East Asia Workshop: Politics, Economy and Society

February 18, 2020
by linzhuoli
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(Feb. 20) Shih-Fen Wang, “Japanese Imperialism, Women, Media: From the Perspective of Analyzing the Magazine, Taiwan Fujinkai”

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“Japanese Imperialism, Women, Media: From the Perspective of Analyzing the Magazine, Taiwan Fujinkai 

Shih-Fen Wang

PhD Student

University of Tokyo

 

Feb. 20th, Thu 5:00-6:30 pm (NEW TIME FOR WINTER QUARTER!)

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshments will be provided

Abstract

This paper aims to understand how women in colonial Taiwan were influenced by Japanese imperialism and its culture by analyzing the magazine, Taiwan Fujinkai. I chose Taiwan Fujinkaifor analysis because of its rich content (each issue has at least 100 pages) and its longer publication period compared with other similar magazines. I focus on the first era of publication (1934-1936) in order to investigate the founder and chief editor KAKINUMA Fumiaki’s editing concept. KAKINUMA is known as a journalist whose main concern and passion was children’s and women’s issues. I analyze Taiwan Fujinkaifrom the perspective of Japanese people living in Japan, Japanese people living in Taiwan, and Taiwanese people living in Taiwan, to understand Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period. This is important because previous studies by Leo T.S. CHING (Becoming Japanese”, 2001) explained the formation of Taiwanese political and cultural identities under the dominant Japanese colonial discourse of assimilation and imperialization. However, most previous research overlooks that Japanese people living in Taiwan also faced many conflicts of their own identities while living in Taiwan.

The core of my research is to analyze and explain why the Japanese people living in Taiwan during that time called their daughters “Taiwanese Girls”, which had both positive and negative implications. The analysis and evidence of this phenomenon is extremely unique. It is interesting that the word usage of Taiwanese women in Taiwan Fujinkai was not only used by Taiwanese women born in Taiwan, but also by women born to second-generation Japanese-Taiwanese families. I conclude that women in colonial Taiwan had to be educated as modern and independent women in order to devote themselves to the Japanese imperial government. However, there is an ambiguous line between Taiwanese born in Taiwan and Japanese born in Taiwan. I argue that in order to develop a better understanding of colonial Taiwan in the 1930s, we cannot overlook this historical phenomenon.

February 10, 2020
by linzhuoli
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East Asia Workshop (Feb. 13) Xuefei Ren, “How China and India Govern Their Cities?”

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“How China and India Govern Their Cities 

Xuefei Ren

Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Urban Studies, Michigan State University

UChicago Sociology Alumni

 

Feb. 13th, Thu 5:00-6:30 pm (NEW TIME FOR WINTER QUARTER!)

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshments will be provided

Abstract

Urbanization is rapidly overtaking China and India. This transformation has unleashed enormous pressures on land use, housing, and the environment. In this talk, Ren will present findings from her forthcoming book Governing the Urban in China and India: Land Grabs, Slum Clearance, and the War on Air Pollution (2020, Princeton University Press). Drawing upon historical-comparative analyses and extensive fieldwork in Beijing, Guangzhou, Wukan, Delhi, Mumbai, and Singur, the book investigates the ways that Chinese and Indian cities manage land acquisition, slum clearance, and air pollution. She argues that in China urban governance centers on territorial institutions, and in India, urban governance centers on associational politics, encompassing contingent alliances formed among state actors, the private sector, and civil society groups.

 

Bio

Xuefei Ren is associate professor of sociology and global urban studies at Michigan State University. Her work focuses on urban development, governance, architecture, and the built environment in global perspective. She is the author of two award-winning books: Building Globalization: Transnational Architecture Production in Urban China (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and Urban China (Polity Press, 2013). Currently she is working on a number of comparative projects, including a photo-documentary on Detroit and rustbelt China, and a series of articles examining informal settlements, mega-events, and spectacles in urban China, India and Brazil. She is a recipient of a number of distinguished fellowships and grants, including from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Andrew Mellon Foundation, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, and American Council of Learned Societies. She received her MA in urban planning from Tokyo Metropolitan University, and Ph.D in Sociology from the University of Chicago.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Yuchen Yang: yucheny@uchicago.edu and Linzhuo Li: linzhuoli@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. Ren, Xuefei – How China and India Govern Their Cities

January 27, 2020
by linzhuoli
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(Jan. 30) Yanfei Sun, “Empires and Religious Toleration”

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“Empires and Religious Toleration 

Yanfei Sun

Associate Professor of Sociology, Zhejiang University

UChicago Sociology Alumni

 

Jan. 30th, Thu 5:00-6:30 pm (NEW TIME FOR WINTER QUARTER!)

