[ Border-Crossing Sessions, Table of Contents ]
[ Panels by World Area Main Menu ]
Organizer and Chair: Robert Hellyer, Allegheny College
Discussant: Anthony J. S. Reid, University of California, Los Angeles
Keywords: marine products, political economy Southeast Asia, political economy East Asia.
For centuries, marine products such as dried fish, kelp, shark fins, sea cucumbers, as well as pearls and turtle shells have been mainstays of intra-Asian trade. While the products are usually overlooked, the world media has recently focused on trade in shark fins and turtle shells amidst reports of over-fishing.
This panel will examine the history of trade in marine products in order to generate broad new insights on politics and commerce in early modern Asia and if possible, produce connections to today’s trade. The goal is to show how trade in marine products shaped larger trends such as aggravating political divisions in Japan, contributing to empire-building by the Sultanate of Sulu, and forming an income base for sea-nomads operating in the seas of Southeast Asia. The panel will seek to stimulate discussion through regional comparisons and will also include a paper on the Chinese market, the main consumer of Asian marine products.
Overall, the panel is intended to be both thematically and geographically "border-crossing," and should attract an audience from across the spectrum of Asian studies.
Import and Consumption of Dried Fish in China: 1600–1900
Takeshi Hamashita, Tokyo University
For centuries, China imported seafood and related commodities from all over Asia. Many Chinese traders and producers moved to Korea, Japan, Ryukyu, Malaya, and Java in order to obtain all kinds of marine products and dried fish in particular. Fujian, Chaozhou, and Guangdong merchant groups extended their trade networks as far as Siam and Burma. It is also important to make clear that this trade was conducted under intense competition from other merchant groups including Western merchants. By focusing on regional characteristics in China from 1600 to 1900, this paper will try to trace the nature of trade in dried fish and also explore the consumption side in China.
The Turtle Shell Trade of East Indonesia, 1650–1800
Heather Sutherland, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
The history of the trade in turtle-shell goes back hundreds of years in East Indonesia. In 1670 Dutch sources describe an extensive trade in which Makassar (South Sulawesi/Celebes) acted as an entrepot linking remote islands and coasts with markets in the Straits of Melaka (Aceh, Melaka) and Java (Banten, Batavia). The turtle shell came from the Eastern Indonesian seas—Banda, Celebes, Sulu, South China—and the Makassar straits, linking apparently isolated populations from Aru and Tanimbar, Sulu and Cebu, Brunei and Berau, with markets in Europe and China. The hawksbill turtle produced the most highly prized shell, known as "karet," valued by European merchants. Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives provide scattered information on turtle shell trade, but the Chinese played a central role. This paper will use VOC sources to detail the organization of the turtle shell trade, considering supply, markets, and prices. Particular attention will be paid to the role of "sea-nomads," the aquatic groups known as "Turijene" or "Bajo." Since European traders were only peripherally involved, the trade is poorly documented and often seen as marginal. However, it was one of the most valuable commodities produced in the region and central to the integration of Eastern Indonesia into long distance trade. It was a precursor to the later boom in the trepang (sea-cucumber) trade. By providing a long-term perspective, this paper will contribute to our understanding of the role of commercial networks in shaping patterns of exploitation of marine products.
A Necklace of Fins: Marine Goods Trading in Maritime Southeast Asia, 1780–1860
Eric Tagliacozzo, Cornell University
This paper will explore the marine goods trade of Southeast Asia between 1780 and 1860, concentrating on two "arenas" where politics, commerce, and the trade in sea produce combined in powerful ways: the Straits of Melaka, and the waters of Northern Borneo. In both of these regions, the collection of marine goods (shark fins, sea cucumbers, pearls, and mother-of-pearl) thrived and the organized funneling of these objects helped keep disparate political projects alive and running. This was the case in the Straits of Melaka, where the collection of such bounty supplied one rationale for British expansion in Penang (1786) and Singapore (1819). In Northern Borneo, the collection of these commodities was also tied to empire-building, in this case via the Sultanate of Sulu. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Sulu (in the contemporary Southern Philippines) used North Borneo’s waters as a vast collecting-ground for sea-produce to be shipped to China. This paper will tell the story of these two regions which geographically comprised a vast "necklace of fins," stretching from Penang south to Riau, and then north again to Sulu. The essay weaves the political maneuvers of expanding state-making projects, the passage of centuries-old trade flows, and the history of marine goods into a single narrative. Far from being a sideline commerce or a colorful oddity, the trade in sea-products helped shape the history of the region. The trade therefore deserves closer inspection, especially alongside further examinations of the subject as seen from other Asian locales.
Foreign Trade and the Japanese State: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Exports of Dried Marine Products to China
Robert Hellyer, Allegheny College
This paper offers a new perspective on the decline of the Tokugawa shogunate (bakufu) and the concurrent growth of local domain power in nineteenth-century Japan. It argues that expanded domain-level trade in dried marine products was one factor in the breakdown of the Japanese foreign trade system in the nineteenth century.
In the late eighteenth century, the Tokugawa shogunate encouraged production of dried shark fins, abalone, sea slugs/cucumbers, and kelp to be used as export substitutes for silver. The shogunate monopolized this trade, directing dried marine products to the port of Nagasaki where Chinese merchants exchanged them for luxury goods and medicinal products, which the shogunate sold for sizable profits on the Japanese market.
In the early nineteenth century, however, the shogunate faced a threat to its monopoly from the southern domain of Satsuma (now Kagoshima prefecture in southern Kyushu). Satsuma began to sell dried marine products directly to Chinese merchants, effectively by-passing Tokugawa controls at Nagasaki. While the shogunate checked Satsuma’s activities for a time, the domain continued to expand its network at the expense of the shogunate, forming domestic and foreign commercial links via the dried marine goods trade. Satsuma’s success in challenging the shogunate’s monopoly demonstrated the rising strength of domain power, which not only weakened the existing Tokugawa-dominated monopoly, but also became a factor in the redefinition of the Japanese foreign trade system in the mid-nineteenth century.
Organizer: Douglas B. Fuller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chair: Tomoo Marukawa, University of Tokyo
Discussant: Eric Thun, Princeton University
This panel will consciously take a cross-regional comparative perspective to the issue of the impact of advanced countries’ investment on the economic development of their regional neighbors. Using the analytic device of regional production networks driven by advanced nation firms, this panel will compare the developmental impact of German firms in Eastern Europe, Taiwanese firms in China, and Japanese firms in Southeast Asia and China. The range of outcomes depends as much on the host countries’ institutional structure as to the national variation among the Taiwanese, German, and Japanese production networks. These institutions range from local governance and educational institutions to industrial clusters and local labor market characteristics. Some Eastern European locales and Chinese locales have the institutional infrastructure to leverage the more economic developmental from inward investment than other locales within Eastern Europe and China or Southeast Asia generally. However, even within those areas with better institutional infrastructures for dealing with foreign production networks, there still remains the problem of the foreign production networks displacing local producers entirely. This displacement is a concern because without local firms there is a distinct possibility that many of the higher value-added functions that are often co-located with the headquarters will remain in the advanced world relegating the developing countries to serving as the lower value-added suppliers within the regional production networks of the advanced countries.
The Strategy of Japanese Multinationals in East and Southeast Asia
Tomoo Marukawa, University of Tokyo
Japanese manufacturing firms rushed to ASEAN countries, especially to Thailand and Malaysia, in order to set up their production bases for exports to U.S., Europe, and Japan in the late 1980s. But the relative advantage of China as an export base became more and more evident in the late 1990s. First, ASEAN countries have shown economic instability and even political crisis in some countries since the Asian financial crisis, while China maintained stability in its currency, economic growth, and politics. Secondly, China’s advantage over ASEAN countries in cheap and abundant labor seems to have become bigger in recent years. Thirdly, the ancillary industries for Japanese multinationals in China, which had been weaker than ASEAN countries in the 1980s, have grown rapidly in the 1990s. Japanese multinationals are now rethinking their strategy towards Asia. Some Japanese firms have shifted their main export base from ASEAN to Southern China. My presentation will focus on Japanese electronics multinationals. Major companies’ strategies towards China and ASEAN will be examined to determine their impact on the host countries’ economic development. I will show that the recent rise of Chinese electronic exports and the stagnation of ASEAN electronic exports are related to such strategic shifts of Japanese multinationals.
