Asian Studies Commons^™

Supporting Examination Reform In Nepal, Mee Young Han

Teacher India

ACER is helping to ensure that school assessment in Nepal focuses on testing higher-order thinking skills.

Understanding Global Change: From Documentation And Collaboration To Social Transformation, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

The conclusion to the book situates the chapters within four programs of anthropological research on climate change: (1) documentation of local impacts of and adaptations to climate change, (2) connections to socioeconomic and political contexts, (3) collaborations with nonanthropologists, and (4) activism and social transformation. The final section notes the persistent challenges to creating positive change and meaningful research outcomes. It highlights some examples of success and outlines future directions for politically engaged anthropological work around climate change.

Intangible Cultural Heritage In Asia: Traditions In Transition, Ziying You, Patricia Anne Hardwick

All Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Variety Of Social Innovation Strategies: Case Studies From Thailand And Taiwan, Istvan Rado, Shekh Mohammad Altafur Rahman

Asian Review

There is widespread agreement among theorists of social innovation that the term encompasses both a product dimension to serve social needs, as well as a process dimension leading to the empowerment of vulnerable groups in society. This definition allows for a number of innovation strategies employed by social enterprises that fulfill these requirements. In this paper we will illustrate how these philosophical premises determine divergent conceptions of the product, process, and empowerment dimensions. Building on seven case studies of social enterprises in Thailand and Taiwan pursuing different social innovation approaches will show that it can be understood as either empowerment …

Tracing Biometric Assemblages In India’S Surveillance State: Reproducing Colonial Logics, Reifying Caste Purity, And Quelling Dissent Through Aadhaar, Priya Prabhakar

Scripps Senior Theses

Tracing Biometric Assemblages in India’s Surveillance State seeks to understand the historical conditions that rendered the nation-state of India as having the world’s largest biometric surveillance system: Aadhaar. Surveillance practices used by the British Raj mirrors the current social order of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as they use surveillance to similar ends in today’s political economy, through the intersecting forces of neoliberalism and ethnonationalism. This thesis is an exploration into how India’s current surveillance regimes cultivate biometric surveillant assemblages through Aadhaar. Contrary to claims that Aadhaar was created to empower the poor, I argue that these surveillance regimes …

Living Rivers, Cosmopolitan Activism, And Environmental Justice In The Bengal Delta, Daniel Adel

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis explores the social movements and civil society activism to protect the rivers that flow through Bangladesh—the cradle and terminal delta floodplain of the transboundary Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna river systems—, as well as ways to build regional cooperation and watershed democracy in South Asia. The research drew on four overarching fields of study: environmental justice, southern environmentalism, ecological nationalism, and environmental governance. These four bodies of scholarship helped address the overarching question: how are civil society organizations analyzing and responding to the water diversions and degradation of Bangladesh’s transboundary rivers? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with civil society organizations …

Beyond Perry's Black Ships: The Emergence Of United States-Japanese Diplomatic Relations, 1840s-1870s, Michelle Blackburn

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The narrative of Commodore Perry single-handedly opening Japan to the outside world has been accepted as common knowledge. Scholars agree that Perry did not have any assistance whatsoever. When reading about how Perry opened the isolated country, the tactics scholars write about include his tough demeanor, violence, and cold persistence that persuaded the Japanese to see reason and open a dialogue with the United States Navy. Scholars have continued to accept this narrative as fact because of primary sources like Perry's journal that gives details on how he exerted dominance over the Japanese and pressured them into agreeing with him …

Allegories Of Neoliberalism : Contemporary South Asian Fictions, Forms Of Appearance, And The Critique Of Capitalism, Zayed Sarker Hasan Al

