Asian Studies Commons^™

Review Of Modi’S India: Hindu Nationalism And The Rise Of Ethnic Democracy, Dhinakaran Savariyar

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Buddhist Nationalism: Rising Religious Violence In South Asia, Eva Chappus, Benjamin Nourse

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Buddhist nationalism has contributed to expanding religious violence in many South Asian countries. The roots of this violent form of nationalism are complex and multi-faceted, making a clear solution difficult to achieve. Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Burma are some of the most pressing and violent case studies in South Asia today and can illustrate the reliance of Buddhist nationalists on ethnoreligious identities to relegate non-Buddhists to second-class status, to the point of massive acts of violence and aggression. This paper seeks to illuminate the complex social history driving the rise of Buddhist nationalism in these countries, particularly strong military-religion relationships, …

The Eagle’S Eye On The Rising Dragon: Why The United States Has Shifted Its View Of China, Jackson Craig Scott

Baker Scholar Projects

Since 1978, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has long been viewed as an economic trading partner of the United States of America (US). The PRC has grown to be an economic powerhouse, and the US directly helped with that process and still benefits from it. However, during the mid-2010’s, US rhetoric began to turn sour against the PRC. The American government rhetoric toward the PRC, beginning with the Obama administration, switched. As Trump’s administration came along, they bolstered this rhetoric from non-friendly to more or less hostile. Then, Biden’s administration strengthened Trump’s rhetoric. Over the past ten years or …

Impacts Of Politicization And Conflict On Archaeological Resources: An Analysis Of Trends In Iraq, Andrew N. Vang-Roberts

Theses and Dissertations

Archeological resources have been used by political regimes to further their own interests since the discipline was established in the late 19th century. Regime-backed 20th century dictators in Iraq, Iran and Egypt understood that whoever controls a nation’s archeological resources controls its memory and its people. However, power changes hands and archeological resources are not immune to the shifting of power, be it through external conflict such as an invasion or internal conflict such as a revolution. In situations where the ruling party is overthrown and a power vacuum forms, destructive activities such as looting and land development increase and …

A Short History Of The Transformation Of Ethnic Chinese Organizations In Thailand: From Seditious Secret Societies To Patriotic Cultural Ngos, Zhang Ying Ying, Wasana Wongsurawat

Asian Review

Ethnic Chinese organizations in Thailand were transformed and developed through the past century and a half of the modern era in three major phases. In the early-19th century, an influx of Chinese labor migrants followed the tradition of establishing fi ctive kinship networks in their host country through sworn brotherhoods and secret societies. Towards the end of the 19th century, however, the modernization and nation-building processes of the Thai state came into confl ict with the culture and lifestyle of Chinese secret societies and they became criminalized. Consequently, the ethnic Chinese community in Thailand entered the second phase of registering …

Proud To Be Thai: The Puzzling Absence Of Ethnicity-Based Political Cleavages In Northeastern Thailand, Jacob I. Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Underneath the veneer of a homogenous state-approved Thai ethnicity,Thailand is home to a heterogeneous population. Only about one-thirdof Thailand’s inhabitants speak the national language as their mothertongue; multiple alternate ethnolinguistic groups comprise the remainderof the population, with the Lao in the northeast, often called Isan people,being the largest at 28 percent of the population. Ethnic divisions closelyalign with areas of political party strength: the Thai Rak Thai Party and itssubsequent incarnations have enjoyed strong support from Isan people andKhammuang speakers in the north while the Democrat Party dominatesamong the Thai- and Paktay-speaking people of the central plains and thesouth. Despite …

How To Be Singaporean: Becoming Global National Citizens And The National Dimension In Cosmopolitan Openness, Wen Li Thian

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper looks at how cosmopolitanism is practised amongst Singaporeans who have experienced Singapore’s education reform in the 1990s. Cosmopolitanism in Singapore is tied to state-intervention with a national orientation. To complement Singapore’s push towards cosmopolitanism, the education reform in the 1990s promoted the idea of a national citizen with a global orientation. I looked at 40 Singaporeans born after the year 1990 to investigate cosmopolitan attitudes that have emerged from the tensions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. To meet the state’s ideals of cosmopolitanism, these Singaporeans employed strategies to practice a particular form of cosmopolitan openness which prioritise national interests. …