Comrades or Compradores: The Impact of Taiwanese Production Networks on China’s Development
Douglas B. Fuller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This paper examines the impact the Taiwanese electronics industry’s investment has had on mainland China’s development. This investment has essentially re-created Taiwanese domestic production networks in Guangdong Province and the greater Shanghai region. The rebuilding of the Taiwanese domestic networks in China has offered both constraints and opportunities for development of the local areas that have received the Taiwanese investment. The main constraint has primarily been the relatively closed nature of the networks in terms of accepting domestic Chinese firms as integrated suppliers within the Taiwanese production networks. This constraint thus limits the amount of technological learning local firms can receive from the Taiwanese networks. Another constraint is the potential of the closed Taiwanese production networks to displace local end-product producers as well as component suppliers. Given the fact that much of the R&D remains in Taiwan, the displacement of local firms may represent a loss of local R&D activities. However, the Taiwanese networks also offer opportunities for local development. The increasing trend towards giving local personnel training and managerial responsibilities offers opportunities to improve the human capital in those areas receiving the Taiwanese investment. The displacement of local end-product producers may also be not so dramatic as more and more relatively high value-added research and design functions are following the factories in their move to mainland China. There has also been some regional variation with the superior institutional foundations of greater Shanghai enabling that region to capture more of the Taiwanese production networks’ value-added activities.
German Firms in Central and Eastern Europe: The Emergence of Regional Production Networks
Volker Wittke, University of Goettingen
This paper will focus on cross-national production networks that integrate manufacturing capacities in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) into value networks driven by German firms. These networks—that emerged in the mid-1990s as the end of state socialism—are providing new options for Western European, particularly German, firms. Production networks extending to CEE are resulting from a dual process of relocation and reorganization: since the turn of the 1990s, German companies have been increasingly breaking up their production systems and moving the component parts into new locations; and companies are now breaking off functions once carried out within vertically-integrated organizations and acquiring these goods and services from outside suppliers. Relocation strategies are focusing on pre-existing industrial agglomerations in CEE, mainly in countries with close spatial proximity to Germany, such as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. In these environments German firms benefit from the industrial legacy of the transition societies, such as the availability of a skilled and experienced workforce (blue collar as well as white collar), of industrial space, and of a local supply base. Firms are using manufacturing facilities in CEE by tapping production networks rather than by relying on stand-alone branch plants. Although there is evidence for a variety of network forms depending on different governance patterns, however, up to now production facilities driven by Western firms are dominating even the local or regional supply infrastructure in CEE. With regard to sectors, my paper will concentrate on automobiles and electronics.
Organizer: Jennifer Hubbert, Lewis & Clark College
Chair: Linda Isako Angst, Lewis & Clark College
Discussant: Helen Funghar Siu, Yale University
Keywords: theme parks, tourism, consumption, national identity, globalization.
Recent discussions of alternative modernities in Asia have occasioned impassioned debates. While most critics acknowledge the integral nature of capitalist, consumer practices to contemporary modernity, they differ on the meaning of these practices to the various actors involved. To contextualize this debate, this panel considers the role of theme parks in contemporary Asia. Moving beyond the notion that Asian theme parks are inadequate examples of universal Westernization, this panel suggests that while East meets West within the built environment, the parks are less examples of postmodern mimicry than creative forms of structuring national identity and historical consciousness, highlighting the contingent nature of the modernity experience.
Hubbert and Angst turn their attention to how history is constructed. Hubbert considers the post-Mao state’s attempts to augment political legitimacy through theme parks devoted to the cultural legacies of Mao and Confucius while Angst draws links between past and present practices of domestication and exoticization of Okinawa in the parks there. Ren and Raz converge in their focus on how theme parks play an integral role in negotiating East/West relationships. Ren suggests that China’s Summer Palace mediates popular understanding of the self-other relationship while Raz shows how Tokyo Disneyland accents the ability of the local to resignify experiences of global hegemony. Together, the authors on this panel argue for a more complex understanding of the role of consumption in modernity, suggesting that theme parks provide a unique perspective on how local players participate in and critique the construction of local histories and global social hierarchies.
Theme Park Okinawa: Taming, Exoticizing, and Consuming Ethnic Selves
Linda Isako Angst, Lewis & Clark College
Thirty years after reversion to Japan, following twenty-seven years of U.S. military occupation, Okinawa has self-consciously and purposefully transformed itself into a major tourist site, a new crossroads of a globalized economy. I explore shifting, competing notions of an Okinawan cultural self as expressed in several "theme parks" developed in the post-reversion era. They include the 1975 Ocean Exposition, promoting Okinawa as Japan’s own tropical paradise; Ryukyu Mura, depicting "traditional" island village life; and Shuri-jo Castle Park (1992), the recently completed primary emblem of Okinawa’s historical connection to the Asian continent (not Japan). Indeed, Okinawa itself has become a theme park developed at the intersection of global cultural flows. Moreover, the process of Okinawa’s make-over speaks to issues of both Japanese and Okinawan self-exoticization. As Japan continues to re-colonize and consume Okinawa as its own exotic terrain, the inclusion of Okinawa as internal (or uchi) other simultaneously (and ironically) serves to reinvent Japan as diverse and heterogeneous. Taming and exoticization are also practiced by Okinawans, as is evidenced in the increasingly conscious self-referencing purposes of tourist sites. Appropriating particular versions of (idealized) pasts, supportive of an idea of an inherently cosmopolitan culture, is critical to legitimating conceptions of a self different from, yet inclusive of, Yamato. Ironically, consuming (and selling) "Okinawa" requires collapsing important class and regional distinctions in order to create a simple, accessible product, working against the touted model of Okinawan cultural diversity.
Consuming History: Theme Parks and the Late-Socialist Chinese State
Jennifer Hubbert, Lewis & Clark College
The writing of national history has long been recognized as an important aspect of state building, particularly in highly centralized states such as China. One sign of the power of the Maoist regime was its ability to choreograph the cultural productions of China’s vast and disparate population to create a vision of the nation-state accessible and acceptable to all. As the post-Mao state experiences a decline in its ability to narrate the national through a monopoly on cultural expression, it is forced to seek new ways to produce a unified national image and historical consciousness. Among these new practices, capitalist consumption has emerged as a key site for state-building. While the Party’s legitimacy as a moral authority has arguably reached a post-1949 nadir, its legitimacy as an economic authority has never been higher, predominantly because of its role in encouraging the growth of entrepreneurial capitalism and improving standards of consumption. Ironically, however, much of the political legitimacy the state retains is linked to its ability to couple itself with two cultural legacies—Maoist and Confucian—that largely disdained individualist capitalism. In this sense the success of contemporary legitimization efforts are intimately linked to the government’s ability to direct a proper consumption of the past. This paper investigates the linkages between the contemporary political legitimacy that is tied to these legacies and the state’s construction of new consumer-oriented narratives of nationhood through an examination of the creation and promotion of historically-related theme parks devoted to the Maoist and Confucian legacies.
Steering the "Black Ship": Tokyo Disneyland as a Cultural Junction
Aviad E. Raz, Ben-Gurion University
In 2000, about 16.5 million people visited Tokyo Disneyland (TDL), making it the most popular theme park in the world. Owned and operated by a Japanese company, TDL is marketed as a 100 percent copy of the original Disneyland. However, TDL was also carefully modified to cater to Japanese predilections. It is a unique cultural junction that can be discussed in terms of its own organizational complexity; as part of wider leisure activities in Japan; as a segment of the relation between the imaginaries of "Japan" and "America"; as a hybrid organizational culture where global (American) service codes are performed and experienced in accordance with local (Japanese) feeling rules; and as a means through which to review our theories of globalization. Since it opened in 1983, TDL has been analyzed mainly as an example of the globalization of the American leisure industry. By looking at how TDL is experienced by employees, management, and visitors, I intend to produce not only a cultural reading of the show, but also an ethnographic analysis of its production and reception. Previous studies have seen TDL as a "black ship"—an exported, hegemonic model of American leisure and pop culture—that "conquered" Japan. By concentrating on the Japanese point of view, I show that it is much more an example of domestication. Rather than being an agent of Americanization, TDL is a simulated "America," showcased by and for the Japanese.
