face of contradictions . . . She will have to solve, for the salvation of man, the most difficult of all problems, the race problem....”
Message of farewell to Canada, Rabindranath Tagore, 1929

Rabindranath Tagore is the world’s first non-European Nobel Laureate (1913). Tagore remains best known as a poet, and in the West often as a mystic. Tagore’s social thought has received much less attention than it deserves, particularly the problematic of inequality and the quest for justice, which is a key element in Tagore’s thought. His writings articulate justice in all its dimensions: across gender, caste, religion and class, and between the colonizing West and the colonized East. Since 1912, Tagore also began writing more explicitly about racial inequality. His travels to Europe and the US were extremely important in shaping this body of thought. Tagore had also refused several invitations to come to Canada – as a way to register his protest against Canada’s treatment of immigrants. Drawing upon these various reflections, and Tagore’s speeches and writings, the paper explores the articulation of race in Tagore and its relationship to his understandings of equality and justice.

(You can find more information on Tagore at http://tagore150toronto.ca)

Ananya Mukherjee-Reed is Professor of Political Science and Development Studies at York University, Toronto. She is the Founding-Director of the International Secretariat of Human Development (ISHD) at York University. Under her leadership, ISHD has collaborated with leading international institutions such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), Geneva; United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), Rome; United Nations Development Program (UNDP); and the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva. Ananya’s latest book Human Development and Social Power: Perspectives from South Asia is published by Routledge (London and New York, 2008).

Description

In domains as diverse as healthcare, financial wellbeing, education and technology, the last mile problem refers to the difficulty of getting end users to adopt a new technology or innovation and embrace a change in behaviour. The last mile problem is a problem of psychology, and not one of technology. In this session, we will discuss the concept and nature of choice architecture – the science of designing choice environments that facilitate changes in behaviour and adoption. Drawing on examples from various domains and from various countries, we will build a framework for designing environments that nudge individuals to the appropriate choice.

Dilip Soman (@dilipsoman) is a professor at the Rotman School of Management and the director of the India Innovation Institute at the University of Toronto. He studies interesting human behaviours, explains them, and uses the insights to develop products and programs to help people help themselves. His interests include behavioural economics, social media, marketing strategy, and consumer psychology.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

Saadia Toor is Associate Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. A native of Lahore, she has been active in feminist and Left political circles in Pakistan. Her scholarship revolves around issues of culture, nationalism, gender/sexuality, state formation, international political economy and the relationships between them. Her book The State of Islam? Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan was recently published by Pluto Press.

Description

This lecture examines the ways in which social reality was imagined in early modern Korean literature. It focuses on two literary genres, sinsosǒl (the New Novel) and pǒnan sosǒl (adapted novel), which were serialized mainly in Maeil sinbo (The Daily News) between 1910 and 1916. The literary value of these genres has not been fully explored in the study of modern Korean literature, largely due to the didactic themes prevalent in these works – such as, notably, kǒwnsǒn chingak (rewarding the good and punishing the evil). Such subject matter is considered much less “modern” than that of fictions produced after Yi Kwangsu’s The Heartless (1917). This lecture, however, tries to illuminate the process of constructing “reality” in the works of these genres through incorporating various signs of social progress that contributed to readers’ imaginations of “modern” ways of life. This process cannot be explained separately from its close relationship with the management and editorial direction of Maeil sinbo, where fictions were serialized, and from authorship and readership, all of which were mutually influencing each other in the creation and perception of constructed images. I pay close attention to these intersecting elements to elucidate the image-making process while simultaneously analyzing creative fictions by Yi Injik, Yi Haejo, and An Kuksǒn, as well as Japanese novels, in particular Konjiki yasha (The Gold Demon by Ozaki Kōyō), Hototogisu (The Cuckoo by Tokutomi Roka), and Sutekobune (Abandoned Boat by Kuroiwa Ruiko), translated by Cho Chunghwan and Yi Sanghyǒp.

Jooyeon Rhee received her Ph.D from the Department of Humanities at York University in 2011. Her Ph.D dissertation investigated representations of gender in popular cultural productions such as serial fictions in newspapers, cinema novels, postcards, and photographs produced between the mid-1900s and the late 1920s. Currently, she is a visiting scholar at the Asian Institute where she is conducting her research focusing on the relationship between crime and gender in the literature and film of colonial Korea. Jooyeon’s translations of essays and short stories by Korean and Japanese writers such as Hasumi Shigehiko, Tatematsu Wahei, Yi Kwangsu, and Hara Kenya have been published for English-speaking audiences. Her published articles include “Na Un Kyu and the Making of Nationalistic Films in South and North Korea” (Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 2009) and “Manifestation of ‘Japanese Spirit’ in Wartime Japan: Focusing on Images of Women in Films, The New Earth and the Suicide Troops of the Watchtower” (The Journal of the International Association of Korean Literary and Cultural Studies, 2008).

