International and Area Studies Commons^™

Peeking Out From Behind The Curtain, Ian Reese

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Absconded by airport security to middle-of-nowhere Russia, Nikolai Alexeyev sat for several days in early September 2010 unaware of his infractions or of his fate. Like a page from a Cold-War spy novel, the point of his abduction was to terrorize; Alexeyev’s abductors psychologically tortured and berated him with homophobic remarks. Nikolai Alexeyev is the leading gay rights activist in Russia and has been a twisting thorn in the side of local and national government for several years. Upon his release, he resolved to agitate further by leading a public demonstration to boycott the Swiss International Air Lines for its …

New Media And Old Dilemmas: Online Protest And Cyber Repression In Asia Panel Report, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As I noted in an article I wrote for the Dissent website earlier this week, one of the major China-related stories of 2011 has been the government’s ever-increasing crackdown on public expression. What started subtly back in January—a slowdown in internet service here and there, more websites (including this one) being blocked—became a full-blown international issue on April 3, when artist and activist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport. Ai’s disappearance has sparked a flood of analysis and commentaries: Colin Jones discusses “The Purge of Ai Weiwei” at Dissent, Evan Osnos at the New Yorkerhas written a series …

Factories Without Smoke, Chris Cherry

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

They are China’s most precious economic asset: migrant workers. Each year, millions upon millions untie themselves from the rhythms of rural life to chase down a future in the prestige cities and sudden boomtowns of the eastern and southern coasts. In doing so, they begin a dramatic journey from farmer to worker; one marked by a profound shift from cultivating land they own, to producing goods they don’t. But few will be allowed to transform completely. Oft belittled for their unsophisticated ways, to urbanites they are forever “waidiren” — outside people. Most will be marked by their speech the moment …

We Chinese, M. Scott Brauer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“We Chinese” grew out of a curiosity to find out what Chinese people think about their country and their future. Media coverage of the country and its development often raises questions about the direction of the government in Beijing on the world stage. Few reports take into account the feelings of the Chinese people, instead making reference to the country as a monolithic actor without constituent parts. A country’s trajectory through history cannot be mapped without careful consideration of the people. This project aims, in a small way, to develop a portrait of the country by looking at the individual …

Pre-Summit Positioning, Scott Kennedy

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Preparations for Wednesday’s state visit by Hu Jintao have been underway for several months. Most of that time was spent negotiating over what deals would be reached, whether there would be a joint statement, and what food would be served. I’m particularly interested to see: 1) Whether Chinese first lady Liu Yongqing will eat the standard fare put on the table as everyone else. She typically travels with her own chef and food; and 2) Whether the American media will get a good photo of the back of Hu Jintao’s head to determine once and for all if he has …

On The Joys Of Online Book Shopping, Maggie Greene

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the fall of 2010, I advanced to candidacy at the University of California, San Diego, and bearing the new title of PhD candidate in modern Chinese history, I set off for that great and time-honored pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China to start researching my dissertation. I’ve been here four months, and while the process of researching Chinese opera (particularly kun opera and ghost plays) in the PRC has not been as smooth as I would have hoped, there is one thing that’s been going swimmingly: book shopping. More precisely, shopping online for books related to my dissertation.

Reading Round-Up, 2/20/11

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

• If you’re looking for a few China book recommendations, check out these two recent interviews at The Browser’s “Five Books” feature: the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos suggests five books that first-time visitors to China should read before they go, and Victor Shih of Northwestern University shares his favorite titles dealing with the Chinese economy.

Book Review: Embattled Glory

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Will virulent nationalism make China a threat to the international order? This is the question that Neil J. Diamant sets out to address in Embattled Glory. A number of academics as well as the mass media have argued that after 1989 the Chinese Communist Party purposely fostered a wide-spread and strongly-felt popular nationalism, and that this sense of nationalism pushes Chinese foreign policy toward more hard-line positions that could lead to diplomatic or even military conflict between China, its neighbors, and even the United States. Diamant points specifically to Peter Gries’ China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy as an …

Bay Area Readers: See Datong: The Great Society

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Our readers in the Bay Area who enjoyed learning about the new Kang Youwei docu-drama Datong: The Great Society earlier this week have an upcoming opportunity to see the movie, which will be screened at UC Berkeley on December 13. Filmmaker Evans Chan will be on hand for a Q&A after the film.