The Old Summer Palace and the Landscape of the Other
Hai Ren, Bowling Green State University
"Theme parks" have recently emerged as a popular cultural form in China. Scholarly studies have viewed them as a result of international tourism, particularly under the influence of Disney theme parks. To complicate this argument, this paper will use Yuan Ming Yuan (or the old Summer Palace) as an example to discuss Chinese theme parks as a cultural and historical phenomenon, particularly by situating them in a complex history of the relationship between the self and the other. Drawing on archives, exhibitions, graffiti writings, interviews, and ethnographic observations, I examine two aspects of Yuan Ming Yuan relevant to our understanding of contemporary theme parks. As a cultural form for organizing a built environment, Yuan Ming Yuan may be viewed as a prototype of the modern theme park; it contains architecture (both traditional Chinese and European styles), gardens with pools and fountains, paths, and displays of artifacts from China and other countries. Moreover, the built environment of Yuan Ming Yuan has also been tied to a series of historical happenings: for example, the display of a European town life in the mid-18th century, the burning of the Palace by British and French soldiers in 1860, the display of "primitive cultures" of other countries in the 1990s, and the celebration of Hong Kong’s "return to the motherland" in 1997. Yuan Ming Yuan as a built environment has played an important role in mediating a popular understanding of the self-other relationship.
Organizer: Michael Baskett, University of Oregon
Chair and Discussant: Joshua A. Fogel, Institute for Advanced Studies
Conventional scholarship on Japanese and Chinese propaganda during and after the Pacific War has mainly focused on political efforts to unilaterally manipulate and control society with oppressive measures. In this context, sites of cultural production become mere "tools" of the state, grinding out ideology for mass consumption. This panel challenges such reductive definitions of propaganda that artificially separate "state/propaganda" and "mass/entertainment" into neat binaries. We aim to expand the framework concerning how societies may be mobilized from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Each panel member will analyze and focus on a specific, but less-conventional, form of popular mobilization, including vernacular humor, film, and physical culture.
Each of the papers examines ways in which propaganda and popular entertainment interacted and intersected with the larger issues of cultural nationalism, colonialism, imperialism, and modernity. Addressing these interactions is necessary to understand not only the role of "ordinary" people in imperial culture, but also that regimes did not and could not rule by oppression alone. Propaganda and entertainment are intertwined—integral parts of the mobilization process that significantly inform notions of nationhood and identity, both in state-affiliated and non-state sponsored propaganda.
Shooting Their Mouths Off: War Comedy Films and the Japanese Imperialist Imagination of Asia
Michael Baskett, University of Oregon
Examining the relation of film comedy to war and empire is a topic ignored by film scholars and historians of Japan because war itself is not conventionally associated with humor. To the extent that it is recognized it all, comedy is seen as a form of release both for soldiers and home front audiences that has been utilized by wartime regimes throughout history. In Japan, comedy films played a serious role both in the prewar mobilization efforts for total war as well as the postwar re-imagining of Japan’s imperial project in Asia. Analyzing narrative strategies in several Japanese comedies produced before and after 1945 reveals what was "funny" about an era when Imperial Japan forcibly occupied vast tracts of foreign territory and subjugated millions of people.
Comedy, like film, is often said to have a "universal" appeal that transcends culture. The locus of the humor in these films however, is found precisely in their cultural specificity articulating a sort of common-sense racism against Asia and Asians and sustaining a Japanese imperial identity. Functioning as more than simple release, escapism, or even nostalgia, these comedies attempted to smooth over very real frictions and contradictions in Japan’s multi-ethnic Asian Imperium and demand re-evaluation as being both political and popular. Shifting the focus of discussion of these films from "war" to "empire" uncovers continuities in representations of the Japanese imperialist imagination of Asia that do not end in 1945, but continue into the present.
"A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Front": Japanese Comedic Performers and the Fifteen-Year War
Barak Kushner, Princeton University
During Japan’s 15-year war, 1931–1945, the Japanese government continually exhorted its population to join together—100 million hearts beating as one—as the popular slogan of the day went. The authorities were not alone in their push to get the masses to support the war. The Yoshimoto Entertainment company’s decision to spend millions and send entertainment brigades to China, and other examples, clearly suggest that perceptions of the necessity of war during the 1930s were far from relegated by the military. This pro-war propaganda from a non-official source demonstrates how ideas surrounding the importance of the war stemmed not only from top-down government sponsored propaganda but from popular, street level attitudes toward the war. A consideration of Japanese wartime performance comedy is significant because while it was partially controlled by the government, a majority of the initiative and influence arose independently from the private sector.
Within Japan’s complex mobilization system Japanese wartime comedy alone did not compel Japan’s population to support the war, but it is indicative of a larger process. War created a modern form of Japanese comedy that supported the war, and constructed an image of a society that saw itself as advanced and strong. It reflected a culture that recognized itself as modern and prosperous, and Japanese imperial subjects supported and consumed this image. My analysis maintains that the Japanese were not passive subjects who blindly followed every word that came out of the mouths of their leaders.
"All China Has Muscles Now, and We Know How to Use Them": Nationalist and Communist Sporting Cultures During Wartime, 1937–45
Andrew Morris, California Polytechnic State University
The project of building a modern Chinese physical culture (tiyu), begun in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, took an important turn with the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Sport and physical culture, justified for decades by its role in training Chinese men and women to fight imperialism, became an important mode of war propaganda. Tiyu was unique among forms of wartime propaganda; more than just a medium of inspiration, the strength and values of teamwork that this culture was said to provide could be imagined as actual solutions to the problem of Japanese invasion.
During wartime, Nationalist and Communist regimes employed physical culture as a means for citizens to corporeally perform their patriotism, to rehearse their physical sacrifice to the nation, and to wreak their own individual vengeance on the hated Japanese enemy. The role of tiyu in creating a modern nation was such a common sense idea that the sporting visions and philosophies embraced by these two regimes were quite similar.
Tiyu was meant to build faith in the individual Chinese body, in the millions of other individual Chinese bodies surrounding it, and in the state under which one’s body had been created and defined. Despite this individuating function, more personal aspects of fun and play in sport, seldom understood as justifications in themselves under China’s modernist physical culture regime, were seen as even less seemly as physical culture was defined in one-dimensional and literal national terms during the crisis of total war.
Propaganda as Entertainment: The Korean War through the Chinese Lens
Shaoyi Sun, University of Southern California
This paper examines China’s cinematic representation of the Korean War from the late 1950s through the 1990s. In delineating the three phases of Chinese films on the Korean War, the author argues that propaganda is not necessarily antagonistic to entertainment. It is legitimate to argue that, along with traditional media such as newspapers, pamphlets, radio broadcasting, and the graphic arts, film was of primary importance in disseminating propaganda messages.
No one can deny that Chinese Korean War films, particularly those produced during the late 1950s and early 1960s, also entertained an audience that was denied access to Western cultural products. The entertainment value of these Korean War films is further enhanced by the fact that many of them still appeal to the contemporary audience. The two theme songs from the two best Korean War films of all time, Heroic Sons and Daughters and The Shang Gan Mountain, were instant hits at the time when the films were released. Their popularity remains, despite the fact that revolutionary idealism has been largely dwarfed by the deluge of Western pop songs and Hollywood blockbusters in today’s China. While critics dismiss or have already dismissed them as pure propaganda, several questions remain unanswered. Why do the Korean War films have a lingering effect on those who have never experienced war? Why does the Chinese audience, including young people, burst into applause or shed tears when some of the films are re-broadcast on Chinese television? Where should we draw the line between propaganda and entertainment?
Organizer: Susan L. Schwartz, Muhlenberg University
Chair and Discussant: Guy L. Beck, Tulane University
Keywords: Japanese, Korean, Indian, performing arts.
Performing Arts in Asia incorporate a wide spectrum of social, cultural, and spiritual functions. Traditional forms have complex histories and origins, and referents often esoteric in nature. The tools used for analysis of performance art must be as multi-dimensional as possible to do justice to the complexity of the forms themselves. Transition over time naturally affects most forms of performance. The challenge of modernity, the lenses of scholarship, and globalization radically transform performance style and content. But the primary goal of performance remains the achievement of connection and communication, broadly defined. This panel will analyze a variety of issues relating to performance in Asia utilizing analytical tools across several disciplines.
