Political Science Commons^™

Around The Web: Art And China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A few of the stories related to art that have caught our eye recently:

1. The big story in Chinese art this week was the unveiling of a new Mao statue in Changsha (thanks to Shanghaiist for that link), which depicts the future Great Helmsman as a 32-year-old. The Mount Rushmore-esque monolith shows Mao as a romantic young revolutionary, gazing resolutely into the distance as his unusually long hair blows in the wind. Although one member of the design team said that they “were particularly concerned with differentiating it from past images,” the statue evokes the feel of “Chairman Mao …

Revival, Paul Katz

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Just over two months have passed since the devastation wrought by Typhoon Morakot, but the reconstruction of Siaolin Village 小林村 and its venerable Plains Aborigine (平埔族) culture is already well underway. A major step forward took place this past weekend with the successful restaging of the annual Siraya 西拉雅 ritual known as the “Siaolin Night Festival” (小林夜祭). This event was accompanied by the holding of a conference on the reconstruction of southern Taiwan’s Plains Aboriginal culture (「重建南臺平埔族群文化」學術研討會) and the official opening of an exhibition of artifacts from Siaolin’s Plains Aborigine culture (小林平埔文化特展) at the Chia-hsien Cultural Hall (甲仙地方文化館). Visiting dignitaries …

Some Expo-Disney Connections

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Needless to say, the Shanghai-Disney story, which has just taken a dramatic turn, is one that I’ve been following with great interest. How could I not, when the University of California-Irvine, where I teach and “China Beat” is based, is closer to the original Disney theme park than any other major research university? When my last book not only looked at Shanghai’s past but speculated a bit about what it may become in the near future as it continues to develop? When I’ve published a travel-themed commentary-cum-memoir that alluded to the role that visits to the Magic Kingdom in Anaheim …

Military Doctrine: A Reference Handbook, Bert Chapman

Libraries Research Publications

This is a 2009 Purdue Libraries brownbag presentation on my book Military Doctrine: A Reference Handbook. It describes how the U.S. and other countries formulate and implement strategies for conducting military operations and publishing literature describing how they conduct military operations. Additional contents include highlighting military strategy objectives of various countries and key military doctrine documents produced by these countries.

Coming Distractions: The Complete Fiction Of Lu Xun–A New Translation

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We’re pleased to present here an excerpt from the introduction of Julia Lovell’s forthcoming translation of Lu Xun’s fiction. Lovell examines the uses (and abuses) of Lu Xun’s writings by Mao Zedong in the decades after the author’s death, pointing out the ways in which the CCP smoothed over rough edges and ignored inconvenient truths as it disseminated Lu Xun’s work for the Chinese public to study. Since the reforms of the late 1970s, Lu Xun has been transformed yet again, and now occupies a status equivalent to that of Charles Dickens in Britain: while his work might be respected, …

Review: Making Religion, Making The State, Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A collection of essays on the religious revival in the People’s Republic of China,Making Religion, Making the State (Stanford UP, 2009) focuses on how the state has influenced the development of Chinese religious institutions and practices. But, as the title suggests, the state’s rehabilitation of different religions has been far from a one-way street, with both clergy and laity prompting the state to adjust its strategies. The essays demonstrate just how complicated this process has been thus far, and suggest that the dynamics of the current religious revival will remain subject to change, albeit under the shadow of a state …

Lijia Zhang: Virtually And In Person

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last Thursday, Lijia Zhang gave a talk at the University of California, Irvine campus to a packed room. In addition to discussing her book, Socialism is Great!, Zhang also discussed her experiences as a writer in China.

Currently in residence as a fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writer’s Program (for Iowa Citians, Zhang will be giving a reading at Prairie Lights todayat 4 p.m.), Zhang has also been hosting a talk show in China. Click here to see her interview with the Australian ambassador to China, Dr. Geoff Raby; you can find more videos at Blue Ocean Network’s …

Community Outreach And Empowerment Through Service Learning And Volunteerism, Christopher Malone

Cornerstone 2 Reports : Community Outreach and Empowerment Through Service Learning and Volunteerism

Pace University and Vote 18 are teaming up in 2009-2010 to launch an exciting program for NYC high school kids to provide them with an in-depth experience in political literacy and civic engagement. The NYC Political Literacy Project brings Vote 18 together with Pace University students to provide high schoolers with a dynamic way to get involved with local, state, and national politics. The object is to teach civic engagement and literacy through direct interaction with real campaigns, issues, events, and people in each of the high school students’ local communities. Students will engage the events of their communities through …

November Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

Healing the Past, Protecting the Future. By Alejandro Toledo. Americas Quarterly. July 13, 2009.