China’S Empty Apartments, Michael Gsovski

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Southeast of Kunming, a new city has risen from the earth, so new that it is literally called the “Chenggong New Area.” Giant complexes of towering, modern apartment buildings line the wide, recently built streets, broken every few kilometers by parks as large and as well designed as any in Kunming proper. Every block of apartment buildings has a police substation, and some have functioning schools. Along the recently constructed highways linking the new city to the old, it seems as if farmland has been transformed into a high-rise commuter suburb like those on the outskirts of Hong Kong and …

Thoughts On River Elegy, June 1988-June 2011, David Moser

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I remember watching the legendary six-part CCTV miniseries River Elegy in my dorm room at Peking University in June of 1988—the last June in the Chinese historical calendar that would not have its 4th day permanently stained red. At the time I could not understand much of the stentorian voice-over (I was only a couple of years into my lifelong struggle with Chinese), but during the week the show was broadcast it became clear that the documentary had hit academic circles like an atomic bomb. The series’ content—a sweeping, brutally painful critique of the deep structure of Chinese culture—was the …

Beijing Subway’S “Great Leap Forward” Provokes Resistance, Jared Hall

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

An elderly couple camped outside as most of the city took shelter from the winter chill. They were doused in gasoline, flanked by a box of matches and a coffin. A small crowd looked on solemnly as the pair read posters recounting their story. These were Wang Shibo’s grandparents, whose store on the southern end of the popular Nanluoguxiang (南􀀀鼓巷) shopping street had been slated for demolition to make way for a new station along Beijing Subway’s newly-extended Line Eight.

Q&A: Yi-Li Wu, Author Of Reproducing Women, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

MEC: Your book examines “medicine for women” (􀀀科 fuke) in Qing China. How did the practice of fuke then differ from present-day obstetrics and gynecology? What has changed in the Chinese understanding of women’s medicine?

China Beat On Break

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We’re going to put China Beat on hiatus from now until early July so I can get settled in Shanghai (where I’ll be based for the next couple of months) and all of our consulting editors and contributors can enjoy some summer vacation.

Ai Weiwei At The Venice Biennale, Jon Wiener

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

At the world’s biggest art event this summer, the Venice Biennale, the world’s most famous imprisoned artist, Ai Weiwei, was not exactly neglected—but his case received virtually no official acknowledgment.

Q&A: Robert Bickers, Author Of The Scramble For China, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Several months ago, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914, Robert Bickers’ fascinating new book. Published in the United Kingdom and most other parts of the world in February, this work will be released in the United States later this month. In anticipation, I caught up with Robert (an old friend and sometime co-author of mine, as well as a past contributor to China Beat) and asked him some questions about the book. A stylishly written and carefully researched work, it contains everything …

Ship To Shore: Inuit, Early Europeans, And Maritime Landscapes In The Northern Gulf Of St. Lawrence, William W. Fitzhugh, Anja Herzog, Sophia Perdikaris, Brenna Mcleod

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Recent research at Hare Harbor on the Quebec Lower North Shore in the northeastern Gulf of St. Lawrence reveals great potential for archaeological and historical research on Basque and other early European activities in the northwestern North Atlantic. Although considerable data have been retrieved from Red Bay, Labrador, and a few other sixteenth-century sites in the Strait of Belle Isle and Gulf of St. Lawrence, archaeological knowledge of the early European phase of North American history in this region is limited, and information about post-sixteenth-century Basque occupations is nearly nonexistent. This chapter reports on a multicomponent site with late sixteenth-century …

Paul Timmermans On Invisible War: The United States And The Iraq Sanctions. By Joy Gordon. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 2010. 359 Pp., Paul Timmermans

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions. By Joy Gordon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. 359 pp.

Vincent Druliolle On Unearthing Franco's Legacy: Mass Graves And The Recovery Of Historical Memory In Spain. Edited By Carlos Jerez-Farrán And Samuel Amago. Notre Dame, In: University Of Notre Dame Press, 2010. 410pp., Vincent Druliolle

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Unearthing Franco's Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. Edited by Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. 410pp.