A number of borders will be crossed in this session. The first implication of this category title is geographical; these presentations will examine performances in Japan, India, Korea, and Siberia. Disciplinary borders will also be challenged as this panel will include in its purview performance studies, aesthetic theory, narratology, sociology, religious studies, and musicology. The participants come from a variety of backgrounds, having trained variously in Religion Studies, Ethnomusicology, East Asian Languages and Literatures, and Comparative Literature.
The styles of presentation for this panel will vary widely as well, including ethnographic documentation, taped and live musical and demonstrations, as well as dance on video, and scholarly analysis. In short, this panel will fulfill the expectations of a border-crossing presentation on many levels. The session promises to be animated, engaging, and professional, while challenging boundaries geographical, academic, and presentational.
Musical Narratologies of Lust: Two Japanese Minyô and the Shamisen
Adam J. Lebowitz, Nihon University
It is common to see research on Japanese minyô folk music as an inquiry into the social forces that define the definition of the genre (e.g. D. H. Hughes) proceeding from a deconstruction of the very concept of "folk" (J. Robertson). Although useful for understanding social context, this methodology tends to limit insight into performative aspects. This paper takes a more text-based approach as it examines two well-known songs associated with the sex trade (mizu-shôbai), focusing on the lyrics as narrative and their conjunction with the melodic composition. Mamuro-gawa Ondo (The Chorus of the River Mamuro) is a melodic discourse with metaphoric references to plum blossoms, nightingales, and romantic dreams of the marriage ceremony. The jaunty Hakata Dontaku (Festival Day in Hakata) in contrast takes a more direct hard-sell approach, even mentioning prices for services rendered.
The versions of the songs under analysis will come from the songbook of the Fujimoto School of Shamisen based in Tokyo, Japan, and interviews with the master teachers of the school will provide secondary material in addition to Japanese musicological scholarship. Furthermore, there will be references to the post-structuralist literary theory of narratology to discover meanings inherent in the lyrical viewpoint of the songs. There will be taped demonstrations of the music, to be augmented by the shamisen during the presentation to demonstrate key musical figures.
Contextualizing the Spiritual Folklore in Modernity
Chan E. Park-Miller, Ohio State University
In the wake of massive industrialization, machination, and capitalization, many indigenous rituals and performances and their traditional habitats have been destroyed or deconstructed. Intellectual and political sectors along with the media have for the past several decades been focusing on excavating, preserving, and documenting pre-industrial manifestations of humanity still surviving in performance. In Korea, politically tied with postcolonial resurgence of national and ethnic identities and in line with the governments’ cultural preservation policies for the urgency of their survival, these heritage performances have been given extraterritorial status and attention on the cultural atlas. Academic interest largely lingers on their cultural or cross-cultural "discovery," "introduction," or "description" as "archetypes" or "fixtures" rather than as shifting in the present with all of its sociopolitical dimensions. Paramount is the need to examine their "social" identities and their encounters with the psychological, sociopolitical, and intellectual needs of the modern society.
Among the most frequently visited are performances of indigenous shaman ritual traditions. The shamanic traffic with the unknown and its intertwining ritual and entertainment, religion and art, the divine and the playful have attracted numerous researchers, tourists, and media to the remotest ritual sites. This paper focuses on how the dense layers of folkloric lenses zooming into the sacred arenas shift the balance between religiosity and artistry, between praying and playing. For the subject matter in the present inquiry, I will refer to the shaman ritual performances of Siberian Yakutsk and Korean Southern and Eastern Coastal shaman rituals I have recently observed.
Getting Lost in the Part: Religion as Performing Arts in India
Susan L. Schwartz, Muhlenberg College
"Religion" here refers to ritual action that often implies a sacrifice of normal identity during the course of performance: one may "get lost in the part." "Religion" also refers to a context and structure of theory and belief where ritual action is efficacious and sensible. Ritual is open to adaptation and re-interpretation. Those who practice do so for reward, experience, and sometimes by "calling," "vocation," or "compulsion."
"Performing arts" refers to that domain in which artists reveal their expertise in live performance, and often become "lost in the part." Performance takes many forms, but always works within a structure of time, space, and design, completely fixed or open to improvisation. Those who practice do so for reward, experience, and often because of an inner "calling," "vocation," or "compulsion."
"India" refers to that cultural setting in which, traditionally, religion and classical performing arts are not separate categories. Music and dance are designed and practiced to achieve the same goals as puja and pilgrimage. All address a particular understanding of the nature of the self and the "other." The result is both a sacrifice and a transformation of the self. There are rewards, there is experience, there are "calling," "vocation," and "compulsion."
This presentation will use the Sanskrit term Rasa to explore the interaction of theatrical performance with religious or spiritual experience in India. The relationship of the physical body to the transformation of the self, and the nature of the ideal experience of performance, are essential to this dynamic.
Organizer: Ethan Segal, Stanford University
Chair: Mark Ravina, Emory University
Discussant: Richard Von Glahn, University of California, Los Angeles
Keywords: money, Islam, Japan, state, religion.
The discs of metal and slips of paper that we use for money have little intrinsic value. Yet these forms of money gain legitimacy as instruments of exchange, leading people to prize them far beyond the worth of the metal or paper from which they are made. In most modern societies, state power is the key determinant in establishing a currency’s legitimacy. However, in premodern societies, currencies derive their value from the purity of precious metal content, endorsement by religious authorities, and the demands of the marketplace. This panel combines approaches from history, numismatics, art history, and religious studies to explore the ways money won acceptance in several premodern Asian settings. For each setting, a member of the panel will analyze factors that distinguished "good money" from "bad."
Sears focuses on the Islamic Near East in the late seventh century, exploring the relationship between religious protesters and the push for regional autonomy. When Ibn al-Ash’ath led an uprising shortly after the introduction of a new currency deemed offensive, he also began minting an alternative type of coin, declared "good money" on religious grounds. Segal looks at economic relations between medieval Japan and China, finding that Chinese cash gained acceptance in Japan for taxes and trade despite clear central government opposition. Segal also explores the significance of late medieval coin laws that distinguished "good money" from bad. Hans Thomsen looks at seventeenth-century Japan and the introduction of paper currencies from an art history perspective. Comparing those currencies with contemporary religious amulets, he concludes that paper money producers borrowed design elements from religious institutions in order for their currencies to gain widespread acceptance as "good money."
Dirty Dirhams and Righteous Rebels: Money, Religion, and the State in Early Islam
Stuart D. Sears, American University, Cairo
Historians remember the monetary reforms of the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik at the end of the seventh century as a "coming of age" for the early Muslim world. The reforms introduced a distinctly Muslim identity to the caliphate’s coinage, using excerpts from the Qur’an and distinctly Muslim professions of belief instead of pictorial images in the obverse and reverse fields. The reforms were also an important step in state-building. They asserted for the first time central government control of the caliphate’s monetary system at the expense of regional governments. Despite widespread acceptance of these views in medieval and modern scholarship, this paper argues on the basis of literary and numismatic evidence that the "coming of age" was not what many Muslims wanted it to be.
The first part of the paper raises questions about the formulation of Muslim identities. Could what is remembered as definitively "Islamic" coinage have appeared un-"Islamic" to earlier groups of Muslims? Some sources claim that religious authorities in Umayyad Iran harbored objections since the Reformed coins subjected Qur’anic verse to the ritually impure touch of non-Muslims and menstruating women.
The second part of my paper ties identity to the development of the early Muslim state. Did the controversy surrounding the new coinage reflect deeper divisions about the role of government? Ibn al-Ash’ath’s revolt in Iran at the beginning of the eighth century suggests that the religious objections may have been linked to broader concerns about the centralization of Umayyad government. This revolt, in fact, received wide support from the religious critics of Umayyad monetary reforms. It brought, moreover, a resumption in the use of traditional coin types.
A Fistful of Zeni: The Role of the Market in Medieval East Asian Currencies
Ethan Segal, Stanford University
Recent Japanese research on medieval currency has begun from the premise that coins in Europe and the Mediterranean derived their value exclusively from the marketplace, while East Asian coins (J: zeni) derived their value solely from the state. In particular, a group of Japanese historians of China have employed this approach to argue that the medieval Japanese economy was dependent upon policies adopted in China. These scholars have focused on the relationship between Chinese laws regarding acceptable coins and similar Japanese laws, known as erizeni, that specified which types of coins could be used in tax payments, trade, etc. This paper, however, reevaluates the notion of an absolute East/West dichotomy and challenges the notion that medieval Japanese economic policies were based on Chinese actions.