Jawing Through Crises: Chinese And Vietnamese Media Strategies In The South China Sea, Frances Yaping Wang, Brantly Womack

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Winston Churchill once said, ‘it is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war.’ However, negotiations are particularly difficult when they are enmeshed in public opinion precommitments. The sharpest crisis between China and Vietnam in the last 30 years concerned the placement of a Chinese oil rig into contested waters in 2014. This study analyses the Chinese and Vietnamese propaganda efforts surrounding the crisis as examples of the instrumental use of propaganda in managing domestic public opinion on diplomatic crises. The article argues that despite very different approaches to public diplomacy during the crisis, both states were primarily concerned with avoiding escalation …

Review Of Religion And Nationalism In Southeast Asia, Michael S. Barr

Reviews

It is a sign of how much the field of social sciences has changed that a new book interrogating the linkages and relationships between religion and nationalism sits in a crowded field. A couple of decades ago, scholars like Peter van der Veer and Mark Jeurgensmeyer had the religious part of the field to themselves, even as historians and other area studies scholars shook their heads, wondering at this blind spot in international relations scholarship. Even more recently it was still fashionable to look forward to the death of nations and nationalism at the hands of regionalism, globalization, and cosmopolitanism.

The Olympics In East Asia: Nationalism, Regionalism, And Globalism On The Center Stage Of World Sports, William W. Kelly, Susan Brownell

Susan Brownell

Yale CEAS Occasional Publication Series - Volume 3

Currents Of Consumption: How National Narratives Of Japanese Cuisine Collide With Localized Forms Of Sushi In Northern California, John Ostermiller

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper examines how national narratives of Japanese cuisine collide with the expectations, preferences, and perceptions of American consumers (particularly Northern California). The global economy has benefited the circulation of positive images of Japan managed by the Japanese government, but the commercialization of Japanese cuisine is also at odds with government efforts. In Japan, sushi is often synonymous with nigirizushi: sliced seafood and a daub of wasabi atop vinegared rice. As part of Japan’s washoku tradition, this singular image of sushi (allegedly) reflects the deepest essence of Japanese cultural sensibilities tied to simplicity, perfection, and nature. But in America, consumers’ …

Making Japan Great Again: Japan's Liberal Democratic Party As A Far Right Movement, Wesley Yee

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In recent years, far right-wing political parties have gained power around the world. Far-right movements build a populist, anti-establishment support base through the use of ethno-nationalism and xenophobic policies and slogans. This article applies the models and party frames used to study European far-right movements and applies them to the case of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP), a party whose policies under prime ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe have pushed the party from having a center-right stance to having more of a far-right nationalist and populist one. Using this framework I find that the LDP has utilized …

The History Problem: The Politics Of War Commemoration In East Asia, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay summarizes my argumentin The History Problem: The Politics of WarCommemoration in East Asia. The historyproblem is essentially a relational phenomenonthat arises when nations promote self-servingversions of the past by focusing on whathappened to their own citizens with littleregard for foreign others. East Asia, however,has recently also witnessed the emergence of acosmopolitan form of commemoration takinghumanity, rather than nationality, as itsprimary frame of reference. Whencosmopolitan commemoration is practiced as acollective endeavor by both perpetrators andvictims, a resolution of the history problem willfinally become possible.

The Unbound Postcolonial Leviathan, Pranoto Iskandar

Asian Review

This paper discusses the overlooked dimension of the aboriginal discourse that serves as the genesis of Indonesia as a postcolonial state. More pointedly, it argues that the nationalist's appropriation of European romanticism should be seen as the last attempt of the local aristocracy to preserve their hegemony in the postcolonial order; post-coloniality does not necessarily mean positivity. In fact, in Indonesia's case, the repeated failure to embed liberal values is arguably a result of the half-hearted commitment to enlightenment values of the early nationalist intellectuals. Some of the early nationalist fi gures blatantly imbued the 1945 Constitution with pre-colonial feudalism. …

The Effects Of Historical Trauma And Gender On National Identity Within The Hmong Diaspora, Kalia Vang

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

Since 1975 the Hmong have settled in the West as a diasporic group. Their involvement in the Vietnam and Secret Wars with the United States in Southeast Asia had forced the group to flee their homes in the mountain tops of Laos. This political migration has since forced Hmong leaders to reframe Hmong national identity in the diaspora, specifically in the United States. With this, certain aspects and perspective from Hmong women on the Secret War were marginalized. Thus, this research asks the following question: why is national identity interpreted differently within the Hmong diaspora? This research project is broken …

Kim Was Korea And Korea Was Kim: The Formation Of Juche Ideology And Personality Cult In North Korea, Bianca Trifoi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Juche ideology, created by founder Kim Il-Sung, governs all aspects of North Korean society. This thesis attempts to answer the questions of why and how Juche ideology and the cult of personality surrounding Kim Il-Sung were successfully implemented in North Korea. It is a historical analysis of the formation of the North Korean state that considers developments from the late 19th century to the late 20th century, with particular attention paid to the 1950s-1970s and to Kim’s own writings and speeches. The thesis argues that Juche was successfully implemented and institutionalized in North Korea due to several factors, including the …

Language And Inter-Racial Harmony: The Battle For English As Singapore Lingua, Margaret Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Against the backdrop of world religious violence, Singapore is as a beacon of inter-ethnic harmony: A 2015 poll, carried out in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, returned the unanimous verdict that it was Singapore that had made the most social progress among the four Chinese ethnic Chinese societies. In 2014, the Pew Research Center ranked Singapore at the top of their Religious Diversity Index. The nation's bilingual policy is critical to the integration of the multi-racial communities of Singapore. This position is highlighted in a discussion of how, in the early years after independence in 1965, the Singapore government …

Folk Songs And Popular Music In China: An Examination Of Min’Ge And Its Significance Within Nationalist Frameworks, Belinda Li

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis examines the function of music within different theories of nationalism and the appropriation of folk music within the genre of min’ge. Min’ge, a term in Chinese which directly translates to “folk songs”, has generally been defined as oral musical traditions. However, due to the increased politicization of popular music since the 1930s, the nature folk music has fundamentally changed, reflecting its new significance within Chinese nationalism. Through the years, min’ge has become more useful to promoting the goals of the state than representing the musical traditions of the many different ethnic groups in China. This transformation …

Historians As Rooted Cosmopolitans: Their Potentials And Limitations, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the 1990s, the so-called 'history problem' began to escalate in East Asia as the result of mutually reinforcing nationalist commemorations in Japan, South Korea and China. In response, historians from the three countries organized joint historical research and textbook projects. In this article, I examine the extent to which these joint projects succeeded in promoting the cosmopolitan logic of historiography that challenged nationalist commemorations. Specifically, I compare governmental and non-governmental projects and illustrate structural and dispositional mechanisms that facilitated the cosmopolitan logic of historiography. However, at the same time, I show that the joint projects have had only a …

Sour Milk: Women And The Hindu Nationalist Movement In India, Saumya Dadoo

Senior Projects Spring 2015

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The A-Bomb Victims' Plea For Cosmopolitan Commemoration: Toward Reconciliation And World Peace, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper critically revisits the A-bomb victims' plea for cosmopolitan commemoration that takes humanity, rather than nationality, as a primary frame of reference. To this end, I first elaborate the nature of cosmopolitan commemoration espoused by A-bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in comparison with another form of cosmopolitan commemoration pertaining to the Holocaust victims. I then analyze limitations in these cosmopolitan commemorations and explore how they can be transcended. In light of my critical analysis, I argue that genuinely cosmopolitan commemoration, a prerequisite for reconciliation and world peace, will appear on the horizon if the commemorations of the two …

Clothing And Social Movements: The Politics Of Dressing In Colonized Tibet, Dicky Yangzom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the relationship between clothing and social movements. Taking the case of Lhakar in the Tibetan Freedom Movement, it explores how Tibetans in Tibet and those in exile imagine national belonging. Second, it delineates how the multiple uses of clothing, both by the colonizing state and the colonial movement articulates its importance in serving as a symbolic boundary in nationalist identity formation. Lastly, using methods of visual analysis, the research explains how the convergence between clothing, social movements, and social media creates a non-violent transnational social movement.