The Irony Of Refuge: Gender-Based Violence Against Female Refugees In Africa, Liz Miller

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The Sudanese soldiers and the Janjawid invaded her village. When she tried to escape, they gang-raped her. At that time, she was eight months pregnant and described giving birth to a dead baby afterward and being very sick. She could not make it with her group to the border to flee to Chad so she had to walk alone. Once she got to Chad, she was raped by a Chadian soldier outside of the camp and became pregnant. Afterwards, her husband divorced her, and she now lives with the stigma of being a rape victim. She has been expelled from …

Waging Peace For Colombia’S Youth: Countering The Attack On Education, Phil Price

Human Rights & Human Welfare

After nearly five decades of internal armed conflict, Colombia’s children and education system remain firmly under siege. Boys and girls as young as thirteen are pulled out of classrooms and thrown into battlefields. Teachers routinely disappear and/or are subjected to extrajudicial executions. Guerillas, paramilitaries, and the Colombian army all utilize school buildings as posts for their combatants. School zones have become littered with landmines. Child displacement and poverty have reached epidemic levels. In direct contradiction with the Rome Statute and the Colombian Ministry of Defense Directive 30743, the Colombian government is guilty of war crimes by employing children as spies …

Women In Afghanistan: A Human Rights Tragedy Ten Years After 9/11, Hayat Alvi

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Ten years after the September 11th attacks in the United States and the military campaign in Afghanistan, there is some good news, but unfortunately still much bad news pertaining to women in Afghanistan. The patterns of politics, security/military operations, religious fanaticism, heavily patriarchal structures and practices, and ongoing insurgent violence continue to threaten girls and women in the most insidious ways. Although women’s rights and freedoms in Afghanistan have finally entered the radar screen of the international community’s consciousness, they still linger in the margins in many respects.

Socio-cultural and extremist religious elements continue to pose serious obstacles to reconstruction …

Earthquakes And Expectations In Haiti And Chile, Robert Funk

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Although 2010 was a bicentenary year for many countries in Latin America, that the year was a memorable one for Chileans is due less to celebrations of independence than to two disasters— one natural and one man-made—and to the country’s response to them. The usual year-end retrospectives tended to emphasize the February 27 earthquake and the accident and rescue at the San José mine much more than the light shows and other forgettable pyrotechnics of the bicentenary. But as with the bicentenary, both the earthquake and the San José disaster enabled the authorities and the average Chilean to indulge in …

The Perils Of Walking Fast And Walking Far, Walter Lotze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When Haitian President René Préval early in January 2011 lambasted the international community for riding roughshod over his country’s sovereignty and his government, and called for greater Haitian ownership over the aid and recovery effort in his country, he highlighted a frustration which has been noted by so many other nations before: while international aid efforts are welcome and usually do provide critical relief to the targeted populations in the short term, they generally tend to undermine governments (and the faith of the people in their government) over the long term.

Remembering The Past And Struggling For Justice: The Contested Legacy Of Authoritarian Rule In Chile, Rebecca Evans

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973-1988. Vol. 2 of The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile. By Steven J. Stern. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 247pp.

and

Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998. Vol. 1 of The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile. By Steven J. Stern. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. 538pp.

and

The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights. By Naomi Roht-Arriaza. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. 256pp.

Security Now: Addressing The Needs Of Darfur’S Children, Nicole Judd

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the Darfur region of Sudan, over 2.3 million children have been affected by the ongoing genocide (UNICEF 2008). Unlike their adult counterparts, children are impacted more severely by the consequences of warfare as they are undergoing a fragile developmental process. While each one of the affected children has had their basic human rights violated in some form, the narrative of trauma differs between groups. Sexually-exploited girls, boy soldiers, unaccompanied children, and those who remain in under-resourced camps have experienced the protracted violence in unique ways. To mitigate the effects of war, each group should receive individualized humanitarian assistance as …

The Migration System Of Low-Skilled Migrants From Northern Thailand To Japan, Akiko Kuwajima

Asian Review

No abstract provided.

Implications And Recommendations For Help Measures And Preventive Programs, Pataya Ruenkaew

Asian Review

No abstract provided.

Entrapment Or Freedom: Enforcing Customary Property Rights Regimes In Common-Law Africa, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

This chapter examines customary property rights and the role of customary leaders in enforcing those property rights from an institutionalist perspective. The issue of societal benefit is at the forefront of this chapter, which proceeds in three parts. Subchapter 13.2 discusses the pervasiveness of customary tenure and customary authority structures throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and their genesis in the colonial era. Subchapter 13.3 notes the lack of consistency between statutory law and customary law, which leads to a pluralistic legal setting. This part also identifies the winners and losers within customary legal systems. Subchapter 13.4 discusses how we can evaluate customary …

Economic Development Under Dominant-Party Regimes, Christopher J. Gorud

Honors Theses

Case studies of economic development in Japan, Mexico, India, and Kenya examine the relationship between dominant-party regimes and developmental outcomes. This paper studies the variables of bureaucratic coherence and cohesion, corporatism, labor relations, and national developmentism as contributing factors to developmental success or failure in these states.