The first part of the paper explores the scholarly notion that a hard division existed between Eastern and Western currencies. While the distinction is useful, counterexamples suggest that the relationship between state and market in establishing currency values was more complex. The second part of the paper focuses on one "Eastern" currency system, that of medieval Japan. Did the Japanese state play a key role in the demand for Chinese cash, and if so, did the state influence the value of the coins? If not, did Chinese economic policy affect Japanese use of coins, as some historians have suggested? Close examination of twelfth-century Japanese Court economic policy, monetization of Kamakura period tax payments, and Warring States erizeni laws suggests that the marketplace played a larger role in determining the value of coins in medieval Japan than any actions taken by the Japanese state or by China.
Selling Images: Religious Talismans and Paper Currencies of Seventeenth-Century Japan
Hans Bjarne Thomsen, Princeton University
Early paper currencies of Edo Japan were not issued by the Bakufu but instead by a large number of individual domains, villages, and wealthy merchants. Accordingly, the total number of paper currencies issued was extremely large and the slips came to constitute a vital part of the Japanese economy from the middle of the seventeenth century to the abolition of the bakuhan system in 1871. Paper currencies have been the focus of extensive studies by Japanese economic historians and numismatists on the local and national levels. However, this paper will not center on the strictly economic aspects of the currencies, but rather on their material aspects, namely, their designs and method of production, topics that have been, until now, largely neglected in prior studies.
Upon close examination, it becomes clear that the first paper currencies bear striking similarities in design and production to talismans manufactured by religious groups of the period, Buddhist and otherwise, that had long been distributed by itinerant monks and salesmen traveling in countrywide circuits. I believe that such similarities were not accidental but deliberate. That is, the issuers of the early currencies clearly borrowed designs from such talismans, decorating the currencies with images of deities and passages from religious texts. Moreover, they also emulated the size and format and even production technique in a deliberate effort to capitalize on traditions created by the religious institutions of the time and to lend legitimacy to newly introduced paper currencies that were in sore need of legitimacy of their own. These paper currencies highlight the remarkable interconnectedness of religious and material culture in early modern Japan.
Organizer and Chair: Jeffrey C. Kinkley, St. John’s University
Discussant: James V. Feinerman, Georgetown University
Study of structural, thematic, and historical interrelations between law and literature began in law schools thirty years ago; humanists in Asian Studies are now breaching the border from their side. Centuries ago, East Asians criticized legal texts’ literariness and argued legal questions in high and popular literature. Europeans, in turn, read Asian drama and fiction for legal information. Such precedents lend depth and focus to this panel of literary, historical, and legal scholars of China, Japan, and the West. We ask how and why authors recast "true" or already fictionalized crime texts into secondary crime-and-law literature, and how and why concepts of justice in the original texts were thereby changed.
Carlitz and Kinkley analyze the fictionalization of 1738 and 1995 Chinese true crimes. St. André and Silver examine European translations of Chinese, and Japanese translations of Western crime-and-law literature respectively. Topics include: Is justice portrayed as a matter of law, human discretion, or providence? Is justice achievable? Does it fail due to human factors? How do changes of genre, culture, era, or authorial purpose affect textual presentations of law? Are translators and fictionalizers captives of their venue? Is literature particularly suited to conveying legal ideas? What are the structures and roles of law cases in East Asia? Do they influence literary "cases"? Do literary cases illuminate popular perceptions of the legal system?
Can Law Deliver Justice? Wu Woyao’s Nine Murders and Its Antecedents
Katherine Carlitz, University of Pittsburgh
The efficacy of China’s new legal systems, currently under construction, will depend in part on inherited attitudes toward law. To investigate these attitudes, I will examine three works that fictionalize a 1738 serial murder that took place in Guangdong: the 1809 Jing fu xin shu (A New Warning to the Wealthy); a 1904 Cantonese nanyin ballad, "Liang Tianlai"; and Wu Woyao’s celebrated 1906 Jiu ming qi yuan (A Strange Tale of Nine Murders). These three works range from reliance on cosmic retribution in New Warning, to Wu Woyao’s modernist agenda, with its faith in secular institutions and rejection of "superstition." (The nanyin ballad reminds us that Wu Woyao’s agenda was not universally shared.) I will argue that the forms of the works themselves are expressive of their attitudes (for example, the cumulative, linear progression of New Warning works to create a sense of cosmic inevitability). One important finding is that despite their detailed descriptions of legal procedure, none of the three works shows us a legal system capable of delivering justice. Instead, all three works seem to require what I will call a "justice hero": a magistrate, commissioner, or emperor willing to override procedure in order to thwart corruption, punish the guilty, and avenge the righteous. Can we use this to make predictions about the "rule of law" in twenty-first-century China? And if we find "legal pessimism" in these works, how can we reconcile it with China’s centuries-old penchant for litigation? How reliably does fiction express social attitudes toward law?
"But Do They Have a Notion of Justice?" Early European Translations of Chinese Crime Literature
James St. André, National University of Singapore
As trade with China gradually increased during the eighteenth century, it was inevitable that crime cases involving Europeans and Chinese would occur. These cases brought questions of law and justice to the attention of many who worked for the East India Company, and a murder case at the turn of the century was directly responsible for Sir George Staunton’s decision to translate the Qing penal code (published in 1810). But besides newspaper reports and public debate on these cases, some of which became causes célèbres in their day, another important facet in the debate was the translation from Chinese of a small number of plays and short stories involving crime cases which showed how such cases might or might not be resolved by the Chinese legal system. As early as 1759, Arthur Murphy’s English adaptation of The Orphan of China brought these questions to the attention of a wider audience, as did later translations by Davis (The Three Dedicated Chambers [1815]; The Sorrows of Han [1829]), Julien (L’histoire du cercle de craie [1832]) and Theodore Pavie ("Le lion de pierre"[1839]) among others.
This paper, then, examines the conception of law and justice among the Chinese presented to the European public through these translations, and then attempts to see how these findings fit into ongoing contemporary debates in Europe about the nature of Chinese society, the state of Chinese civilization, and the possibility of shared notions of justice and common humanity.
Putting the Court on Trial: The Translated Crime Novel in Mid-Meiji Japan
Mark Silver, Colgate University
This paper focuses on a confluence of two of the many cultural changes ushered into Japan in the aftermath of the 1868 Meiji Restoration—new ideas about how the Japanese legal system should work and the new influx of translated crime literature. In particular, I show that Kuroiwa Ruiko’s (1862–1920) adaptations for Japanese readers of Western crime novels—adaptations that throw into relief the fallibility of investigators and judges—marked both a new departure in the Japanese literary representation of justice and a striking recontextualization of foreign texts as part of a program of agitation for domestic legal reforms. The courtroom literature of the earlier Tokugawa period (most notably Ihara Saikaku’s Honcho oin hiji, or Cases Heard beneath the Cherry Tree, 1689) emphasized the sagacity of the judge, thereby tending to legitimate the legal system’s authoritarian power. In contrast, Ruiko’s typical mid-Meiji translations of crime novels show close calls in which justice nearly miscarries because of misleading evidence. Moreover, Ruiko often prefaces his translations with, or interpolates into their midst, statements underlining the precariousness of justice in these cases, even when this does not seem to have been the burden of the original text. His translation of Emile Gaboriau’s L’Affaire LeRouge as Hito ka oni ka ("Man or Devil?," 1888) is a case in point, ending as it does with several pages describing the founding of a society to abolish the death penalty, though the original contains only the briefest mention of this.
"Anticorruption" Is Not Justice: On Heaven’s Wrath, a Roman à Clef
Jeffrey C. Kinkley, St. John’s University
Many if not most Chinese crime stories written since 1980 are based on real cases, though not on China’s laconic judicial reports. Typical sources include classified police files open to friendly authors, leaks on the grapevine, gossip, and fabrication. Enter Chen Fang’s mystery thriller Tian nu (Heaven’s Wrath, 1996), about a miasma of corruption resembling that which felled Beijing party secretary Chen Xitong after the 1995 suicide of his vice-mayor Wang Baosen. In the absence of genuine documentation (Chen Xitong was only tried in 1998, and then secretly), Heaven’s Wrath acquired the aura of a true case history. It was after all banned (ineffectively) for "leaking secrets." Interpreting it required only the grapevine, fed by accounts leaked to Hong Kong journalists. Heaven’s Wrath’s inferences are still unique. Besides fingering Chen Xitong’s son for murder, the novel imputes transnational corruption to an official capital mafia skilled in intelligence techniques and dangerous as a Praetorian Guard.
