Description

There are many reasons for the crisis of several so-called border-states in India. One factor is that the governing elite in India has continuously had a conceptual block about recognizing multiple nationalities in India. More specifically, given the complexity and size of India, it should have recognized and worked with what might be called a deeply asymmetrical federalism which recognized some societies within it as nations and some not. Over time, the governing elite in India did imagine an inclusive enough state in India, one that granted recognition to different cultural communities but it just fell short of grasping the precise form of recognition for which some societies increasingly yearned. This was a political as much as a conceptual failure. Moreover, the hold of some conceptions was so strong that these elites could not imagine an even more inclusive variety of federalism. Instead of responding even more democratically to multi-layered difference, the Indian state, responded to it with force. Furthermore, it could not imagine that the organizational principle of different states could itself be very different, that some regional units could be formed on the basis of language, others on the basis of religion and still others on the basis of traditional ways of living. Only then could groups with multilayered differences – difference in religion, language and a whole way of life – be accommodated within a single state. The crisis of border-states in India must be accounted also in terms of this deeper conceptual failure.

Rajeev Bhargava obtained his BA degree in Economics from the University of Delhi and M.Phil and D.Phil from Oxford University. He is currently Senior Fellow and Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, He is also the Director of the CSDS programme on Social and Political Theory. He has previously been Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and between 2001-2005 held the chair in Political theory and Indian political thought at the University of Delhi and was the Head of its Department of Political Science..

He has been a Senior fellow in Ethics at Harvard University, Visiting fellow of the British Academy, CR Parekh Fellow at the CSDS, Delhi, a Leverhulme fellow at the University of Bristol, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Jerusalem and Distinguished Resident scholar, Institute of Religion, Public life and Toleration, Columbia University, NY. . He has held the Asia Chair at Science Po, Paris in the summer of 2006. His publications include Individualism in Social Science, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992,) Secularism and its Critics ed. (OUP, New Delhi, 1998), Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy, (ed. with A. Bagchi and R. Sudarshan, OUP 1999) and Transforming India, (ed. With Francine Frankel et. al, OUP 2000) and Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution (ed.) OUP, 2008. He is currently working on a book on Secularism. He has contributed to several international books and journals including the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.and the Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. He was a consultant to the UNDP report on Cultural Liberty.

Description

Igor Saveliev is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of International Development of Nagoya University (Japan). He holds a Ph.D. in history from St. Petersburg State University and Nagoya University. His research is focused on human migrations and immigration policies in East Asia. Currently he heads a research project on Korean diasporas in the former Soviet Union and PRC. He is the author of “Migration and State:
Chinese, Korean and Japanese in the Russian Far East, 1860-1917” (Tokyo, 2005, in Japanese) and co-editor and contributor of “Globalizing Chinese Migration” (Ashgate, 2002).

The talk will focus on the transformation of Japanese and Korean immigration policies in the 1990s – 2000s and will show how these policies affected the formation of migrant communities in these two countries (Central Asians in the South Korea and Latin Americans in Japan). The presentation will be based on the materials of the field work conducted in Korea and Japan in 2007-2008 and various Japanese, Korean and English sources.

Description

Since the early to mid 1990s, several million peasants from Southeast Asia have migrated to East Asia by becoming ‘migrant workers’ or ‘foreign brides’. Based on five years of on-going fieldwork in migrants’ communities of origin in rural Vietnam and visits to Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, this presentation will argue that the categorization of migrants as either ‘workers’ or ‘wives’ in research obscures the complex trajectories and motives involved in the process of ‘becoming a migrant’. This presentation thus puts migrants’ perspectives and experiences center stage and sheds light on the significance of various factors that lead migrants to exit Vietnam and enter a destination country with a certain status or type of visa. Migrants’ narratives powerfully show how migration policies, the recruitment and selection process, networks, and the cost of migration together create both opportunities and constraints that give more options to some and fewer to others. The stories of these global peasants illustrate the tension between migrants’ agency and the structural constraints in international migration flows within Asia.

Danièle Bélanger is the Canada Research Chair in Population, Gender and Development and Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. Her work examines social processes related to demographic change, such as increasing female singlehood, declining fertility, the growing female deficit, and increasing international migration flows, within the Asian context. Her current major project, funded by SSHRC and IDRC, focuses on migration from Southeast Asia to East Asia and examines the impact on sending and receiving communities. She is the co-editor of the recently published volume Reconfiguring Families in Contemporary Vietnam (Stanford University Press, 2009).