Description

A common metaphor for advertising is South Korea is “flower of capitalism,” which, rather than calling attention to the intrinsic links between commercial advertising and capitalism, frames advertising as a wholesome creative medium driven by the ethos of public good and contributing positively to society. Rarely dismissed as an intrusive commercial message, South Korean advertising is consumed like any other product of popular culture and even celebrated for the humanist societal ideals it often advances. This vision of advertising as overwhelmingly benign is enforced by semi-government censorship institutions, industry associations and NGOs, which scrutinize advertising content. Not only is advertising expected to promote inspirational ideals, it is pressured to foster democracy, with concerned citizens and civic groups demanding that businesses use their advertising budgets to support progressive media—even if those media regularly critique the businesses in question. Such valorization of advertising’s potential for positive societal interventions over advertising’s commercial imperatives clashes with the principles of free market and liberal freedom of expression, which grew hegemonic in South Korea since the ascendance of neoliberalism from the late 1990s. Thus advertising becomes a focal point for far-reaching contestations not only over politics of representation but also over media regimes and an overall vision for South Korea’s future. Exploring conflicting claims on advertising, my presentation draws out critical openings and disjunctures which have defined contemporary South Korea.

Olga Fedorenko is a doctoral candidate in East Asian Studies Department of the University of Toronto. Her research deals with discourses and practices of advertising in contemporary South Korea and is based on a 14-month fieldwork in Seoul, which included an internship at a major advertising agency and observation at an advertising censorship board. Her dissertation is provisionally entitled “Enchanted with ‘flower of capitalism’: Consuming, producing and censoring advertising in contemporary South Korea.”

Description

Dr. Julie Mehta will be sharing her current research on articulations of food and the performative act of eating and how they punctuate diasporic and transnational Asian- North American literature. Turning her attention to the cultural politics of power, consumption and diversity, Dr. Mehta examines how culinary narratives interrogate racial, sexual and fiscal constructs. Theorising the diaspora, Anita Mannur in Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Disporic Culture asserts that “Food...is also about nostalgia, performing cultural identity and establishing alternative networks of intimacy not circumscribed by blood and filiation”. Dr. Mehta’s project uses Anita Mannur, Salman Rushdie and Wenying Xu’s analyses to unveil representations of food in Asian-North American Literature. Her presentation is a hybrid of empirical research, participant observation, and personalized scholarship. This dialogic session at the Asian Institute is a progression from the paper she recently presented at the Australasian Conference in December 2011 in Hyderabad, India. Her chapter on “Multicultural Tongues”, forthcoming in Edible Histories of Canada, (U of T Press: Spring 2012, ed by Franca Iacovetta et al) explores the crucial but neglected subject of South Asian-North American identities in cosmopolitan Toronto by testing and tasting three major sources that speak to the key importance of food in the formulation of identity: South Asian restaurants and cuisines; Asian-Canadian literatures in English; and the narratives of students in the multicultural university classroom and wider landscape of a multiracial Toronto. She explores the relationship between food and identity in situations of encounter, tracks the rise of immigrant and ethnic foodways, interrogates the generational conflicts embedded in culinary encounters at home, and bears witness to the phenomena of preservation and invention of tradition in cultural hybridity and creolization. Her current research, while informed by the vexed historical context of immigration in Canada, focuses on racialized, non-Western immigrants whose cultural presence on the contemporary culinary and literary landscape has helped define a certain Canadian diasporic cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and essentialisation, on the other.

Sampling of some of the ‘hybridized’ items that are represented in Asian-North American Literature will be a part of the experience at the talk.

Dr. Julie Mehta is the author of Dance of Life: Mythology, History and Politics of Cambodian Culture (2001), and co-author with historian Dr. Harish C. Mehta of Hun Sen: Strongman of Cambodia (1999). She teaches Canadian Diasporic Literature and the Chancellor Emerita Senator Vivienne Poy endowed course on Asian Cultures in Canada at University College. Her doctoral dissertation was titled: “Unchaste” Goddesses, Turbulent Waters: Postcolonial Representations of the Divine Feminine in South Asian Fiction.” A Postcolonial Studies specialist by training, she has published widely on Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures and works on exile and identity among diasporic novelists and is deeply interested in the concepts of home and belonging among Canadian artistes and writers. She is also interested in how Canadian readers respond to the works of vernacular writers such as Tagore and Premchand. Her translation of Tagore’s Dak Ghar (The Post Office) was performed by the Pleiades Theatre in Toronto in 2011. A CGS-SSHRC recipient she was also awarded the Mary H. Beatty Fellowship and the Dr. David Chu Fellowship from the University of Toronto. Dr. Mehta has persisted in propelling cross cultural understanding between borders while she lived and worked as a correspondent in India, Australia, Singapore, Cambodia and Thailand, before coming to Canada.