China’s overlapping official and unofficial discourses of corruption tend to sublimate legal matters into questions of morality and political loyalty; life-style and everyday graft charges predominated in the long delayed official indictment of Chen Xitong himself. The novel offers no hope of justice from contemporary mortals (only from Heaven, as in the title). Explaining and even rationalizing "corruption" as system-bred, Heaven’s Wrath engages a more fully legal discourse by pursuing a still "higher," constitutional crime: subversion.
Organizer: Christopher Atwood, Indiana University
Chair and Discussant: John W. Dardess, University of Kansas
Keywords: Mongols, Persia, Yuan, religious policy, kinship, illuminated manuscripts, coronation ritual.
Despite much recent progress, a persistent binary opposition of nomad vs. sedentary still defines the study of the Mongol world empire. While this ecological opposition has yielded important results, by serving as a mere reflex of the dualism of nature vs. culture, it has helped marginalize Mongol culture as part of the interaction, and has made antagonism the main theme of research.
Without glossing over the fact of conquest and hierarchy, the panelists focus on cultural discourses the Mongols shared with other peoples of the empire. By demonstrating how the actors in these interactions were not "cultures" but specific persons with specific interests they avoid reifying nomadic or sedentary "traditions." Bringing in Mongolian interactions with both Iran and China breaks down the two-player schema, and the involvement of art history and social history stymies any quick appeal to ecology. While the Mongols easily crossed the artificial boundary of the AAS and Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA), contemporary scholarship has found these borders less permeable. This panel hopes to remedy that gap.
Thus, Christopher Atwood explores the Mongols’ trademark religious policy as the outcome of particular khans assessed the views of particular Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist advisers. Kinship practices are a vital form of culture, and Bettine Birge shows how Mongols and Han shared in a common discourse on kinship in the Yuan. Aboulala Soudavar links the development of the Persian illustrated manuscript tradition to a common ground found between the Chinggisid saga and the saga of the Persian kings. Finally Ron Sela shows how "unchanging Chinggisid rituals" were neither unchanging nor unwelcome to Muslim audiences.
"A Singular Conformity?" The Origin and Nature of the Mongol Imperial Religious Policy
Christopher Atwood, Indiana University
Since the time of Gibbon, the religious tolerance of the Mongol conquerors has garnered fame. Yet Gibbon, by detecting a "singular conformity" between the religious policy of "Zingis" and that of Locke, also began the analytical short-circuiting in which the Mongol religious policy is treated only as a curious precursor of Enlightenment ideas. Not surprisingly, then, the policy’s origins and significance within contemporary religious ideas have remained little explored. Analysis of the Mongol religious policy indicates that neither "tolerance" nor the indifferent skepticism seen by others, played any part. Instead it was based on a series of definite assertions about Heaven’s (or God’s) role in human affairs, assertions which added up to a strikingly coherent and original political theology. Religions that contradicted this political theology were either ignored or ruthlessly suppressed.
The religious policy of the Mongol empire developed from a series of ad hoc decisions made by Chinggis Khan during his conquest of Uighuristan, North China, and Turkistan. His son Ögedei, at his coronation in 1229, drew together these separate policies drawn together and began the treatment of them as a coherent whole.
Despite its originality, the resulting religious policy bears distinct analogy to Chinese ideas on the role and significance of the "Three Religions" as found, for example, in Yelü Chucai’s Xi yu lu. The religious policy developed by Chinggis Khan and enunciated by Ögedei is thus best seen as a creative reworking of the classic "Three Religions" policy formulated by their Chinese advisers.
Misrepresenting Tradition: Mongol Influences on Chinese Social Legislation
Bettine Birge, University of Southern California
Mongol nomadic customs have historically been seen as fundamentally different from those of the sedentary Chinese, and it is commonly accepted that Mongol rule had little or no effect on Chinese law or social practices. With regard to law, this view is reinforced by pronouncements by the Ming founder, Zhu Yuanzhang, that his ambitious attempts at legal and social transformation represented a return to traditional Chinese Confucian practices after an unfortunate and chaotic interlude of foreign rule. This paper argues that, on the contrary, early Ming legislation was greatly influenced by Mongol values and Yuan law. In many respects it broke from long-established Chinese tradition and followed precedents set by the Mongols.
New regulations under the Yuan, based on steppe practices and Mongol military organization, deprived daughters of some types of inheritance that they had previously enjoyed. Other Yuan laws, which derived from the nomadic practice of the levirate and from steppe notions of servility, deprived widows of familial authority and personal autonomy in ways unprecedented in Chinese history. These laws influenced early Ming legislation or were copied verbatim into the Ming code, all under the name of returning to traditional Chinese Confucian values.
The Han-lin Academy and the Creation of the Persian Royal Library-Atelier
Aboulala Soudavar, Independent Scholar
Despite the devastation that the Mongols inflicted upon the lands they conquered, they unleashed a cultural renaissance that affected these lands for centuries to come. Religious tolerance and the promotion of free trade certainly much contributed to this cultural renaissance, but more importantly it was the interaction between the two extreme poles of the empire, namely China and Iran, that generated new art forms and standards.
While merchants from the Persian lands helped reorienting the production of the Chinese kilns to the Persian markets, the courtly customs and activities at Peking much influenced those of the Il-Khânids of Iran. A case in point is how a history writing project of the Hanlin Academy sparked a similar activity in Tabriz, which ultimately led to the institution of illustrated manuscript production as one of the most important of Iranian princely activities.
This paper analyses the development of illustrated manuscript production in Iran, by following its evolution from the writing of a history of the Mongols, to the "publication" of a universal history, to the creation of the first grandly illustrated copy of the Iranian national epic, the Shâhnâmeh, and finally, to the establishment of the royal library-atelier as an Iranian kingly institution.
Elevation Ritual in the Mongol Empire: The Persian Perspective
Ron Sela, Indiana University
As late as the nineteenth century, the standard coronation ritual of an Islamic monarch (Khan or Amir) in Central Asia was an old Inner Asian ritual, whereby the most important dignitaries of the realm raised the new ruler on a white felt rug. Muslim authors attributed the elevation ritual to the legacy of Chinggis Khan, and, although they occasionally showed some reluctance to acknowledge a ceremony seemingly opposed to Islamic Law (shari‘a), they more often described the ritual in very enthusiastic terms. This was especially true since the absence of a prescribed formula for a proper coronation procedure in the Islamic world made it more difficult for Muslim authors to counter the lawfulness of the elevation ritual. The door was left open for a quick acceptance of the new ceremony.
The performance of the elevation ritual, as well as its representation in the literary sources, was also seen as one of the most important tools to showcase legitimacy of rule in an environment that (ordinarily) observed a principle of sovereignty, whereby the descendants of Chinggis Khan reserved the right to rule.
Although the ceremony may have become commonplace in the Islamic parts of the Mongol Empire already in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, descriptions of the actual performance of the ritual are ambiguous. We will present the disparity between the Persian sources of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which hardly mentioned the elevation ritual (though otherwise provided very vivid descriptions of coronations of new rulers in the Mongol Empire), in contrast with direct and circumstantial evidence that shows that the elevation ritual was indeed carried out, and try to understand if and why the performance of the ritual was downplayed by the official Persian sources.
Organizer: Barry Sautman, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Chair and Discussant: Elizabeth F. Drexler, Michigan State University
Keywords: culture, genocide, minorities, indigenous peoples, peripheries.
As human rights concerns have become central to the discourse of indigenous and ethnic minority peoples in Asian state peripheral regions, intellectuals native to these peoples and academics internationally have borrowed from international law the concept, of "cultural genocide." These papers engage the concept by considering whether four key states in Asia employ policies intended to extirpate the language, religion, folkways or other elements of a non-dominant people’s culture. One paper examines how since 1963 state promotion of settlement and Indonesian lifestyles has affected Papuan culture and argues that these policies should be seen in conjunction with other state activities that amount to colonialism. A second paper considers cultural genocide as a key element in the Tibetan émigré discourse, in which it is averred that Tibetan language and religion are being extinguished in a Chinese government effort to stabilize Tibet politically. Placing this claim in comparative perspective, the paper contests the applicability of the concept of cultural genocide to Tibet. A third paper focuses on how Indian state control over aspects of culture in Nagaland, northeast India, has been contested by Naga rebels and their supporters during the five decades-long insurgency in the region. Through examination of the primary and secondary school texts used in Nagaland, it will be argued that the Indian state is seeking to use education to negate the cultural identity of the Naga people.