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshments will be provided

Abstract

Recent scholarship of pre-modern empires likes to compare them with modern nation-states and stresses the propensity of pre-modern empires to tolerate diverse religions and cultures in their own territories. This emphasis, however, belies the fact that the religious policies of pre-modern empires differ significantly: some indeed allowed all kinds of religions to exist and flourish, while others persecuted heretics and non-believers, and carried out forced conversions. In this talk,I examine the religious policies of 23 pre-modern Eurasian empires and rank them into six different tiers according to their degree of toleration towards non-state religions. I argue against the existing theory that highlights state capacity of empires as the key to explain their different degree of religious toleration and instead stress the nature of the state religion and the related state-religion relations as the key to explanation. I found that pre-modern empires associated with a state religion that had a zero-sum mentality towards other religions and a strong drive to convert people tended to adopt intolerant policies towards other religions. Among these empires, those whose political power was more circumscribed by the power of the state religion are found to be even more religiously intolerant.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Yuchen Yang: yucheny@uchicago.edu and Linzhuo Li: linzhuoli@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Sun, Yanfei – Empires and Religious Toleration

January 20, 2020
by linzhuoli
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(Jan. 23) Kyu-hyun Jo, “Unitary Socialism and an Intellectual History of the Korean War’s Origins as a Civil War”

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“Unitary Socialism and an Intellectual History of the Korean War’s Origins as a Civil War 

Kyu-hyun Jo

UChicago History Alumni

 

Jan. 23rd, Thu 5:00-6:30 pm (NEW TIME FOR WINTER QUARTER!)

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshments will be provided

Abstract

In stark contrast to efforts to understand the Korean War as the Cold War’s first international conflict, very little has been discussed about the complexities of Communist activism in southern Korea under the leadership of Pak Hŏn-yŏng and the South Korean Workers’ Party (Nam Jo-suhn Roh-dong Dang), the largest Communist organization in southern Korea before the war. I fill this lacuna on the SKWP by closely examining South and North Korean documents and Record Groups 59, 242, and 554 to assess the party’s role in causing the Korean War.

I adopt a history-of-ideas perspective to examine the flow of post-liberation Korea’s political history through the SKWP’s rhetoric. The SKWP intensely battled against the Rightists to realize Communist political supremacy in southern Korea, and the Korean peninsula. In attempting to thoroughly Communize South Korea, the SKWP was simultaneously responsible for completely eradicating “Unitary Socialism” and the possibility for any peaceful ideological unification to be achieved by combining electoral democracy and economic socialism. The Korean War originated as a southern Communist and anti-Right-wing civil war; the war directly inherited the leitmotif of a Manichean battle between the Left and the Right which the SKWP willingly engaged in to assure Communist supremacy in the south. The Korean War was not originally a North Korean attempt to “liberate” South Korea but a South Korean civil war and the SKWP’s failed quest to lead the southern clash between the Left and the Right to a Communist victory by punishing pro-Japanese collaborators and “American imperialists.”

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Yuchen Yang: yucheny@uchicago.edu and Linzhuo Li: linzhuoli@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Kyu-hyun Jo – Unitary Socialism and an Intellectual History of the Korean War’s Origins as a Civil War

January 16, 2020
by linzhuoli
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(Jan. 16) “Orders of Explanation and Hermeneutic Cycles”

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“Orders of Explanation and Hermeneutic Cycles 

Dingxin Zhao

Professor of Sociology

University of Chicago

 

 

Jan. 16th, Thu 5:00-6:30 pm (NEW TIME FOR WINTER QUARTER!)