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In his book After Critique, Mitchum Huehls writes that neoliberalism is “the socio-cultural dominant” of our contemporary moment. In this study, I ask: if neoliberalism is indeed the socio-cultural dominant today, how have contemporary South Asian fictions responded to it? Drawing upon Fredric Jameson’s hypothesis that all literary works are allegorical, I argue that in contemporary South Asian fictions, the representation of neoliberalism has often taken two different historical trajectories: apprehension of it as a structure of feeling, and critique of its corrosive effects on society and the planet. Drawing upon contemporary scholarship, I outline a Marxist theory of neoliberalism. …

Chai And Conversation: Crafting Field Identities And Archaeological Practice In South Asia, Teresa Raczek, Namita S. Sugandhi

Faculty Articles

In this article, we present examples from four research projects in India that were influenced by the values and ethics of decolonized and participatory research, and shaped by engendered perspectives. Each project built on earlier experiences that forced us to critically examine the ways we engaged with participants, crafted our field identities, and formed relationships. Using insights from linguistic anthropology and attending to intersectional inequalities and the construction of epistemic authority, we showcase how conducting an ethnography of communication and employing tactics of intersubjectivity influenced archaeological outcomes. We argue that close attention to context of communication, identity expression, and intersectional …

Geography, Trade, And Internal Migration In China, Lin Ma, Yang Tang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper quantitatively studies the local welfare impacts of inter-city migration in China. We structurally estimate a trade model with endogenous migration decisions using data from 279 prefecture-level cities. The results suggest that inflows of migrant workers increase welfare in the destination cities between 2000 and 2005 despite their negative impacts on congestion and nominal wage. The positive local impacts of migration depend crucially on the endogenous firm entry. The positive impacts in the destination cities also spill over to the neighboring cities through inter-city trade, often leading to higher welfare gains in the nearby cities than the destination cities …

Using Online Tutorials To Teach The Accounting Cycle, Tracey Chunqi Zhang, Lay Chin Low, Poh Sun Seow

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The accounting cycle is an important yet difficult topic for introductory financial accounting students to learn. These students often lack the business context to understand the accounting cycle and find the traditional teaching approach dry. This problem motivates the authors to examine whether a blended learning approach via online tutorials can improve students’ perceived knowledge of the accounting cycle for the undergraduate introductory financial accounting course. The authors developed four innovative online tutorials with a coherent storyline to enable students to learn the accounting cycle and to supplement in-class learning. To test the effectiveness of online tutorials, an independent survey …

Issues And Perspective On The Covid-19 And Nepal: An Introduction, Ambika P. Adhikari, Basu Sharma

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Even though Nepal has relatively fewer Covid-19 cases as of 24 September 2020 (about 70,000 cases and more than 450 deaths), the numbers are on the rise. If this trend continues for a while, the likely consequences of the Pandemic would be no less severe than elsewhere. Further, Nepal’s next-door neighbor India is now experiencing a rapid rise in the virus infection rate and virus-related death toll. In fact, as of 24 September, 2020, India is seeing some about six million total Covid-19 cases, and more than 92,000 deaths. As India and Nepal have open borders, and as India is …

Open University Of Nepal Initiative Lessons Learned From Designing An Institution Of Higher Learning, Pramod Dhakal, Drona P. Rasali, Ambika P. Adhikari, Raju Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

A group of Nepali diaspora members, represented by the Non-Resident Nepali Association (NRNA), started a campaign in 2009 to establish the Open University of Nepal (OUN) in partnership with the government of Nepal. Their motivation was to develop a quality university for the masses by mobilizing local, diaspora, and international collaborators for producing and disseminating knowledge in the public domain. The university was subsequently established in 2017 but it drifted away from many of the original objectives. Most critically, it embraced distance education as its central function while setting aside the aspiration of producing and sharing knowledge under the public …

Performance Of Cross-Border Acquisitions: Evidence From China, Yuanyuan Fan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The number of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in China has increased dramatically in recent years. Under China’s “go global” strategy, Chinese firms are devoting more capital and time to developing their overseas business. Cross-border M&As make up a large proportion of these activities. Therefore, it is crucial to determine what factors affect the performance of cross-border acquisitions.