Advocate, November 2009, Vol. [21], No. [3], Gc Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

From the Editor’s Desk: Education Über Alles. (p. 2)

Adjuncting: The Collapse of the Tenure Track. Alison Powell (p. 4)

Health Issues: Rapid HIV Testing Returns to GC on Dec. 3. Collette Sosnowy (p. 5)

Political Analysis: The Militarization of Crowd Control. Justin Rogers-Cooper (p. 6)

Dispatches from the Front: Grading Papers is Hell (But It Doesn’t Have to Be). Talia Argondezzi (p. 8)

Books That Changed the Way We Think: Autonomy! Review of Autonomia: Post-Political Politics, edited by Sylvère Lotringer and Christian Marazzi (MIT Press, 2007). Ashley Dawson (p. 9)

Lessons in Terror at John …

The Hidden Costs Of Terror, Cath Collins

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In this month’s featured article, former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) gives a thoughtful and insightful account of how post-atrocity accounting and reconstruction feels ‘from the top’. What can an incoming head of state possibly do or say that will redress and repair the social and human costs of decades of violence? What about the centuries of injustice and inequality that fueled the flames? In fact Toledo did perhaps as much as he could, and more than many thought he would be able to, in recognising and beginning to address the ethnic, class, and institutional faultlines that tore Peru apart …

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2009, J. Reuben Clark Law Society, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law School

The Clark Memorandum

• Latter-day Saint Lawyers and the Public Square (Elder Quentin L. Cook)
• Originalist Roots of Substantive Due Process (Frederick Mark Gedicks)
• The Triumph of the Atonement (Elder Earl C. Tingey)
• The Heart of Lawyering (Kristin B. Gerdy)

Irish Political Parties And Policy Stances On European Integration, Kenneth Benoit

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Support for the political and economic integration of Europe has formed an increasingly important policy issue for Irish political parties as the European Union has grown in importance at both the domestic and European level. This article examines the political positioning of Irish parties on the issue of European integration, comparing these positions across parties and across time. For data, it draws on expert surveys taken at each election since 1992, a time series of coded manifestos as well as a computerized content analysis of the 2007 party manifestos. The article also reports the results of a previously unpublished expert …

The Peruvian Precedent, Katherine Hite

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the early days of September 2009, former Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) president Salomón Lerner received a series of sick anonymous messages: “We will do to you what we did to your dogs.” Lerner’s two pet dogs had been fatally poisoned. The poisoning and the death threats against Lerner joined other vicious retaliations, including continuous attacks on another powerful human rights symbol, Lika Mutal’s “The Eye that Cries,” a sculpture in Lima that mourns the tens of thousands of Peruvian victims of internal armed conflict. In a twisted way, the poisoning, death threats, and attacks show that Peruvian …

From Atrocities To Security: A Parable From Peru, Stephen James

Human Rights & Human Welfare

I have no expertise on the domestic politics of Peru, but I know that its often violent past shares much with its Latin American neighbours. Though not a practice confined to this region, I also know that events in the region have made notorious the chilling euphemism “disappearances.”

The Limits Of Executive Action For Human Rights, Henry Krisch

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Between 2001 and 2006 Alejandro Toledo served as President of Peru. He entered office committed to, in his words, “restoring the democratic institutions that had suffered from a steady deterioration during the previous decade,” (that is, during the rule of former President Alberto Fujimori). Moreover, he took up the task of providing Peruvian society with “a full accounting of the atrocities that had occurred in previous decades.” This personal commitment to re-establishing a functioning democracy based on the rule of law, a commitment based in part on his participation in the anti-Fujimori demonstrations, lead him to seek an honest accounting …

Double Take

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I took this photograph in Hanoi last summer, during my first trip to Vietnam, a brief but memorable one, the main purpose of which was to give lectures about the Journal of Asian Studies and the nature of scholarly publishing in the West. Many things I saw there made me think of China (either as it is today or as it was a decade or two ago), including this store. When I first took the photograph, I was reminded of a Danwei post I had seen a few months earlier that featured a May 4th commemorative graphic (from the Chinese …

Dirty Innards, Paul Katz

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Taiwan has recently been upset by the news that imports of American beef will soon resume, including internal organs. The resulting upheaval has featured more hysteria than science, but has nonetheless had an impact on the current government’s popularity, with President Ma’s approval rating plummeting by 14%. In the midst of the discomfort about potentially contaminated beef, however, concerns are also being raised about other forms of filth at the political and social levels:

1. Yet another KMT legislator is facing the end of his political career, with the Taiwan High Court yesterday upholding a lower court ruling annulling his …

Peter Hessler: Readings On The Web

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Peter Hessler will be speaking about his new book at the University of California, Irvine on February 16 (mark your calendars, Southern Californians!). Hessler will be in the midst of a tour for the book, Country Driving. We noticed a few readings by and about Hessler this week, and thought, in honor of his upcoming visit, to share them with you.

1. This week’s New Yorker features a piece by Hessler on Lishui, a Chinese city that has a booming business in export artwork. Click here for a slide show narrated by Hessler. (For another take on Chinese copies/forgeries in …

Bowling Green, Kentucky - City Ordinances (Mss 285), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscript Collection 285. Ordinances passed by the City of Bowling Green, Kentucky during the years 1914 to 1944. Includes list of ordinances; all the ordinances are not included with the collection. Also includes copies of various deeds and easements granted to the City of Bowling Green from 1885 to 1958.