Description

For a long time, North Korea was considered to be a special case, an extraordinary socialist country in terms of politics, ideology and economy. The changes in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev towards collective leadership and peaceful coexistence were countered by the creation of an indigenous, heavily nationalist ideology and a strengthening of the cult of personality around the country’s founder and leader Kim Il-sung. The price was high: a restrictive foreign policy and economic backwardness isolated North Korea even within the socialist camp. However, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise: expectations of a collapse after the end of socialism in Europe proved premature exactly because of this „own way“ and the lack of strong ideological, economic and military interdependencies. The system even survived a number of massive shocks, such as the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994 and a famine 1995-1997. Starting around 2000, surprisingly and for a long time ignored by the West, economic reforms started. They changed North Korea’s society profoundly and, as we would argue, in an irreversible way. Since around 2004/05 and in particular since 2008, we observe a return to orthodox, neoconservative values and methods. How did North Korea function before the reforms? What has changed? And why do they take this u-turn now? We will explore these and other questions and try to make sense of the current events such as the missile and nuclear tests. We will also discuss the consequences for regional security and options for a leadership succession. In the end, we will argue that North Korea is on its way to finally becoming much more of an ordinary socialist country, with all consequences.

Professor Dr. Ruediger FRANK, a German national, is Chair Professor of East Asian Economy and Society at the University of Vienna and Deputy Head of the Department of East Asian Studies. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Korea University and the University of North Korean Studies.
He holds an M.A. in Korean Studies, Economics and International Relations and a Ph.D. in Economics. Visiting Professorships included Columbia University New York and Korea University Seoul. He is a Council member of the Association for Korean Studies in Europe, Vice Director of the Vienna School of Governance, an Associate at Japan Focus, and Deputy Editor of the European Journal of East Asian Studies. His first five-month visit to North Korea took place in 1991, when he was a language student at Kim Il-sung University. His major research fields are socialist transformation in East Asia and Europe (with a focus on North Korea), state-business relations in East Asia, and regional integration in East Asia.
See http://wirtschaft.ostasien.univie.ac.at/; Email: ruediger.frank@univie.ac.at

Description

In 1972, South Korean president Park Chung-hee declared martial law with the introduction of the Yushin, or “Revitalization” Constitution. In the following years thereafter, state surveillance intensified in a way that bestowed new urgency upon enterprises whose impact was primarily visual. Visual works commissioned or completed at the behest of the Yushin state distinctly turned on the notion of reciprocal scrutiny: these works were concurrently surrogate “eyes” of the state and objects subject to public inspection. The importance of looking and being looked at was especially well delineated in painting, a medium that gained renewed momentum in seventies Korea through both the expansion of the state-sponsored national documentary paintings project and the consolidation of a Korean artistic avant-garde. The wages of looking was perhaps best demonstrated by the Ecriture series of Park Seobo. Heralded as an exemplar of Korean avant-garde art almost upon the moment of its first unveiling in 1973, the Ecriture series consists of paintings whose size and appearance compelled looking of such closeness so as to open up new possibilities for audiences otherwise accustomed to visual modes seemingly intent on attaining closure.

Joan Kee is Assistant Professor in the History of Art department at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. A specialist in modern and contemporary art with particular interests in East and Southeast Asia, her publications include articles for the Oxford Art Journal, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critiques, Third Text, and Art Journal as well as catalogue essays for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Korean Pavilion for the 2003 Venice Biennale.

Description

Ann Laura Stoler is Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies at The New School for Social Research in New York since 2004. Her areas of research span the politics of knowledge, colonial governance and its conceptual grammar, racial epistemologies, and the sexual politics of colonial pasts and presents. Her books include: Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt, l870-1979 (Yale, 1985); Race and the Education of Desire (Duke, 1995); Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power (California, 2002); Along the Archival Grain (Princeton, 2009); and the edited volumes, Tensions of Empire, with Frederick Cooper (California, 1997); Haunted by Empire (Duke 2006); Imperial Formations, with Carole McGranahan and Peter Perdue (SAR 2007); and Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (Duke, forthcoming).

Description

Two days of Readings, Performances, and Discussions with book sales and an art exhibition

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2009
LOCATION: Seeley Hall, Trinity College, University of Toronto
7:00 pm Welcome Reception
Readings introduced by: Alka Kumar
Speakers: Priscila Uppal, Ameen Merchant,Padma Viswanathan, Shyam Selvadurai
Sitar Recital: Anwar Khurshid

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 2009
LOCATION: Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility, Munk Centre for International Studies, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto
10 am – 11:30 am Readings
Punjabi / English: Surjeet Kalsey
Urdu / English: Nuzhat Siddiqui, Abid Jafri
Tamil / English: R Cheran, C Kanaganayakam
Q & A moderated by Tahira Naqvi

11:40 am – 12:50 pm Readings
Moderator: Suwanda Sugunasiri
Readings: Sheniz Janmohamed, Kwai Li, Ven Begamudre, and Ashok Mathur

12:50 pm – 1:30 pm LUNCH BREAK

1:30 pm – 3:00 pm Readings with interviews
Manil Suri (Moderator: Prasad Bidaye)
Zulfikar Ghose (Moderator: Julie Mehta)

3:05 pm – 4:20 pm Readings
Moderator: Khalid Sohail
Readings: Randy Boyagoda, Ramabai Espinet, Nazneen Sheikh, Sasenarine Persaud, and Anand Mahadevan

4:30 pm – 6:00 pm Parallel Sessions
LOCATION: VIVIAN AND DAVID CAMPBELL CONFERENCE FACILITY
“Writing Away: A discussion of how South Asian writing has evolved away from the Subcontinent”
Moderator: Ameen Merchant
Speakers: Arun Mukherjee, Harish Narang, MG Vassanji, Chelva Kanaganayakam

LOCATION: 108 N (MUNK CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, NORTH HOUSE)
“South Asian Drama in Canada: Existential Problems”
Moderator: Anosh Irani
Speakers: Rahul Varma, Rana Bose, Hari Krishnan, Ajmer Rode

7:00 pm Evening of Dance and Literature
LOCATION: Robert Gill Theatre, Koffler Centre, University of Toronto
Introduction: MG Vassanji
Readings: Bapsi Sidhwa, Anosh Irani, Tahira Naqvi
Dance Performance: “The King’s Salon” by Hari Krishnan and inDance
THIS IS A TICKETED EVENT: $25
Purchase tickets online at: http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?eventid=8006

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 27, 2009 – Scheduled events have been moved to Saturday for the convenience of speakers & audiences

Description

Two days of Readings, Performances, and Discussions with book sales and an art exhibition

PROGRAM

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2009
LOCATION: Seeley Hall, Trinity College, University of Toronto
7:00 p.m. Welcome Reception
Readings introduced by: Alka Kumar
Speakers: Priscilla Uppal, Ramabai Espinet, Shyam Selvadurai
Sitar Recital: Anwar Khurshid

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 2009
LOCATION: Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility, Munk Centre for International Studies, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto
10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.: Readings
Punjabi / English: (TBA)
Urdu / English: Nuzhat Siddiqui, TBA
Tamil / English: R Cheran, C Kanaganayakam
Q & A moderated by Tahira Naqvi

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.:Readings and Discussion
Manil Suri (Moderator: Prasad Bidaye)
Zulfikar Ghose (Moderator: Julie Mehta)

12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. LUNCH BREAK

1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.: Readings
Moderator: Suwanda Sugunasiri
Speakers: Sheniz Janmohamed, Kwai Lee, Ven Begamudre, and Ashok Mathur

Moderator: Alka Kumar
Speakers: Randy Boyagoda, Padma Viswanathan, Nazneen Sheikh, Sasenarine Persaud, and Nalini Warriar

4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.: Parallel Sessions
LOCATION: VIVIAN AND DAVID CAMPBELL CONFERENCE FACILITY
“Writing Away: A discussion of how South Asian writing has evolved away from the Subcontinent”
Moderator: Rana Bose
Speakers: Arun Mukherjee, Harish Narang, M. G. Vassanji, Chelva Kanaganayakam
Respondent: Ashok Mathur

LOCATION: 108 N (MUNK CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, NORTH HOUSE)
“South Asian Drama in Canada: Existential Problems”
Moderator: Padma Viswanathan
Speakers: Rahul Verma, Rana Bose, Hari Krishnan, Ajmer Rode

LOCATION: Robert Gill Theatre, Koffler Centre, University of Toronto
7:00 p.m. Evening of Dance and Literature
Readings
Introduced by M G Vassanji
Bapsi Sidhwa
Anand Mahadevan
Tahira Naqvi

Dance Performance
Hari Krishnan and troupe
“The King’s Salon”

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 27, 2009 programming has been cancelled

PLEASE NOTE: Admission is free with the exception of the Saturday night event at the Robert Gill Theatre. Tickets are $25.00.

