Asian Studies Commons^™

Food Green Cities For Urban Sustainability (Book), Ambika P. Adhikari, Keshav Bhattarai, Drona Rasali, Sunil Babu Shrestha

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

The book delves into the essential role of urban agriculture, forestry, and sustainable practices in ensuring food security while addressing the challenges of climate change and urbanization. It highlights urban greening and sustainable land use as strategies to create livable cities and mitigate environmental degradation. Through its chapters, the book offers a rich compilation of research, practical solutions, and transferable strategies for application in other developing countries.

Urban Forestry In Selected Nepali And Us Cities: Assessment, Analysis, And Recommendations, Ambika P. Adhikari, Keshav Bhattarai

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Urban forest delivers several benefits to urban area residents. The benefits include shade, dust control, noise mitigation, water retention, ecological services, pedestrian comfort, aesthetic improvements, and economic benefit to the community, including the provision of food. Nepali urban areas face several environmental and infrastructure-related problems that include air and noise pollution, frequent street flooding, and unclean roads and sidewalks. Further, a vast majority of pedestrians in cities face discomforting, unpleasant, unhygienic, and unsafe conditions. Urban forests can help alleviate many of these problems at a low cost as trees provide shade to the pedestrians, absorb dust and noise, and can …

The 2024 Carlisle Conference On The Pla: Protracted War Against The Prc, Joshua Arostegui

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

The US Army War College’s 2024 Carlisle Conference on the People’s Liberation Army was held on October 16 and 17 at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. The conference featured keynote speakers from the US Department of Defense and the think-tank community, and panels focused on assessing the People’s Republic of China’s understanding of and capability to carry out a protracted war in the Indo-Pacific. The conference brought together over 100 participants from government, military, US Intelligence Community, academic, and think-tank organizations.

The conference papers were authored by expert speakers and panelists and were designed to provide insight into key People’s Republic of …

On The Future Of The Blue Economy: Comparing Indonesia’S Role In The Asean And Lac Regions, Darynaufal Mulyaman, Bambang Dwi Waluyo, Dewi Aulia Maharani

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

This study aims to determine the concrete development and implementation of blue economy programs in the future by examining Indonesia's role in the context of international political economy, particularly through maritime diplomacy and cross-regional cooperation such as ASEAN, the Indonesia-Latin America and Caribbean Business Forum INA-LAC, and the Alliance of Island States AIS. Using a constructivist approach, this study concludes that Indonesia, as a middle-power country, utilises soft resources, such as maritime identity, sustainability values, and diplomatic leadership, to strengthen its position in global blue economy governance. The results of the study show that Indonesia has strategic potential for developing …

Hosts, Scouts, And Female Indentured Sexual Servitude In Contemporary Japan, Caroline Norma, Seiya Morita

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article sweeps away glossy abstractions obscuring the indenturing of women in sexual servitude in Japan. These abstractions were generated by anthropologists writing in English in the first two decades of the 21^st century who inverted the relationship between perpetrator and victim to suggest that female customers exploited hosts. To overturn this view and expose the ‘gendered reality that [i]s really going on’ in Japan, this article differently explains from a feminist perspective how present-day host and scout businesses indenture Japanese women in sexual servitude. This role is one of both procuring victims as well as keeping young women …

The Judicial Containment Of Adivasi Rights Across India's Mineral Belt, Sajni S. Sheth-Voss

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines how Adivasi resistance to mining-induced dispossession across India’s mineral belt is increasingly channeled into the judiciary, arguing that this shift functions as a mechanism of containment rather than a pathway to justice. Despite a robust legal framework designed to protect Adivasi land and consent rights, systematic non-enforcement and political closure have hollowed out policy and electoral channels, pushing communities into litigation as a last resort. Drawing on scholarship in political economy, legal studies, and political ecology, alongside primary sources including court documents and activist statements, this study follows how disputes move across institutions and are ultimately reshaped …

A Reevaluation Of South Korea’S Economic Rise: The Defense Industrial Base, Timothy Lee