West Papua: The Discourse of ‘Cultural Genocide’ and Conflict Resolution
John Otto Ondawame, University of Sydney
"Cultural genocide" constitutes a major part of Papuan discourse. The spread of Indonesian culture in West Papua is seen as an integral part of the state’s policy of colonial administration under which Papuan identity is denied. Indonesia’s transmigration policy and its official encouragement of Indonesian ways of life and traditions in West Papua has created a deep social gap that has led to a sharp conflict between Indonesia and the people of West Papua, a struggle that has already cost many civilian lives on both sides.
This paper examines "cultural genocide" in West Papua in the context of an analysis of colonialism and conflict resolution. The empirical dimensions of "cultural genocide" are tested by examining the extent to which Papuan culture has been marginalized over thirty-eight years of Indonesian occupation. This phenomenon is considered in relation to other aspects of colonialism, such as militarism, economic imbalance, transmigration and state peripheralization policies. It is argued that the lack of respect for Papuan culture evinced by the Indonesian administration is a violation of the fundamental human rights and that as to language and religion, ongoing cultural erosion in West Papua has not been given the attention it deserves by the world community. If the denial of this cultural erosion continues, an escalation of the conflict in West Papua is likely, despite the need for a peace settlement to end the conflict and build a civil democratic society.
Tibet and the Discourse of ‘Cultural Genocide’
Barry Sautman, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
"Cultural genocide" constitutes a major trope of the Tibetan émigré discourse. The putative atrophy of Tibetanness and spread of Han culture on the Tibet Plateau is said to be tantamount to a state policy of extirpating the Tibetan ethnic group. As the Dalai Lama frames it, cultural genocide may be intentional or unintentional, while most émigré leaders represent it as deliberate and impelled by racial animus, atheism, and totalitarianism. The claim is advanced that the cultural requisites of Tibetan identity are being disintegrated by the migration of Han into Tibetan areas, official encouragement of Chinese language use in schools, state-society interaction, and economic relations, controls over religious communities and practices, and the toleration of bars, karaoke, billiards, prostitution, and other malign phenomena.
This paper examines "cultural genocide" in Tibet in international and comparative perspective. The explication of the concept by Tibetan émigrés is considered in light of how it has been elaborated in international law. The empirical dimensions of the claim are tested by comparing the extent of erosion of Tibetan culture with the evisceration of ethnic minority cultures in other societies. It is argued that the changes denominated as "cultural genocide in Tibet" do not amount to a violation of the internationally recognized rights of ethnic minorities, that as to language and religion, cultural erosion is less marked among Tibetans than among many ethnic minorities in liberal democracies, and that the discourse of cultural genocide in Tibet is a problematic elision of ethnic suppression with global processes of cultural hybridization.
Destroying Difference, Schooling Consent: A Critical Analysis of Education Policy in Indian-Administered Nagaland
Dolly Kikon, North Eastern Social Research Centre
The Naga people inhabit the eastern Himalayan ranges and have been politically and geographically spread over the boundaries of two nation-states since mid-twentieth century. The State apparatus in India and Myanmar and the Naga people have been engaged in conflict for the last five decades. The role of culture as a field of resistance and control is important as it reflects the dissonance between what the Naga people aspire to achieve, in terms of their right to self-determination, and what the State is willing to concede, in terms of allowing the Naga people the right to maintain their political, economic, and cultural sovereignty.
The role of education has been instrumental in perpetuating certain forms of cultural dominance that seek to institutionalize the cultural hegemony of the dominant notions of Naga culture and identity. This dominance is based upon the denial of forms of indigenous knowledge as much as it is based on the reproduction through education of colonial notions of "Naga tradition." This paper is limited to analyzing the process of negating through education the cultural identity of the Naga people by the Indian State. The latter has undertaken several institutional initiatives on education in its Naga-inhabited areas as part of its commitment to civil governance. The paper will focus on the historical development of the "Naga conflict" and a textual analysis of the material used for primary and secondary education in Indian-administered Naga-inhabited areas, to locate the primary motor of cultural oppression of Naga society by the Indian State.
Organizer and Chair: Ligaya Lindio-McGovern, Indiana University
Keywords: globilization and Asian women, globilization and Filipino women.
This border-crossing panel brings in scholars from different disciplines and from outside the United States. Sociologists, an anthropologist, and an environmentalist/ ecologist will present research papers dealing with gender, race/ethnicity, class, and nationality issues related to globalization.
While the area focus of the panel is on the Philippines—since it drastically suffers the impact of globalization—two sociologists will examine the experience of Filipino women from a comparative perspective: Professor Hsiao-Chuan of the Graduate School for Social Transformation Studies at Shih Hsin University in Taiwan links the experience of "foreign brides" (whom she refers to as commodified trans-national marriages) from the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand to capitalist globalization (internationalization of capital). Professor McGovern examines the impact of the Philippine labor export policy and the politics of foreign debt from the experience of Filipino migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vancouver, and Rome.
The international sex trafficking of Asian women has been contested both in the discourse and resistance to globalization. Anthropology Professor Nadeau examines the global sexual commodification of Asian women in the promotion of sex tourism as part of the capitalist development package, focusing on Filipino women. She argues for the importance of contrasting the postmodern and pre-colonial feature of this process.
Women are not just passive victims of underdevelopment. Agency and empowerment are important concepts in the discourse on globalization. Hence, using innovative research methodology, Professor Dorado, an environmentalist and ecologist from the Philippines, will present initiatives on sustainable development of grassroots women in a Philippine fishing village that offer insights on alternatives to unsustainable practices. Through their collective empowerment, the women realized that there are decent alternatives to exporting labor that separates families and exploits women. Their experience indisputably brings forth the importance of fitting development to the needs of the local people, as well as implications on the local, national, and international development policy.
To give ample time for open dialogue, there will be no formal discussant, but instead panel members will be invited to comment on each other’s papers. The audience will be invited to comment on the presentations and share insights from their own research and experience on gender and globalization. The chair will conclude with a brief statement that will tie the presentations and raise issues on Asian women and globalization that the panel has not addressed.
Following the session, I will invite panel members to have a caucus on how to put together our papers as part of an edited volume on gender and globalization in Southeast Asia.
The Globalization of Labor and the Politics of Foreign Debt in the Philippines: The Experience of Overseas Filipino Domestic Workers
Ligaya Lindio-McGovern, Indiana University
This paper examines the impact of the Philippine export labor policy, as a way to deal with debt crisis, from the experience of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vancouver, and Rome. Fieldwork was conducted in Hong Kong and Taiwan in Summer 2000, Vancouver in Summer 1999, and in Rome in Summer 2001.
Pointing out the explanatory inadequacy of the individualist view on migration, and suggesting the usefulness of structural perspective, the paper relates the economic motivation of the domestic workers to the IMF’s structural adjustment policies in the Philippines. It illustrates the contradictory role of the state and the role of private recruitment agencies or traders in the international commodification of labor. It examines issues of gender, nationality/race/ethnicity, class, and human rights in the experience of the Filipino domestics in the host countries. Further, it shows how the host countries benefit more from the trade in domestic workers and reinforce the unequal relations between a less developed country and a more developed nation, with the social costs being borne by the women and their families.
The massive exportation of Filipino domestic workers is transforming a transnational division of female labor that subordinates Third World women in the labor market.
The paper concludes with policy alternatives to export labor.
Sex Trafficking in Asia: Discontinuous with the Pre-Colonial Past?