Description

Ameen Merchant was born in Bombay and raised in Madras, India. The Silent Raga is his first novel. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he is working on his next novel and programming a new Bollywood audio channel for the CBC.

He has been nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book Award. Ameen Merchant was also awarded 2nd place in the Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design (Prose Fiction category)

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Information is not yet available.

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Information is not yet available.

Description

The May 4th Movement of 1919 and the Tiananmen Uprising that took place seven decades later are two of the best known protest struggles in modern Chinese history. They are movements that have been commemorated and discussed in many contexts, getting even more attention than usual in years, such as this one, that end with the number nine. They are also events that have been mythologized and oversimplified, as well as events that have been misremembered and misrepresented, sometimes intentionally and sometimes inadvertently. This talk will focus on aspects of the struggles of 1919 and 1989 that have tended to be overlooked, downplayed, or airbrushed out of the picture completely. It will ask what we can learn about the events themselves and about the dynamics of commemoration from focusing on some of the “missing May 4th” and “eclipsed ’89s,” and also suggest some things that the process of selective remembering of struggles of this kind reveals about Chinese politics and the way China is thought about in the West.

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a Professor of History at the University of California-Irvine, where he also serves as Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. His most recent books are China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (forthcoming from Oxford University Press), Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (Routledge, 2009), and, as co-editor, China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). A co-founder of the “China Beat” blog/electronic magazine and a regular contributor to the “Huffington Post,” he has contributed reviews and commentaries to newspapers such as the New York Times and magazines such as Time and Newsweek.

Description

This seminar is originated from the author’s recent published biography “The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China before Mao.” During the seminar, Professor Li will talk about his experience in China and Hong Kong of the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Prof. Li was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong in 1950. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1963, he enrolled in the Ph.D. Program in mathematics at Stanford University and later transferred to UC Berkeley to study linguistics. Before his retirement in 2007, Prof. Li was the Dean of Graduate Division and a Professor of Linguistics at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Description

What’s your vision for Canada’s future?
Tell us what you think belongs on our list of 25 things that matter most for Canada’ s future with Asia
and you could win $5000!

Create a video short that describes an issue, challenge, or opportunity you feel Canadians should be thinking about in our relations with Asia – is it family values? Freedom of speech? Fusion cuisine...

Help us help you create an entry through our 25@25 Workshop

Find us on Twitter!
Http://twitter.com/25at25

Find us on Facebook!
Http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=165415910498&ref=mf

Contest opens September 17, 2009
Questions? Email 25at25@asiapacific.ca

Description

The panel discussion will focus on relief efforts for children and families affected by the May 2008 earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan Province.

When the massive earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale struck Sichuan’s Wenchuan County on 12 May 2008, more than 120 million people in the region experienced the effects. The Wenchuan earthquake left 88,000 people dead or missing and nearly 400,000 injured. Millions of homes were damaged or destroyed, leaving five million people homeless.

The earthquake hit children especially hard. More than 12,000 schools, or 40% of all the schools in Sichuan, were damaged by the earthquake and more than 600 children were orphaned.

Discussion panelists will address the impact of the devastating earthquake on children and families, and provide an overview of relief and reconstruction efforts since May 2008.

Mr. Nigel Fisher, President and CEO, UNICEF Canada, is a recognized advocate for children’s rights and global development, having held international posts with UNICEF and the United Nations.

Professor A. Ka Tat Tsang is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto and specializes in social work within a globalized environment.

Dr. Yin Yin Nwe is the first female UNICEF Representative for China, with expertise in resource mobilization for tsunami and earthquake recovery programmes.

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Information is not yet available.

Description

The rapid growth, diversity and strategic importance of the emerging Chinese and Indian economies have fired the world’s imagination with both hopes and fears for the future. Wendy Dobson’s perceptive analysis of changing institutions, demographics, and politics paints a thoughtful and surprising picture of India and China as economic powerhouses in the year 2030. Examining past events and current trends, Gravity Shift offers bold predictions of the changes we can expect in key economic and political institutions in China and India, changes that will inform and shape tomorrow’s business decisions.

Dobson’s work anticipates that by 2030, China’s economy will be larger than those of the United States, India, and Japan, though its population will be ageing and its growth slowing. India will also come into its own, making major strides in modernizing its vast rural population, vanquishing illiteracy, and emerging as an innovative manufacturing powerhouse. A China-India free trade agreement could well become the foundation of a cooperative Asian economic community. As the world re-evaluates business practices in the wake of the global economic crisis, Gravity Shift provides a clear vision of how India and China will reshape the Asian region, to inform and transform global economic institutions.

Wendy Dobson is the director of the Institute for International Business at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

Description

This information is for all interested undergraduate and graduate students who would like to be involved with NKRG this year. The session is highly recommended for anyone interested in researching with NKRG as we will talk about our research topics this year, some information about the group, and information regarding the application process.

For more information, please visit NKRG’s website at http://nkrg.org

Description

This presentation will explore South Korean military participation in Vietnam (1965-1973) and South Korean and Vietnamese military sex work for US and South Korean troops. It focuses on South Korean literary representations that examine the linkages between military labor and military sex work as related but hierarchized types of racialized, gendered and sexualized proletarian labors. Through its reading of several key literary texts, the paper attempts to situate differentiated militarization of gendered sexualities—articulated in the form of military labor and military sex work during the Vietnam War era—in the context of South Korea’s state-led industrialization and the American Cold War expansionism in the greater Asian region.

Jin-kyung Lee is Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at University of California, San Diego, where she teaches modern Korean literature. She received her Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. Her book, titled, Proletarianizing Sexuality and Race: Transnational Labors of South Korea since 1965, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press. She is currently working on another book project, tentatively titled, Modernizing Governance: New Conceptions of Politics, Economics, and Aesthetics in Colonial Korea, 1910-1925.

Description

Historic National Gathering Aims to Fill the Research Gap on Filipinos in Canada

Toronto, Ontario (September 1, 2009) – Leading scholars will convene to address the absence of academic and policy discussions on Filipinos in Canada, the third largest non-European ethnic group in the country. “Spectres of In/Visibility” will be held on October 23, 2009, from 8 am to 7:30 pm at the University of Toronto.

The symposium’s featured speakers will include Dr. Eleanor Ty of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Dr. Leonora Angeles of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, and Dr. Bonnie McElhinny of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto.

According to the 2006 Statistics Canada Profile, the Filipino population in Canada is estimated to be 436,190 people. Although 31% of Filipinos have university degrees and 72% participate in the labour force, Filipinos in Canada make $5,000 less than the national average income. The Filipino community in Canada also has a higher proportion of women compared to the national population (57% compared to 51% nationally). Many of these women have come to Canada through the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), a federal work program that has garnered considerable attention among policymakers and in the media in recent months.

The symposium will focus on migration, labour, race, and gender issues, and will also showcase other topics, such as arts, health, and politics. John Paul C. Catungal, a graduate student in Geography at the University of Toronto, says that this broader view is necessary to expand the prevailing attention on the LCP and youth violence. He notes, “While the experiences of caregivers and at-risk youth are important, we want to go beyond stereotypical ‘nannies and gangsters’ representations and explore the complexities of Filipino lives in Canada.”

“The symposium was developed out of a community need to fill the research gap on Filipinos in Canada,” says Dr. Roland Sintos Coloma, a faculty member in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education and the only Filipino professor at the University of Toronto. He adds, “It will be a groundbreaking gathering. It will bring together a critical mass of scholars throughout Canada, for the first time, to develop a national academic platform for Filipino Canadian Studies.”

The symposium is free and open to the public. It is organized by Kritikal Kolektibo, a group of faculty and graduate students interested in Filipino Studies at the University of Toronto. This event is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and a number of faculties, institutes, and departments at the university. The registration form and schedule are available online at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/rsc/filcan2009/.

Contact:
Roland Sintos Coloma, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto
Office Phone: (416) 978-0462
Email: roland.coloma@utoronto.ca

Description

The expansion of India’s cities has made urban crisis highly visible in recent years. Along with urban crisis, informal technological networks have proliferated, radically bypassing states and corporations. Older technologies of urban control set up under modernist designs of the 1950s have become increasingly irrelevant, or paralyzed.

This presentation considers the futures of the Indian cities after media and asks if we need significantly revise our idea of postcolonial urbanism itself.

Ravi Sundaram is a Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. In 2000 he founded the well known Sarai programme along with Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi, Ravi Vasudevan and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. Sundaram has co-edited the critically acclaimed Sarai Reader series, The Public Domain (2001), The Cities of Everyday Life(2002), Shaping Technologies (2003), Crisis Media(2004), and Frontiers (2007). He is the author of Pirate Modernity: Media Urbanism in Delhi (Routledge, London 2009). His current work is on urban fear after media modernity.

Description

Detailed program and papers are available on event website.

Edward Friedman is one of the world’s foremost scholars on the politics of China and Asia. Throughout a half century of publications, lectures, speeches, and research projects, Professor Friedman has profoundly influenced the intellectual lives of countless people, and made a major mark on the politics of China and Asia. This event will offer friends and colleagues an opportunity to celebrate Friedman’s career of scholarship and to join together to consider the enduring themes that his work addresses. The festschrift will take place over a day-long conference at the Asian Institute of the University of Toronto. Speakers and participants will be coming from across Canada, the US, Asia, Europe and Australia.

Edward Friedman is the author of over one hundred articles and book chapters. He has also published over a dozen books, including Backward Toward Revolution: The Chinese Revolutionary Party (California); Ascent and Decline in the World System (Sage); Chinese Village, Socialist State (Yale; winner of the AAS award for best book on modern China); Revolution, Resistance and Reform in Village China (Yale); National Identity and Democratic Prospects in Socialist China (M.E. Sharpe); among many others. Professor Friedman’s writings are controversial, and this festschrift is intended to be a critical celebration of his works, an opportunity to engage the big and important questions he has constantly asked, and the answers that he has given. The thematic focuses of the conference comprise: (i) Maoism, Revolution and the Rural; (ii) Party and the State; (iii) Nationalism and National Identity; (iv) Taiwan; and (v) Democracy.

Speakers to include:
David Bachman
Jean-Pierre Cabestan
Tun-Jen Cheng
Yinghong Cheng
John Coleman
Sam Crane
John Dower
Chongyi Feng
Lisa Fischler
Susan Stanford Friedman
Bruce Gilley
Jian Guo
Rowena He
Timothy Hildebrandt
Richard Kagan
Daniel Lynch
Stephen Manning
Barrett McCormick
Phil Midland
David Ost
John Rapp
Shelley Rigger
James Scott
Sarah Swider
Michael Szonyi
Ralph Thaxton
Steve Tsang
June Teufel Dreyer
Vincent Wang
Joseph Wong
Suisheng Zhao

Description

During the early twentieth century, thousands of predominantly male migrants from China and their families in Guangdong were embroiled in two seemingly separate discussions on women’s roles in education. In emigrant areas, while promoting education was upheld as a badge of Chinese patriotism and modernity, the absence of many able-bodied men and changes introduced by sending girls to schools created a backlash where many parents on both sides of the Pacific blamed schools for turning their daughters into “freedom girls,” girls who disobeyed parental wishes in their heedless pursuit of personal gratification. The academic achievements of female students in North America, on the other hand, were uniformly celebrated by newspapers on both sides of the ocean. The accomplishments and activities of a handful of female students at the Chinese Public School in Victoria BC, the largest overseas Chinese school in Canada, particularly captured the public imagination. By examining events in Guangdong and Victoria together as two integrally connected halves of a migration-created trans-Pacific society, this paper will suggest that the treatment and perception of women on both sides of the Pacific mutually influenced each other. In many ways, the transgressions of distant “unsupervised” women in Guangdong provided the foil that helped migrants in Canada identify with and celebrate the achievements of girls who were closely supervised by their parents and the community at large. The interconnectedness between Guangdong and Chinese Victoria highlights the need to examine migration-created settlements in Canada through a transnational lens.