CMC Senior Theses

This paper seeks to reexamine how the Republic of Korea (ROK) was able to rise from one of the world's poorest economies after the Korean War to a leading international defense exporter today. Existing development theories—such as dependency theory, export-led industrialization, and world-systems theory—each offer partial explanations but none fully accounts for the ROK's rapid economic growth. To address this gap, the paper analyzes U.S. foreign aid data, U.S. national security documents, and the economic data of the ROK’s chaebols, family-owned business conglomerates, to reevaluate two key variables: the United States' strategic imperative to contain communism during the Cold War, …

Pork, Parties, And Power: Money Politics In Japanese Political Parties, Maya Maranto

HMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the proposition that the LDP utilizes money politics more than opposition parties in Japan, which could explain why the LDP has remained largely dominant since 1955. Focusing on the House of Representatives elections in 2017, 2021, and 2024, I analyze eight case studies, examine the University of Tokyo-Asahi Shimbun Elite Candidate Survey covering over 90 percent of candidates, and quantitatively analyze party manifestos. I operationalize money politics as reliance on support organizations, support for infrastructure and agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, and support for regional funding. I find that, all measures taken together, the LDP remains the most …

Making Sense Of East Asian Languages, Keiko Konoeda, Linh Hoang, Geizuo Mahai, Nary Phon, Georgia Green, Ana Grieve, James Soifer

Open Educational Resources

In Winter 2026, the Bates College Asian Studies course “Making Sense of East Asian Languages” launched this open collection of supplementary readings. This collection helps students of Chinese and Japanese explore the histories behind the languages they study. Often, language courses focus on mastering a "standard" version without looking at its context. These readings bridge that gap.

Each entry investigates how certain language varieties became the national standard and what happened to other varieties and languages that were left out. By looking at these historical and colonial contexts, the collection helps students understand the power dynamics that shape language today. …

News Media Sentiment Toward Chinese Ai: A Comparative Analysis With Belt And Road Initiative Involvement And Public Opinion On China, Asya Vaisberg

Pomona Senior Theses

This study evaluates different countries' news media’s sentiment towards Chinese AI, between May 2023 and May 2024, by using Microsoft Azure NLP Sentiment Analysis. The results are then compared with the country’s public opinion on China and its involvement in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For this study 12 countries have been selected which are USA, Australia, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, Romania, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Philippines, Brazil, and Egypt. For each one, GNews Application Programming Interface (API), which has access to more than 60,000 global news sources, was used to aggregate relevant news articles based on queried keywords. The collected …

Place-Branding In The Japanese Agricultural Industry: A Discourse Analysis Of National, Prefectural, Municipal, And Producer Perspectives, Miyu L. Owada

Pomona Senior Theses

This essay is a case study of place-based agricultural branding in Japan, particularly in the sub-urban context of Mitaka City, Tokyo. Shifting the focus from rural revitalization models typically studied in this field, this study brings sub-urban landscapes into the conversation. Although existing studies assume a top-down policy is implemented for agricultural branding in Japan, the study assesses to what extent this structure holds true for the Mitaka context, comparing narratives across four tiers: the national Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF), the prefectural Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG), the municipal Mitaka City and Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) Tokyo Musashi …

Confucian Thought As A Strategic Veil: How Western Strategy Should Correctly Compete With China, Owen Miller

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The rise of the People's Republic of China as a peer competitor to the United States constitutes the defining geopolitical challenge of the twenty-first century, but even so, Western strategic analysis has consistently failed to engage China on its own terms. The recurrent pattern of Western misinterpretation results from projecting Western assumptions onto a state whose institutional and cultural drivers operate under fundamentally different premises, where key elements of Chinese strategic culture and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) instrumentalization of Confucianism as a moral veil are instruments of domestic legitimacy and external strategic narrative. The United States must recognize that …

The Evolving Beijing Consensus: Chinese Communist Party Political Control And Economic Trade Offs, Ian Murphy

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

China’s rapid economic rise and unique development trajectory have long been the subject of scholarly debate, often framed through the concept of the “Beijing Consensus” as an alternative to the Washington Consensus. While initial conceptualizations highlight innovation, sustainability, and national sovereignty, later analyses highlighted elements like state capitalism and authoritarianism, particularly in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This paper argues that the Beijing Consensus is undergoing a significant evolution under Chairman Xi Jinping, increasingly prioritizing the Chinese Communist Party’s political security, regime stability, and ideological control at the expense of economic growth. This marks a notable departure …