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshments will be provided

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Yuchen Yang: yucheny@uchicago.edu and Linzhuo Li: linzhuoli@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Zhao, Dingxin – Orders of Explanation and Hermeneutic Cycles

November 25, 2019
by linzhuoli
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(Nov. 25) Matthew Kahn, “Air Pollution Progress in Urban China” and “Ghost Towns and China’s High Speed Rail”

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“Air Pollution Progress in Urban China” 

and

“Ghost Towns and China’s High Speed Rail” 

Matthew Kahn

Professor of Economics and Business

John Hopkins University

 

 

Nov. 25th, Mon 4:30-6:00 pm

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshment will be provided

 

 

Abstract

Air Pollution Progress in Urban China

Using city level panel data from China covering fifteen years, this paper describes trends in ambient particulate matter across three types of cities.  Using data on each city’s population, the paper then describes the population’s exposure to air pollution in the base year and the final year of the study.  In the final section of the paper, several hypotheses are tested for explaining the observed pollution dynamics.


Ghost Towns and China’s High Speed Rail

The Chinese Central Government has spent billions of dollars on High Speed Rail extending these lines deep into the periphery of major cities. The Western Media (see the New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/business/global/20ghost.html) has declared that these sunk investments have often been wasteful as “Ghost Cities” have emerged that feature infrastructure and housing towers but no people.  This paper uses the investment under uncertainty framework from economics and finance to model the “option value” of constructing such Ghost Cities.  We use a novel source of Big Data to measure when such towns become more lively featuring people and economic activity.   Using basic ideas from urban economics, we form hypotheses concerning under what economic conditions do such Ghost Town options activate and become thriving small cities.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Yuchen Yang: yucheny@uchicago.edu and Linzhuo Li: linzhuoli@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Attachments area

 

Kahn, Matthew – Air Pollution Progress in Urban China + Ghost Towns and China’s High Speed Rail

November 15, 2019
by linzhuoli
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(Nov. 18) Liping Wang, “Collective Belonging or Individual Calling: Language and Ethnic Identity of Ethnic Minorities in China”

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“Collective Belonging or Individual Calling: Language and Ethnic Identity of Ethnic Minorities in China” 

Liping Wang

Graduate School of Education, Peking University

(UChicago Sociology Alumna)

 

 

Nov. 18th, Mon 4:30-6:00 pm

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshment will be provided

 

 

Abstract

Minority education in contemporary China consists of two systems: a bilingual education system that greatly emphasizes the ethnic minority language, and a monolingual Chinese education system. These two linguistic-education programs have significant influence on self-identity. This paper, which is based on 57 in-depth interviews conducted with those who identify as Mongols, Tibetans and Uighurs, examines the distinct conceptions of ethnicity held by ethnic-language educated and Chinese educated minorities, and their distinct paths of ethnic identity formation. Members from both groups can develop a strong ethnic identity. However, the former are less confident than their Chinese-educated peers in striving towards academic and professional achievements, but more competent in mastering their ethnic language. Language is central to their self-knowledge, which is nurtured in community life and conferred by their ancestors. They revere tradition and have moral pride in preserving their ethnic culture. In contrast, the Chinese-educated ethnic minorities often view ethnicity as an individual calling. Their ethnic consciousness is enhanced through reflective learning, not communal participation. Language has an important, but not central position in their knowledge of ethnicity. They do not inherit, but acquire, their ethnic identity by questioning and struggling with it. Education experiences largely explain for the divergence.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Yuchen Yang: yucheny@uchicago.edu and Linzhuo Li: linzhuoli@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

 

Wang, Liping – Collective Belonging or Individual Calling

November 11, 2019
by linzhuoli
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(Nov. 11) MAPSS Panel: Dimensions of Urban Change

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“MAPSS Panel: Dimensions of Urban Change” 

Yunhan Wen – Chinese Urbanism as a Way of Life: Becoming Urban in Shenzhen’s Informal Settlement

Xi Wang – Comparative Discourse Analysis between the Left Students in 2018 and the Workers in the 1920s and 1930s

Liqun Xie – To Be a Beijinger: “Destiny” as Habitus in Rural-urban Migration under China’s Hukou System

Yuanhang Zhu – Dynamics between State Autonomy and State Embeddedness: Evidence from the “Targeted Poverty Alleviation” Campaign in Rural China

 

 

Nov. 11th, Mon 4:30-6:00 pm

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshment will be provided

MAPSS – Dimensions of Urban Change

 