Belinda Huang completed her Ph.D. In the Department of History, Princeton University under the supervision of Prof. Susan Naquin. Her dissertation examines issues of generational conflict, identity formation, and gender in the trans-Pacific society created by Chinese migrants in North America and their families in Guangdong, China.

Description

Why does ethnicity have varied effects on educational achievement for different national-origin or ethnic groups, even after holding constant key socioeconomic and contextual factors? Why do the children of Asian immigrants, regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds, excel and succeed in the educational arena in disproportionately large numbers? This ethnographic study of two Asian immigrant communities in Los Angeles looks at the space between home and school to understand the specific ways in which local social structures, namely neighborhood-based institutions and patterned social relations, function to create a unique social environment conducive to education.

Min Zhou, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology & Asian American Studies and the Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in U.S.-China Relations and Communications at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her main areas of research include international migration; ethnic and racial relations; ethnic entrepreneurship, education and the new second generation; Asia and Asian America; and urban sociology. She has published more than 130 refereed journal articles and book chapters, some of which have translated and published in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She is the author of “Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave” (Temple University Press, 1992), “The Transformation of Chinese America” (Sanlian Publishers, 2006), and “Contemporary Chinese America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation” (Temple University Press, 2009); co-author of “Growing up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States” (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 1998); co-editor of “Contemporary Asian America” (New York University Press, 1st ed., 2000; 2nd ed., 2007) and “Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity” (Routledge, 2004). Zhou is currently working on two book projects: “Chinatown, Koreatown, and Beyond: How Ethnicity Matters for Immigrant Education” (Blackwell, forthcoming) and “Los Angeles’ New Second Generation: Mobility, Identity, and the Making of a New American Metropolis” (with J. Lee).

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Information is not yet available.

Description

A key question in Chinese historiography is why capitalism did not develop in China, or at least, why it did not occur before Europe. On the other hand, scholars in Southeast Asia have been asking why the Chinese have been economically dominant in the region. In fact, terminologies such as ‘ersatz’, ‘pariah’, ‘comprador’ or ‘crony’ capitalism have been variously used to describe the workings of Chinese political-economic activities here. These terms basically evolved from observations that these activities differed from those of European (industrial) capitalism. A theory of how Chinese capitalism works in Southeast Asia is still lacking however. Based on historical materials and contemporary observations in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, this talk demonstrates how cultural and religious resources have effected the economic expansion of Chinese people from the seventeenth century to the present, and offers possibilities to theorize Chinese capitalism in Southeast Asia through their social-economic institutions.

Kwee Hui Kian is assistant professor at University of Toronto. Her areas of interest are the processes and theories of colonialism, capitalism, Chinese ethnicity, migration and networks in maritime Southeast Asia from the early modern period to the present. Her publications include various articles on these topics and a book entitled The Political Economy of Java’s Northeast Coast, c. 1740-1800: elite synergy (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

Description

This talk addresses the salient features of Muslim Sūfi-pir practices that have for centuries shaped Bengali culture and influenced the lives of the common people in what is now Bangladesh. It does so by examining the teachings of Khwaja Enayetpuri (1886 – 1952), one of the most celebrated Sūfi-pirs in 20th century Bengal, and the operation of the centres established by him and his disciples.

Islam was spread in the Indian sub-continent by immigrant Sūfi saints from the mid-10th century. The eastern part of Bengal, now Bangladesh, first embraced Sūfi saints in the mid-11th century. Thereafter learned Sūfis and Muslim scholars continued to come to Bengal to establish centres for preaching the spiritual-ascetic tenets of Islam to the local people. They accommodated local customs that reinforced their own charismatic activities, thereby contributing to the growth of the Muslim population.

A recent survey conducted by my students at 80 Sūfi-pir centres (khanqahs) in urban as well as rural Bangladesh shows that for many poverty-stricken Muslims pir veneration seems to be almost a precondition for God’s blessing. But some of the pir practices are considered controversial by more orthodox and fundamentalist Muslims, especially the Jamaat-i-Islami party. This poses a huge challenge for the present day stake-holders in the Sūfi-pir institutions.

In this talk, I address such questions as the following. Who are the Sūfis and how do they practise what they call mystical ideals of Islam? Who are their contemporary followers and what satisfaction do they derive from the Sūfi shrines? Are the followers aware of basic Islamic teachings and practices? Or are they blindly following socio-cultural and religious customs handed down from previous generations?