Kathy Nadeau, California State University, San Bernardino
Policymakers of international lending agencies and local governments, among others, have "rationalized" and perpetuated the sex industry in Asia by saying that it has always existed there. But, the kind of sexuality that can be bought and sold as a commodity on the market, for example, wherein "a man can turn his desire into a thing," is not the same kind of sexuality that was integral to the social reproduction of Asian social formations. With a special focus on the Philippines, the paper will argue for the importance of distinguishing postmodern conceptions of the sex industry from precolonial forms of sex work in Asia. It will raise a hypothesis that sex tourism corresponds to Euro-American colonial forms of slavery that dealt with humans as non-human commodities. In contrast, precolonial Asians in all their diversity and difference, largely, albeit not in all instances, treated their slaves as part of their living and related social body.
Internationalization of Capital and the Trade in Asian Women: The Case of "Foreign Brides" in Taiwan
Hsiao-Chuan Hsia, Shih Hsin University
The phenomenon of "foreign brides" is a global phenomenon whereby women from less developed countries marry and then move in with the families of men from more developed countries. The analytical framework of this paper views the "commodified transnational marriages" as a by-product of capitalist development. Capitalist development results in an unequal international division of labor, and separates countries into core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral nation states, while also distorting development within nations. "Commodified transnational marriages" are one way that men and women cope in societies distorted and marginalized by global capitalism and increasingly liberal labor markets. However, these transnational marriages, often in turn reinforce the international division of labor into core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral states, and in the end bolster capitalism’s strength. Furthermore, "commodified transnational marriages" manifest the international division of labor within interpersonal relationships, localizing the international division of labor as an unequal relation between people.
Data were gathered through field research on "foreign brides" from the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand between 1994–1997 and 1999–2000.
Filipino Grassroots Women’s Initiatives on Sustainable Development: Insights on Alternatives to Globalization
Salvacion L. Dorado, St. Scholastica’s College
Using data from ecological field study, interviews, and participatory/action research, this paper documents how women in a fishing village in the Visayan Region in the Philippines become empowered as they grew in critical awareness of their collective potential towards sustainable development. Through organization and grassroots education the women realized the value of preserving the coral reefs that were becoming extinct through unsustainable practices. Their initiatives on integrated sustainable development led to the creation of a more self-sustainable community where they saw environmental, socio-economic, and political gains improving their livelihood. Some of the women, who had experience working overseas as domestic workers or entertainers and came back to the village before their contract ended, realized that there is an alternative to leaving the country to do such work.
The women’s experience demonstrates: the (a) efficacy of an integrated module for grassroots education on sustainable development; the (b) crucial role of women’s collective empowerment in social change; and (c) the significance of making development responsive to the needs of the local people. Local, national, and international development policymaking has much to learn from this grassroots experience—which tells us that there is an alternative to globalization that hurts the poor.
Organizer and Chair: Keiko Yamanaka, University of California, Berkeley
Discussant: Michael Weiner, San Diego State University
Keywords: civil society, migration, transnationalism, grassroots, governance.
Since the 1980s, there has been increasing labor migration throughout East and Southeast Asia and in response, a rapidly growing wave of "civil society" movements. "Global civil society" refers to those voluntary organizations that have been formed outside of national governments and global markets in order to enhance citizens’ participation in democratic governance. In a world where global markets expand without regulation by nation states, global civil society plays a major role in counteracting, or at least keeping the balance between, forces of the state and commercial institutions. Such phenomena have recently drawn academic interest as a form of political "transnationalism from below," wherein coalitions of citizens of various nationalities and classes exercise power transcending national boundaries.
In this session, three migration scholars will discuss specific cases in which grassroots transnationalization has comprised an alternative force in Asia. Sociologist Nicola Piper addresses rapidly feminized migration and NGO activism in several countries in the region, drawing upon theories of international political economy, female labor migration, and gender-related social movements. Political scientist Timothy Lim examines the nature of political actions and agency among foreign migrant workers—an otherwise seemingly powerless population—acting in conjunction with a network of NGOs. Sociologist Keiko Yamanaka emphasizes the Japanese "dominant ethnicity" in her analysis of struggles of local citizens and immigrants to understand and cope with growing multiculturalism that has resulted from global migration. Discussant, historian Michael Weiner, will address the implications of grassroots movements designed to enhance migrants’ rights throughout East and Southeast Asia.
Protection of Female Migrant Labor: Transnational Advocacy Networks in East and Southeast Asia
Nicola Piper, Australian National University
Processes of globalization have had a significant impact on the Southeast and East Asian societies, not only economically, but also socio-politically, reflected in expanding flows of labor migration, enhanced democratization and growth of civil society activism. Advocacy for rights—labor, human or women’s rights—are part and parcel of these developments.
Difficulties involved in safeguarding the human and labor rights of temporary migrant workers in general, and migrant women in particular, requires the development of transnational mechanisms for protection. In this context, the application of international human rights codes and labor standards have increasingly come to the fore. The degree to which workers rights are acknowledged, however, is subject to the prerogative of individual states, rather than following a more universally accepted code of practice. Any improvements, therefore, hinge upon NGO activism—nationally and even more so transnationally.
On the theoretical level, this paper attempts to integrate three perspectives: it draws on existing theorizing in the fields of international political economy, labor migration and studies on social movements analyzed in their gender-specific implications. Empirical examples will be provided from the East and Southeast Asian context—a region which has experienced particularly high incidences of trafficking, marriage migration and domestic helper migration. As the vulnerable situation of female migrant workers has been well documented by NGOs, it is not the aim of this paper to detail the nature of that vulnerability, but rather to explore the responses by NGOs.
Race from the Bottom? The Nexus between Civil Society and Transnational Migrants in South Korea
Timothy C. Lim, California State University, Los Angeles
This paper examines the role that non-governmental organizations (both civil and religious) in South Korea have played and are playing in promoting and protecting the rights of foreign migrant workers. In particular, this paper will provide an understanding of the process by which seemingly powerless social groups—in conjunction with a network of globally-oriented and socially-conscious NGOs—can take (and have taken) advantage of ongoing changes in the global system to challenge and perhaps overturn historically reproduced practices of exploitation and subordination. My analysis concludes that, in the case of South Korea, the nexus between NGOs and foreign migrant workers has been critical. It has led to significant and progressive, albeit far from ideal, changes in the conditions facing the large majority of foreign migrant workers. These changes include a gradual expansion of legal rights and protections to foreign migrants—both "legal" and "illegal"—which only a decade earlier had been the exclusive domain of Korean workers. Indeed, there is a strong possibility that all foreign migrant workers in South Korea will soon have the same basic labor rights as domestic workers. These changes, to reiterate, are the product of a concrete political action. My paper examines the nature of this political action through a "neo-Gramscian" framework, which emphasizes the instability of the current "post-hegemonic" world order. It is in this instability that NGOs and foreign workers have found a means to assert more democratic control over their political lives and to achieve broader social purposes in face of the seemingly overwhelming force of economic globalization.
Dominant Ethnicity, Global Migration, and Civil Society in Japan
Keiko Yamanaka, University of California, Berkeley
Ten years after the influx of immigrant workers in the late 1980s, Japan stands at the crossroads of becoming a multicultural society. Global migration has revealed glaring inadequacy of laws and public services in meeting the needs of massive numbers of non-citizen residents and their families. It has also brought to the fore among Japanese citizens a lack of the human rights consciousness which is required to develop universal standards for building a multicultural society.
In response, a few dedicated Japanese volunteers have organized groups and networks to alleviate problems faced by immigrants, while promoting public awareness toward equal rights and cultural diversity. In defense of their rights, immigrant populations have also organized mutual help associations based on their cultural and community resources. In many cases, these citizens’ and immigrants’ organizations collaborate toward common goals. Global immigration has thus catalyzed multicultural civil activism at the grassroots through transnational coalitions and networking. Such Japanese citizen’s efforts to include non-citizens as their equals constitute a step toward a truly multicultural society. However, many ideological and institutional obstacles challenge them in a country where the myth of "one ethnicity, one nation" retains deep roots.
This paper, therefore, analyzes Japanese migrant rights activism, beginning with the history of modern nation-state building. In the process of territorial and economic expansion, migrant minorities were racialized as cultural others, thus justifying exploitation of their labor. In order to demonstrate the logic of inclusion and exclusion based on ethnicity and nationality, the analysis emphasizes cultural constructs of the Japanese dominant ethnicity. The analysis includes: myths and narratives of ancestry of the Japanese; their ethnocultural markers, rituals and methods of exclusion; international and internal pressures to become cosmopolitan; and recent changes in national identity within the Japanese dominant ethnicity, particularly among its young members.