October 30, 2019
by linzhuoli
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(Oct.30)Junyan Jiang, “Countering Capture: Elite Networks and Government Responsiveness in China’s Land Market Reform”

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“Countering Capture: Elite Networks and Government Responsiveness in China’s Land Market Reform” 

Junyan Jiang

Assistant Professor, Department of Government and Public Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong

 

 

Oct. 30th, Wed 4:00-5:30 pm [SPECIAL DATE & New Time]

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshments will be provided

 

 

Abstract

Government responsiveness is often viewed as a result of political pressure from the public, but why do politicians facing similar pressure sometimes differ in their responsiveness? This article considers the configurations of elite networks as a key mediating factor. We argue that access to external support networks helps improve politicians’ responsiveness to ordinary citizens by reducing their dependence on vested interests, and test this claim using China’s land market reform as a case. Leveraging novel city-level measures of mass grievances and political networks, we demonstrate that the intensity of land-related grievances is on average positively associated with reform occurrence, but this association is only salient among a subset of city leaders who enjoy informal connections to the higher-level authority. We also show that connected leaders tend to implement policies less congruent with local bureaucratic and business interests. These findings underscore the importance of intra-elite dynamics in shaping mass-elite interactions.

Bio

Junyan Jiang is Assistant Professor at the Department of Government and Public Administration, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include elite politics, public opinion, and mass-elite interactions, with a regional focus on China. His work has appeared in journals such as American Journal of Political ScienceComparative Political StudiesGovernanceJournal of Politics, and Political Research Quarterly. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania between 2016 and 2017.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Yuchen Yang: yucheny@uchicago.edu and Linzhuo Li: linzhuoli@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

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October 21, 2019
by linzhuoli
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(Oct. 21) Lida Nedilsky, “The Liberalizing Role of Hong Kong Startups in Religion and Politics”

EAST ASIA WORKSHOP: POLITICS, ECONOMY & SOCIETY Presents

 

“The Liberalizing Role of Hong Kong Startups in Religion and Politics” 

Lida Nedilsky

Professor of Sociology, North Park University

 

 

Oct. 21st, Mon 4:30-6:00 pm

Tea Room, Social Science Research Building (2nd floor).

Refreshment will be provided

Professor Nedilsky has shared the full paper (see attached) to encourage further discussion and debate.

Nedilsky, Lida – The Liberalizing Role of Hong Kong Startups in Religion and Politics

Lida Nedilsky – The Liberalizing Role of Hong Kong Startups in Religion and Politics

Abstract

Since the territory’s return to Chinese sovereignty, Hong Kong’s executive branch has sought ways to control a relatively free-market society. Dispatching riot police to break up flash mobs from June through August 2019 is one vivid example. Acting as a source of consensual politics is another. In this essay I document a rival to control: the persistent presence of both religious and political startups in Hong Kong’s organizational marketplace. As vehicles of innovation, startups –those entrepreneurial efforts to respond to missed opportunities by fulfilling demands of an untapped market– ought to attract attention in a city with Hong Kong’s global reputation for business. These are the Christian nongovernmental organizations and political parties that populate its public sphere and dislodge the state-society fixity assumed necessary for efficient and stable governance. By placing Christian religious culture in the context of the wider Hong Kong culture I cast it in a new light: one that reveals how Christian entrepreneurialism, like political entrepreneurialism, performs a liberalizing role in Hong Kong.

Bio

Lida V. Nedilsky, Professor of Sociology at North Park University, focuses her research on the intersection of religious and political cultures in Chinese societies. Most recently, she collaborated with historian Joseph Tse-hei Lee of Pace University on a special issue of China Information (July 2019) exploring marginalization in China today. Along with guest-editing, they authored “Marginalization as creative endeavour,” an article spotlighting the innovative possibilities that come with existing on the margins of society –including the margins of academic community and enterprise.

* Subscribe  to our workshop mailing-list at: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/info/east-asia

* Abstract or description of each presentation will be posted on our website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia

* Questions and comments can be addressed to the student coordinators Yuchen Yang: yucheny@uchicago.edu and Linzhuo Li: linzhuoli@uchicago.edu

*Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinators in advance.

The East Asia Workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences.