Organizer: Mark T. Berger, Murdoch University
Chair: Ravi Arvind Palat, University of Auckland
Discussant: L. H. M. Ling, Cornell University
In the post-Cold War era the center of politico-economic and socio-cultural gravity is shifting towards significantly reconfigured relationships between the major powers and an increased emphasis on the global importance of the Asia-Pacific. The new era is characterized by an increased role for international financial institutions and transnational corporations (TNCs) and the dramatic internationalization of production, trade and finance, with important changes to the position of, and a changing role for, territorial-states. These trends, often referred to as globalization, have been accompanied by important ‘ideological’ reorientations and a shift towards exclusive or inclusive regional political, economic and cultural groupings. In the post-Cold War era powerful new and reconfigured national and regional narratives have emerged which articulate competing and overlapping visions for parts or all of what has become known as the Asia-Pacific. State policies, national narratives and regional initiatives in the Asia-Pacific represent reactions against, engagements with and/or efforts to facilitate globalization. The papers on this panel all attempt to grapple with the role of the state, questions of identity, new nationalist visions and regional approaches to politico-economic and socio-cultural change in the context of an increasingly globalized Asia-Pacific.
Mark T. Berger, Murdoch University
This paper explores the relationship between post-Cold War geo-political narratives and the new regionalism in the Asia-Pacific by examining and contextualizing the work of representative Pacific Rim policy-intellectuals and journalists who write about the East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC) and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEQ)—the emergence of the idea of a relatively homogenous and interconnected Greater China will also be examined. The EAEC and APEC, which are state-led projects at the same time as they draw support from an array of non-state institutional and social forces, are part of the wider political, economic, social and cultural re-organization of national and regional spaces in the Asia-Pacific. They both complement and contradict non-state centered processes of regionalization and globalization. The conflicting and complementary geo-political visions which are linked to the EAEC and APEC and flow from shifting configurations of power in the Asia-Pacific, play a potentially important role in shaping state policies, in mobilizing people and in legitimating shifting national and regional political and economic arrangements. Differing visions of the region (and the forms of knowledge production which go with them) flow from various relations of power which enable and disable conflicting narratives on trends in the post-Cold War Asia-Pacific. This paper seeks to place important exponents of these competing narratives in their politico-institutional context and evaluate their particular visions for the region, which will help clarify the relationship between power in, and the production of knowledge about, the rise of East Asia and the dawn of the Pacific Century.
Jasper Goss, Griffith University
The current restructuring of the inter-state system in the direction of heightened integration has produced significant transformations in the activities of, and actors within, contemporary states. The history of Thai industrialization and economic transformation has been identified by various authors as evidence of the success of the neo-liberal paradigm of economic development and the wisdom of minimal state-intervention. More recently, however, segments of the Thai state have developed a ‘schizophrenic’ relationship with processes of globalization and their impact upon the Thai ‘nation.’ Within the Thai agri-food sector, the development of transnational forces internal to Thailand (such as the CP Group) and the resultant international couplings from joint ventures, has produced a reorientation of ideas about nationalism and industrialization. These changes and their subsequent impacts have been compounded by the fact that agents of the state also have vested interests in the CP Group. Taking the CP Group as a case study this paper argues that understanding the interaction between globalization, nationalism, industrialization and the state must be grounded in a framework that moves beyond understanding ‘economic development’ as a process separate from its historical and regional context.
Miyume Tanji, Murdoch University
This paper attempts to expand the discussion on democracy in East Asia in the global capitalist era. There is a tension in the literature on international relations, between the universalist triumphalism of liberal democracy, and the relativist backlash of the advocates of a distinctly East Asian political culture. Breaking free of this theoretical impasse involves re-considering "democratic values" and reviewing the development of the idea of democracy as a political concept which is the product of a particular philosophical tradition, and how it has been adapted to, or rejected in, East Asia. The first part of this article re-examines the emergence and limitations of liberal democracy as a political idea in late modernity, and how it is disconnected from the discussion on "democracy" in non-Western locations such as East Asia. The second part looks at "democratic values" as a counter-hegemonic political norm which is increasingly deployed by underprivileged social groups against what they see as the tyranny of transnational capital. This article argues that "democratic values," as derived from the Western tradition, can be viable as a universal idea in contemporary East Asia. However, democracy’s potential as a liberating force is much greater in emerging local struggles to obtain human well-being rather than as a set of institutional and governmental arrangements.
Jing Wang, Duke University
This paper examines the changing definitions of ‘culture,’ the structural transformations of Chinese post-socialist state after the 1989 crisis, and the mutually constitutive relationship between state policies and cultural industry. ‘Culture’ (wenhua) suddenly became a buzzword in China toward the latter half of the 1990s. The discursive construction of "leisure culture" since 1994 and the burgeoning state policies of ‘cultural economy’ that promote the collapse and convertibility of cultural capital into financial capital will be looked at. Through this examination of the changing definitions of ‘culture as leisure’ and ‘culture as capital,’ this presentation illustrates the roles played by the Chinese state in reorganizing recreational spaces, constructing the meaning of the citizen-consumer, and reinventing the notion of the ‘public sphere’ by defining it in terms of the public’s equal access to leisure cultural goods and services. The restructuring attempt of the Chinese state to move from a coercive to regulatory body of governance brings us to a close look at how the nation-state responds to globalization by turning itself into a machine capable of mediating the contradictions resulted from capital accumulation. In short, this paper addresses issues of the complicitous relationship between the ideology of free time, the Chinese state’s economic and public policies, popular consumerism, and global consumerist modernity.