Connectivity And Selective Rural Migration, Lin Ma, Yuan Mei, Qunfeng Wu, Mingzhi Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study how infrastructure shapes rural development using household panel data from a nationally representative sample of Chinese villages, matched to high-resolution highway maps. Reduced-form results show that road expansion between 2000 and 2015 operates mainly through reallocation, with less productive farmers scaling down or exiting and more productive farmers remaining and expanding. We quantify the aggregate and distributional consequences in a dynamic spatial equilibrium model with heterogeneous households and endogenous migration. Improved connectivity not only accelerates urbanization, roughly doubling the speed of convergence, but also increases aggregate rural output by 2.2 to 5.3 percent in the long run, even …

Mind The Gap: Comparing Asian American And White American Experiences In Integrated Primary Care, Tenzin Miller-Dorjee

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study explores Asian American and White American adults’ experiences of integrated primary care (IPC), focusing on patient satisfaction and perceived provider cultural competence. Although IPC models are intended to improve access to behavioral health services, it remains important to examine whether these models are experienced as culturally responsive and equitable across racial groups. This study used a quantitative, cross-sectional survey design with 550 adults in the United States who reported experience with IPC. Patient satisfaction was assessed using the Patient Experience of Integrated Care Scale (PEICS), and perceived provider cultural competence was assessed using the Iowa Cultural Understanding Assessment–Client …

Modelling Nature? The Digital Twinning And Untwinning Of Urban Farms, Prerona Das, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Data-driven solutions and innovations have been extended to various industries, including agriculture, to increase efficiency. With the emergence of smart farming and agriculture 4.0, advanced technologies such as IoT, big data, machine learning, and cloud computing are increasingly integrated into farming. Among these, technologies such as digital models, digital twins and the metaverse are now used to control various farming activities remotely based on real-time data. However agricultural ecosystems, involving uncertain nature-based factors and complex human-nature interactions cannot always be accurately represented or predicted by digital models. Digital models aim to reduce natural environments into controllable game-like situations and undermine …

Smu Launches Resilient Workforces Institute To Strengthen Singapore’S Workforce In The Age Of Ai, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

Singapore Management University (SMU) announced the launch of the Resilient Workforces Institute (ResWORK), a new university-level research institute advancing workforce resilience and lifelong learning amid accelerating technological change. It is among the first institutes in Singapore and the region to jointly study adult-learning and the future of work through an integrated, interdisciplinary lens spanning economics, management, behavioural science and technology.

Languages Of Marginalization: Educational Inequality And Identity Formation Among Rohingya Refugees In Bangladesh, Md Khalid Rahman

Sustainability and Social Justice

This research paper investigates how language-of-instruction policies shape educational inequality and identity formation among Rohingya refugee children living in protracted displacement in Cox’ Bazar, Bangladesh. Analyzed from a human right–based framework, the study examines whether existing educational policies align with international legal standards on the right to education, including the UDHR, ICESCR, Child Convention and SDG 4. While these frameworks guarantee non-discriminatory and inclusive access to education, the reality in Cox’s Bazar reveals a persistent gap between normative commitments and policy implementation. Moreover, the study explores how the exclusion of both the host language (Bangla) and the native Rohingya language …

International Law, The Courts, And The Political Branches Of Singapore: Painting A Complete Picture, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In line with Singapore's vision of the separation of powers, the courts' duty is primarily to give effect to domestic law; the political branches take the lead in engaging with international law. A study of Singapore's interface with international law would therefore be incomplete were it to consider only the courts' role and not the political branches' model of international law as primarily a guarantor of Singapore's sovereignty and standing as a participant on the international stage. The political branches have been circumspect in engaging with international law in other areas, such as human rights, preferring a specifically Singaporean vision …

The Shareholder’S Standing To Challenge The Exercise Of Directorial Power: Tianrui (International) Holding Company V China Shanshui Cement Group Ltd, Pearlie M. C. Koh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

An enduring problem with the proper purposes duty is the apparent right of the shareholder to enforce the same despite the duty being owed to the company. The cases on the proper purpose duty have thus far simply assumed the right of the shareholder to do so without dealing with the question of standing. In Tianrui (International) Holding Company Ltd v China Shanshui Cement Group Ltd, the Privy Council dealt with this issue directly and affirmed the shareholder's right to bring the action on the basis of the statutory contract constituted by the memorandum and articles of association of the …