Description

The gender imbalance problem emerged in China in the early 1980s, and diffused and exacerbated in the 1990s. Since 2000, high sex ratio at birth has been fluctuating at a very high level around 120. Meanwhile, over the last three decades, China has experienced dramatic social change, including sustained low fertility, institutional reform, economic growth, technology progress and social structural change, which may have impacted the evolution of gender imbalance as well. The government has also taken crucial policy measures such as the national “Care for Girls” campaign to contain gender imbalance and address its consequences. This talk will examine how demographic transition, social change and public governance interact to drive the evolution of gender imbalance in China. The talk first describes recent trends and patterns in gender imbalance in China and reviews the current knowledge and debates about causes of gender imbalance and its social consequences. It then summarizes public policies and social responses to address these issues in China, focusing on national “Care for Girls” campaign and its impact. The talk will also present a framework to analyze the social change, public governance and gender imbalance evolution, as well as empirical findings. Finally, the talk will discuss prospects for China’s gender imbalance in future.

Shuzhuo Li is a Professor at the Institute for Population and Development Studies, School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. He received his Ph.D. from Xi’an Jiaotong University. His research interests include mortality analysis, gender and child survival, and reproductive health in China.

Description

For two decades, Korowai of West Papua have been famous in the primitivist mass media and primitivist tourism industries, where they are known for their “treehouse” architecture and for living in a valued, nearly “Stone Age” condition of human archaicness. This presentation considers some striking convergences and contrasts between the bodies of fantasized stereotypy that Tourists and Korowai respectively project onto each other. The presentation also explores some aspects of actual interactions between Korowai and Tourists that would not be adequately accounted for by consideration of stereotypy alone, nor adequately accounted for by taking Korowai and Tourists as entirely two separate and unitary groups.

Rupert Stasch is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCSD, and previously taught for ten years at Reed College. He is the author of Society of Others: Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan Place (U. California Press, 2009), and a number of journal articles also based on fieldwork 1995 – 2011 with Korowai of West Papua, Indonesia.

Description

Prevention of malnutrition in children has been a priority for United Nations agencies, governments and NGOs for decades. The last of the major nutritional problems yet to be solved is iron deficiency and its accompanying anemia. Close to 200 million children globally are affected. Our research group has developed an intervention to fortify foods in the home (home-fortification) to prevent iron deficiency. Over the past 10 years the intervention has been shown to be efficacious and safe; has been produced by the private sector; has been championed by the United Nations and implemented by the UN, NGO, public and private sectors. In 2010, 400 million units were procured by UN agencies alone for use in over 30 countries. However, the scaling-up process has actually been quite variable – some more successful, some less so – contingent on a host of social, political and economic factors. This discussion will use multiple country examples to illustrate the complexity of scaling of home-fortification.

Stanley Zlotkin MD, PhD is a professor of Paediatrics, Public Health Sciences and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. He was appointed to the position of VP Medical and Academic Affairs in July 2010. Dr. Zlotkin and his Program, the Sprinkles Global Health Initiative has focused on research and advocacy to control micronutrient malnutrition in children. Challenged by UNICEF to come up with a viable and reproducible solution to the problem of micronutrient malnutrition, Zlotkin and his research team developed the concept of micronutrient powders for ‘home-fortification’ of complementary foods. With support from USAID, CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) and private foundations, he has completed stable isotope studies and RCTs in more than 8 developing countries to ‘prove’ the efficacy and effectiveness of ‘home-fortification’ to control micronutrient deficiencies. Professor Zlotkin’s advocacy work was recognized by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in 2006 with his receipt of the prestigious ‘CIHR National Knowledge Translation Award’ for “outstanding contributions to the health of children worldwide”. He was awarded the HJ Heinz Humanitarian Award in 2001 for his international contribution to the health of children globally, and in 2008 was awarded the Order of Canada, the highest civilian honour in Canada, for his contributions to improving the lives of children globally. In 2011 he was awarded a Fellowship in the Canadian Society of Health Sciences.