Organizer: Amrita Basu, Amherst College
Chair: Durba Ghosh, Cornell University
Pradeep Kumar Jena, Jawaharlal Nehru University
In the days of McDonalds, Pepsi-Cola, and Levi’s jeans, where the free
flow of goods and services and also of people and culture have been rampant,
the volatility of the choices of the variety-seeking consumers not only always
demands the new and modern, but also sometimes revamps the old and the traditional.
It is in this context that the case for traditional arts and crafts comes to
the fore. Quite surprisingly, many foreign fashion shows are run these days
with Hollywood models wearing the appliquéd motifs of saris designed
by Indian fashion designers. This instance adds to growing demand for Indian
folk creations like appliqué umbrellas in western sea beaches. This shows
how tradition meets with modernity these days. Globalization has put both
east and west into one compartment and makes a single village a global village.
As we know, globalization produces a variety of responses in the field of culture.
Sometimes global culture gets inhabited in the local spheres making a micro
global, sometimes local culture mounts to the global heights making a macro
local, and yet again sometimes both global and local culture produce a hybrid
one-a glocal. This is the magic of globalization these days.
With a brief theoretical understanding, this paper looks at globalization’s
increasing impact on Indian handicrafts and craftspeople. It tries to assess
how far globalization serves as an opportunity and threat to the artisans.
The role of the government in promoting the crafts and protecting the artists
will also be discussed before concluding the paper.
Nitasha Kaul, University of Westminster
This multi-disciplinary paper demonstrates how the conventional idea of a
market, as in political economy, relies upon generalizations which are not
universal and fail to account for the complex ways in which markets are the
historical and institutional sites for the construction of various identities
(e.g. in terms of gender, nation, religion, politics, and culture). As a case
study, it will trace a contemporary history of the Janpath (“people’s way” in
Hindi) bazaar in New Delhi (India), where the market interactions among people
from different walks of life and different parts of the globe map upon competing
and complex processes of identity construction. It draws upon fieldwork and
includes archival footage, interviews, and observation. The concerns of the
different constituencies in this postcolonial settler-refugees’ market – architect-planners,
state enforcement-administrators (NDMC), “babus”, original settlers, “tayabazaari” holders,
and legal/ “illegal” hawkers – highlight the ways of institutionalizing
urban space and the forms of resistance to it. In analyzing the social and
symbolic geography of this market over the latter-half of the twentieth-century,
and in changing political climates and social mores, we achieve an understanding
of the many different ways in which the instrumentality of market institutions
can be read and the implications of a wider cultural-economic role of the
market, especially in postcolonial societies. The paper concludes with an analysis
of the transformations brought about by the processes of globalization in the
context of such urban markets and the impact of this progressive insertion into
the circuits of capital on the issues of identity.
Alisa DiCaprio, New York University
This paper addresses the issue of non-linear preferences exhibited by the
developing countries of Asia in international trade negotiations. Specifically,
the ASEAN countries have actively protested the expansion of the WTO regime
into new disciplines such as labor, investment, intellectual property, and standards.
However, at the same time, these same countries are forming asymmetric free
trade agreements (FTAs) with industrial countries that include regulations on
nearly identical disciplines. The political economy literature is unable to
explain this dichotomy because of an historical focus on FTAs that involve South
America. In this paper, I address this issue by expanding the existing analysis
to include the unique institutional environments of the ASEAN countries. In
particular, I propose a framework where FTAs offer payoffs that these countries
have not been able to achieve through their WTO commitments. Rather than treating
FTAs as a set of limiting regulations, this analysis dissembles them into their
constituent chapters. This enables me to show that, unlike traditional South
American partners, the FTAs that are currently in negotiation between the United
States and ASEAN member countries, provide the developing country partners with
additional policy flexibility that they would be unable to attain in the absence
of the FTA. This has policy implications not only for the ASEAN countries but
also for all other non-traditional partner countries.
Zarina Othman, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Malaysia-Myanmar diplomatic relations were officially established in 1958,
a year after Malaysia gained political independence from Britain and a decade
after Myanmar became a sovereign state. Due to Myanmar’s internal political
turbulence and her isolationist foreign policy, the relations have never been
strong. Additionally, as a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), Malaysia has taken a non-interference policy towards Myanmar’s
human rights abuse, such as the house arrest of pro-democracy champion Aung
San Suu Kyi. Nevertheless, Malaysia joined those ASEAN members who pushed for
acceptance of Myanmar into their regional association, and Myanmar eventually
became the 8th member of ASEAN in 1997. However, it appears that neither the
ASEAN noninterference policy nor the Malaysian constructive engagement policy
have had much success in changing Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi, for instance, remains
in house detention to this day, and this has reflected badly on the ASEAN image.
It is the purpose of this paper to gain an understanding of why Malaysia has
shifted its approach towards Myanmar from one of noninterference to constructive
engagement, and how the latter approach can be made more effective. Specifically,
this paper will investigate an important issue: whether Malaysia’s changing
policy towards Myanmar was due to a political reason, or whether it has more
to do with an investment opportunity. The paper concludes that the time has
come for Malaysia to seek a workable alternative for making Myanmar less
of a political liability for either Malaysia or to ASEAN.
|