Previous studies show that the acquirers’ post-merger performance is affected by various factors. Those papers mainly focus on domestic M&As. However, cross-border M&As also have unique features. In this study, I focus on Chinese cross-border acquisitions and the factors that affect the …

The Erosion Of Press Freedom: An Examination Of Hong Kong’S Book Publishing And Journalism Industries Post-Handover, Salonee Goel

CMC Senior Theses

Hong Kong was once touted for the openness of its press and its vibrant independent publishing scene. Now, seemingly reputable news organizations, such as the South China Morning Post, are undergoing editorial shifts and engaging in self-censorship while independent book publishers are being replaced by Chinese state-owned companies. These changes are a result of years of direct and indirect pressure on these industries by the Chinese government, which began even before the 1997 handover. In the past decade, these tactics have become more overt and their effects on the city’s news organizations and book publishers are increasingly visible. Through interviews …

Competition, Markups, And Gains From Trade: A Quantitative Analysis Of China Between 1995 And 2004, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Guiying Laura Wu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper provides a quantitative analysis of gains from trade in a model with head-to-head competition using Chinese firm-level data from Economic Censuses in 1995 and 2004. We find a significant reduction in trade cost during this period, and total gains from such improved openness during this period is 7.1%. The gains are decomposed into a Ricardian component and two pro-competitive ones. The pro-competitive effects account for 20% of the total gains. Moreover, the total gains from trade are 13 − 31% larger than what would result from the formula provided by ACR (Arkolakis et al., 2012), which nests a …

Singapore In The Global Value Chains, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this chapter, we analyze the participation of Singapore in the global value chains (GVC): how much of its gross exports are GVC-related trade, how downstream it is, and which countries are its key upstream and downstream trade partners. This is done at both the country aggregate and at the sector level. New formulas are proposed in the gross export decomposition framework of Koopman, Wang and Wei (2014) and Borin and Mancini (2017), to characterize a country/industry’s downstreamness in the GVC and the importance of each trade partner in its backward/forward linkages. Singapore is found to start off with a …

Political Financing Reform: Politics, Policies, And Patronage In Malaysia, Sebastian Carl Dettman, Edmund Terence Gomez

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article analyses the evolution of political finance reform debates in Malaysia, one of the world’s most durable electoral authoritarian regimes. While the reliance of the dominant party, UMNO, on unfettered resources remained unchanged, crises in Malaysia’s political environment allowed civil society actors to concretise abstract debates over reform into specific proposals. Drawing from interviews, public statements and observation, two distinct periods in this reform debate are analysed: after Najib Razak assumed power in 2009, following the unprecedented electoral success of the opposition during the 2008 general election; and after the 1MDB scandal broke in 2015. In both periods, civil …

Commentary: What Lies Ahead? Considering The Future Of A ‘New’ Vietnamese Higher Education, Yasmin Y. Ortiga

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this commentary, Ortiga discusses two main tensions in how the authors in this volume portray the future of Vietnamese higher education. The first tension is the issue of autonomy or how universities must redefine their purpose and role in Vietnamese society as the state loosens its monopoly over higher education. Meanwhile, the second tension is the issue of privatisation or whether for-profit corporations and private agencies should play an increasing role in providing higher education services in the country. In reflecting on the future, Ortiga compares the case of Vietnam to higher education systems in neighbouring countries like the …

China’S Regulatory Approach To The Sharing Economy: A Perspective On Ride-Hailing, Huiqin Jiang, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

While the sharing economy brings significant social benefits in China, it comes with regulatory challenges that are novel and unpredictable. How should regulators handle these challenges? This paper offers fresh insights into the regulatory approach to the ride-hailing industry, the most comprehensively regulated sharing industry in China. A historical review identifies three regulatory approaches deployed to date: self-regulation, market-based regulation and government regulation. Self-regulation relies on the platforms with incentive to provide better service for greater profit, and to deal with sharing-specific challenges. Market-based regulation invites rivals to keep a watchful eye on other players, in order to enhance their …