State-Centric Or State-In-Society: National Identity And Collective Memory In The Linkage Politics Of Chinese Foreign Relations, Ning Liao

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation, with a standpoint of disentangling China's diplomacy "inside-out," explores the Chinese state-society relationship in domestic-foreign-policy interaction. With its analytic focus resting on the collective memory of national humiliation in modern Chinese history and the derived national identity, this project delves into the linkage between the ideational impetus of the diplomatic decision-making of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the way that the authoritarian regime claims its internal and external legitimacy.

In the state legitimation, collective memory and national identity are instrumentalized to enact the moral justification of the CCP's political authority and to justify China's persistent quest to …

Competing Logics Of Commemoration: Cosmopolitanism And Nationalism In East Asia's History Problem, Hiro Saito, Yoko Wang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Recent studies in collective memory point to the emergence of cosmopolitan commemoration that takes humanity, rather than nationality, as a primary frame of reference. But these studies have yet to specify how cosmopolitan commemoration emerges and articulates with existing nationalist commemoration. To solve this problem, we examine the “history problem” between Japan and South Korea by focusing on how relevant political and civic actors negotiated cosmopolitanism and nationalism in commemorating Japan’s past colonial rule and wartime atrocities. In light of our historical analysis, we argue that a synthesis of theories of institutional logics and social movements is useful in illuminating …

Balancing Spirituality And Secularism, Globalism And Nationalism: The Geographies Of Identity, Integration And Citizenship In Schools, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Geographies of education have drawn more research attention in the last decade. The varied motivations for geographical attention to education have led to divergent approaches. First, a macro, political economy or "outward looking" approach has examined educational provision and what it tells us about wider social, economic and political processes. Second, a micro, social-cultural or "inward looking" approach has emphasised social difference within school spaces, and the links between home and educational spaces. This latter approach has also acknowledged the importance of the voices of children and young people in understanding educational experiences. In this paper, l take stock of …

Chinese Intellectuals And China's Policy Toward Japan, Wenting Yang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims at integrating two scholarships: state-society relation studies and Chinese foreign policy analysis. I created Two-level Perception Gap Model to analyze different intellectual groups' relations with party-state by confirming Chinese intellectuals play a role in CFP making in general, China's Japan policy in particular. This model is an alternative approach, instead of conventional wisdom patron-client approach, to explain and analyze the pluralized intellectual-state relations in China. This model first analyzed the role of two intellectual groups, namely think tank scholars and popular nationalist, in China's Japan policy making, and then based on these analyses it explains the interactional …

Palestinian Refugees, The Nation, And The Shifting Political Landscape, Randa Farah

Randa R Farah Dr.

This article briefly examines the historical causes that led to the uprooting of the Palestinians in 1948, who today represent one of the longest and largest refugee situations in contemporary history. It then draws on field research on refugees in Jordan to trace some of the pertinent political and ideological shifts since the Palestinian Nakba. Its emphasis is on refugee camps, approached here as palimpsests refracting different historical periods, which for the purpose of this article are divided into: the Nasserite period in the 1950s and early 1960s, the heyday of the Palestinian national liberation movement, beginning in the mid-1960s, …

Angry Youth: Patriotic Education And The New Chinese Nationalism, Rachel Gary

Honors Program Theses

No abstract provided.

Cosmopolitan Nation-Building: The Institutional Contradiction And Politics Of Postwar Japanese Education, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The education system has been a quintessential state apparatus of nation-building since the emergence of the modern nation-state; however, recent comparative studies demonstrate the growing presence of cosmopolitanism in education policies and school curricula around the world. This trend indicates that the education system now operates according to two different institutional logics, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. To understand how the education system negotiates the potential contradiction between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, in this paper, I analyze the case of postwar Japanese education. Theoretically, I synthesize studies of institutional logics and social movements: while the former shed light on a contradiction between different …

The Olympics In East Asia: Nationalism, Regionalism, And Globalism On The Center Stage Of World Sports, William W. Kelly, Susan Brownell

CEAS Occasional Publication Series

Yale CEAS Occasional Publication Series - Volume 3