In Case You Missed It: Repeat After Me

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In 2005, when Rachel DeWoskin published her memoir of living in Beijing during the 1990s, I was so excited that I immediately bought the first copy I saw in a Hong Kong bookstore. Foreign Babes in Beijing represents a rare female voice among the expats-in-China genre of books, and DeWoskin’s tales of working in public relations and acting in a Chinese soap opera are deftly and humorously written. It’s a book that I still recommend to people who want to know more about living in China, and I’m looking forward to seeing the film version that’s currently in development.

After …

Party Girl

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Taken in a packed Christian service I attended out of curiosity at a wannabe mega-church in Beijing. While the passionately Christian Chinese acquaintance I went with stood reverent and modest by my side, this girl happened to step into my shot.”

–Alec Ash

The Curious Case Of Jia Junpeng, Or The Power Of Symbolic Appropriation In Chinese Cyberspace, Guobing Yang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

An Uncanny Story[1]

On July 16, 2009, an anonymous internet user in a popular Baidu discussion forum posted a message titled “Jia Junpeng, your mother wants you to go home to eat.” The message has only twelve Chinese characters in its title and has no other content. Yet it got 3,000 responses within five hours, responses that range from the routine socializing type (“Support!” “Interesting!”) to the funny and sarcastic (“I am not going to eat at home today. I’m eating in the Internet bar. Please pass on my message to my mom.”). Within one day, it received seven million …

10/19 Reader

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. This is a rather belated link, but in case you missed it at China Digital Times, you might be interested to read their translation of a piece on “‘The Wall’ and ‘Climbing Over the Wall’” by Tu Zifang from Southern Metropolis Weekly.

For so many years, the busiest people on the Chinese internet are those who make the Wall software and the “Climbing the Wall” software. It has been said that those people all have something in common: 1. They are all Chinese, 2. They all made a fortune, 3. They all have studied in the US. The only …

Vietnam And Afghanistan: Lessons In Disaster?, Nicholas Hayes

University Chair in Critical Thinking Publications

No abstract provided.

Response To “Islamic Fundamentalism: An Ignored Specter In The Xinjiang Riot”, Mark Elliott

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat has run several pieces recently on the Xinjiang riots. On October 2, we featured Rian Thum’s “The Ethnicization of Discontent in Xinjiang,” which argued that the riots had raised ethnic tensions in the region. A few days later, we published “Islamic Fundamentalism: An Ignored Specter in the Xinjiang Riot,” written by Liang Zheng. Zheng argued that the foreign media had ignored indications that the riots were instigated by fundamentalists from southern Xinjiang, an argument that preserves the notion of ethnic harmony in Urumqi itself.

Today we run a response to Zheng’s argument from Mark Elliott, Professor of Chinese …

Why We Don't Understand The Rule Of Law, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

This paper presents an assessment of current theories of law and their continuing failure to account in a convincing way for the rule of law as an ideal that guides and reassures modern democratic societies. It then explores the possibility that emerging understandings of human evolution and brain function may help us understand the process of convention making in a way that could reveal the underlying moral and epistemological context of law and allow us to identify a complete set of standards for the rule of law in human societies.

Yes, You Too Can “Win In China”: An Interview With Filmmaker Ole Schell, Dustin Wright

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There has understandably been no shortage of commentary on China’s rapid economic development. Much like Japan’s economic “miracle” of the last century, this other industrialization in East Asia has generated considerable discussion, both in academia and popular media. No doubt, much of the discussion rests on a healthy crop of skepticism regarding the actual sustainability of China’s growth. However, though export growth has slowed since the boom apex in 2007, the country’s economy is nonetheless continuing to grow and many observers maintain that China is surviving the global recession better than any other major economy.

But as both domestic and …

Barkley, David M., 1906-1983 (Sc 2051), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Small Collection 2051. Three letters to David M. Barkley, Paducah, Kentucky, from Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, thanking him for good wishes and expressing regard for Barkely's father, Vice President Alben W. Barkley. An image of one of the letters, dated 14 November 1970 , can be found as an additional file.

Talks By Jeff Wasserstrom In Heidelberg

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Jeff Wasserstrom will be giving several talks at the University of Heidelberg over the next few days in the series “China Beat–Mega-Events and Recent Trends in Transcultural China”:

Thursday, October 15

“New Possibilities and Old Patterns in Publishing in and about China,” with a response by poet Bei Ling

Friday, October 16

“Mega-Events and the Rise of Global Cities: The Shanghai World Expo in Historical and Comparative Perspective”

Monday, October 19

“Chatter about China in the Global Public Sphere: From the Boxer Crisis to the Beijing Games and Beyond”

Details about these events are available here.