12th EastAsiaNet Research Workshop

Sean Golden, a member of the Inter-Asia research group, gave a talk at the 12th EastAsiaNet Research Workshop organised by the Institut d'Asie Orientale - Sciences-Po Lyon and the Institut d'Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles - Université Jean-Moulin Lyon 3, on 17-18 October 2013, dedicated to: 

Future Cities and Space Reconfiguration in East Asia: Practices and Representations, Risk and Opportunities 

on the topic of:

Urban policies and governance of the risks of urban environmental calamities and urban development: a discourse analysis of official and non-official communication

Abstract

This paper will present a case study of three sources of discourse for the communication of urban ecological risk in the PRC and its subsequent management. The three sources are: the discourse of informal, nongovernmental or emergent civil society communication of ecological risk (social movements, protest movements, critical analysis of risk and governmental policy); the discourse of formal or academic, nongovernmental communication of ecological risk (academics, advisers, opinion-makers); the official, governmental communication of ecological risk (official think tanks, ministry documents). New political terminology is emerging, whose analysis can reveal contemporary tensions in social, economic and political policy-making. One the one hand, terms such as “social construction” 社会建设  shèhuì jiànshè, “social system reform” 社会體制改革 shèhuì tízhì gǎigé“ or social self-governance” 社會自治 [社会自治] shèhuī zìzhì might imply a growing role for Chinese "civil society" 民间社会 mínjiān shèhuì. On the other hand, terms and statements such as  “social management” 社会管理  shèhuì guǎnlǐ, "stability preservation" 维护稳定 wéihù wěndìng/维稳 wéiwěn or “‘civil society’ is a ‘Western pitfall’” “公民社会”是西方陷阱 gōngmín shèhuì shì xīfāng xiànjǐng seem to imply serious opposition to social or political reform. In 2010, 习近平 Xi Jinping told Party members in a speech at the Central Party School that “power is given by the people, and power is used for the people.” In 2011, 周本順  Zhōu Běnshùn, secretary of the Party’s Central Politics and Law Commission, attacked the idea of social organizations working independently of the government, saying China had to avoid the “pitfall of ‘civil society’ designed for us by certain Western nations.” Now the debate is centering around what the "Chinese Dream" 中國夢 Zhōngguó mèng might be. Three cases of urban planning and governance --Chongqing 重慶, Guangzhou  广州 and Wukan 烏坎-- provide three contrasting visions of urban policies and governance of the risks of urban environmental calamities and urban development.

10th EastAsiaNet Research Workshop

The East Asian Studies and Research Centre of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the CIDOB Foundation of Barcelona think tank organised the 10th EastAsiaNet Research Workshop at the CIDOB Foundation on 25-26 October 2012 in collaboration with the Inter-Asia Research Group of the UAB, the Masters degree in European Union-China. Culture & Economy of the UAB, the Confucius Institute Foundation of Barcelona, the Spanish Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness and the Residence for Researchers of the Spanish Higher Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas- CSIC).

The Speakers were:

• Alain-Marc Rieu (University of Lyon 3, France): Japan after Fukushima: toward a new governance arrangement
• Lau Blaxekjær (University of Copenhagen, Denmark):  Post-Fukushima Governance – Institutional Dissonance and Post-Normal Governance?
• Kristin Surak (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany): Civil Society and Migrant Labor Recruit Schemes in East Asia: Possibilities and Pitfalls in Lobbying for Reform
• Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard (Copenhagen Business Sxchool, Denmark): Murder, Sex, Corruption: Will China Continue to Hold Together?
• Andrea Revelant (University of Venice - Ca'Foscari, Italy): Between state and society: political parties in Japan
• Stéphane Corcuff (Lyon Institute of East Asia, France): Local, national, cross straits, global: Do Taiwanese voters establish a hierarchy of identification references in their voting behaviour?
• Xavier Ortells-Nicolau (Inter-Asia, UAB, Spain): Major trends in English-speaking scholarship on China’s civil society, 1989-2000s
• Sean Golden (Inter-Asia, UAB, Spain): “Social construction”, “social management”, and “social system reform” versus “‘civil society’ is a ‘Western pitfall’”: official discourse on civil society and governance going into the 18^th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
• Joaquín Beltrán (Inter-Asia, UAB, Spain):  Culture and the Confucius Institute: Soft power to meet global governance and external challenges
• Laura De Giorgi (University of Venice - Ca'Foscari, Italy): History education and civil society in contemporary China
• Thomas Boutonnet (University of Lyon 3, France): Consumerism as a Risk for Social Stability? Governance and Risk Management in the "Eight Honours and Eight Disgraces" Campaign
• Carmen Amado Mendes (University of Coimbra, Portugal): The role of Macau’s governance and civil society in promoting lusophony: the manipulation of a concept for managing risk in China’s relations with the lusophone world

8th EastAsiaNet Research Workshop

Inter-Asia research group member Sean Golden spoke at the 8th EastAsiaNet Research Workshop organised by the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna (Austria) on 15-17 September 2011.

His contribution to Section A: The Future of Higher Education on East Asia: Concepts and Experiences was entitled Do East Asian Studies really exist?:

Abstract:

I have been actively involved in setting up East Asian studies at university level in Spain since I arrived there from China in 1984 and found that they did not yet exist at that time. The process was long and laborious. By the 1988-1989 academic year we were able to introduce the study of Chinese and Japanese into an official undergraduate degree course and we created a Chinese Studies Centre and a Japanese Studies Centre. It took another 10 years to create an undergraduate degree in Area Studies that included a specialisation in East Asian Studies form a multidisciplinary point of view, still concentrating on China and Japan but also introducing Korean language studies. Five years later the Spanish government formally created an official undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies. During this entire process I was involved in university administration as a Dean of a Faculty and as a member of the Governing Board of the university. I also acted as an adviser to the regional and national governments and published studies of how to organise East Asian Studies. On the basis of this experience I would like to comment on the question “Do East Asian Studies really exist?” By this I mean to ask whether or not it is possible to carry out coordinated studies of an area recognised to be “East Asia” from a variety of humanistic and social science disciplines, or whether what we call East Asian Studies is simply the sum of a various uncoordinated academic offers based on Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, Korean Studies, etc. A debate on this subject might make it possible to formulate some basic EastAsiaNet guidelines for the organisation of East Asian Studies.