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The Twelfth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 12)
The Twelfth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 12) is a global space in which Asia scholars and social and cultural actors from all over the world engage in dialogues on Asia that transcend boundaries between academic disciplines and geographic regions. The twelfth edition of ICAS was held from 24 to 28 August 2021.
The special focus of ICAS 12 was “Crafting a Global Future”; presentations at ICAS 12 involved topics from all Asian Studies disciplines in the broadest possible sense. Due to the global circumstances, ICAS 12 manifested its theme in a dynamic virtual form. Unlike the previous editions, which were hosted in different countries together with local partners, ICAS 12 was organized for the first time entirely online by the ICAS Secretariat in Leiden in partnership with Kyoto Seika University, Japan.
The Twelfth International Convention of Asia Scholars facilitated interdisciplinary dialogues on Asia and attracted 1500 scholars, civil society representatives, practitioners, publishers and artists who gathered online in more than 300 live discussion sessions to exchange and discuss their latest research. For a more detailed report on ICAS 12, check out our article in IIAS’s The Newsletter, ICAS 12: A Retrospective.
The ICAS Conference Proceedings is doubtlessly a mere excerpt of the richness and diversity of ICAS 12. These 94 articles represent the advancements in the field of Asian Studies and depict the ongoing research on the themes of Arts, Economy, Development and Urbanization, Education and Knowledge, Environment and Climate Change, Gender and Diversity, Heritage and Culture, History, Language and Literature, Media and the Digital Age, Migration and Diasporas, Philosophy, Region and Beliefs, Politics and International Relations and Society and Identity.
View Organisational Board
- Conference date: August 24, 2021 - August 28, 2021
- Location: Kyoto, Japan (online conference)
- ISBN: 9789048557820
- Volume number: 1
- Published: 01 June 2022
21 - 40 of 94 results
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The Ancient Southern Silk Road and the Contemporary One Belt and One Road in Southwest China Case study of Kunming City in Yunnan Province
Authors: Yun Gao & Adrian PittsKunming is the capital of Yunnan Province which shares borders with Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar. The area of Yunnan province, accounts for only 4.1% of the area of the whole country, but within its boundaries can be found 50% of higher plants species found in China; the Province also hosts representatives of 25 different ethnic groups. Kunming is situated in a mountainous area so city development was constrained by topography but human endeavour was demonstrated to connect to the outside world. Many traditional trails and trading routes are connected to the ancient Southern Silk Road (or Tea and Horse Road) in the area of Yunnan province. The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, built in 1910, promoted the vigorous development of trade in commodities and cultural exchanges with other countries, and had significant impacts on the transformation of Kunming city. In the contemporary era, the expansion and development of Kunming was promoted by the “New Silk Road Economic Belt” proposed in the region since 2013 and the United Nation’s 15th Biodiversity Conference was held in Kunming in October 2021. This links to the Government's 14th five-year plan for the region: to create a world-class ‘green energy brand’, taking advantage of existing green energy, green food, and large-scale health industries in the province. This project investigates historical and contemporary transformation of the urban form in Kunming city and explores how the current planning discourses such as green city and contemporary technology supported transportation and communication. These also combined with the reconstructed concepts of ‘Eternal Spring City’ and ‘Southern Silk Road’, in trying to address the needs of the development of the urban space.
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Kyoto as a Palimpsest for Textual Heritage Or How to Rewrite a Historic Urban Space
More LessRecently, Kyoto has become one of the most popular touristic destination in Asia, attracting each year a growing number of visitors. This development has a double-faced consequence: greater efforts for the preservation of major historical sites, and at the same time a faster demolition of typical cityscapes and traditional neighborhoods not strictly tied to touristic routes. The aim seems to revert large portions of the urban space into more profitable and market-oriented facilities: hotels, parking lots, luxury apartments. Drawing both on previous theories from the critical heritage studies field, especially those that re-evaluate the necessity of forgetting and destroying as an unavoidable part of the heritagization process itself, and both on the original idea of “textual heritage” proposed by the author, this paper aims to reflect on practices of valorization, demolition and “rewriting” of both the urban spaces of Kyoto, from an interdisciplinary point of view that sees the city as a textual palimpsest embodying past memories and cultural practices. Is it possible to compare processes of collation and reconstruction of premodern texts and manuscripts – for example a modern critical edition of The Tale of Genji – with the recover of historic vernacular architectures in a city like Kyoto? How the expertise of philologists in seeking and reconstructing the textual archetype may inform the way citizenship of historical cities is felt, negotiated, and reconstructed in the present? Can the concept of Classics contribute to imagining new ways to preserve historical cities in the 21th century?
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The Impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative and the South China Sea Dispute on the Hedging Strategies of the Philippines and Vietnam Towards China
More LessHedging is an attractive strategy for governments, especially in Southeast Asia, as well as a popular academic lens for analyzing the foreign policy strategies of small and middle powers. The Philippines and Vietnam are among the countries which apply a hedging strategy towards the rising China. Both countries seek gains from their close political-diplomatic and economic engagement with Beijing, conducted both bilaterally and multilaterally via the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. At the same time, they follow omnidirectional political-diplomatic, economic and security relations to insure themselves from negative impacts stemming from their relations with China. Despite these fundamental similarities, the hedging strategies of the Philippines and Vietnam also vary considerably: Hanoi’s hedging strategy has been in the last decade very consistent and much more robust due to strong China-critical perceptions of the leadership, whereas Manila responded under the initially China-friendly President Duterte in a less planned, more ad hoc manner to Beijing’s policies and actions. Since mid-2019, though, the Philippines apply more confrontational measures towards China. This was a reaction to the lower than expected returns from the collaboration under the frame of the Belt and Road Initiative and China’s assertive behaviour in the South China Sea. However, neither the more confrontational Vietnamese policies nor the initially more cooperative Philippine policies resulted in an improvement of the security in the South China Sea.
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Negotiating the End of Extraterritoriality (1919-1946): A Project Proposal
More LessOften viewed as a 19th-century affair, extraterritorial courts continued to act as delineators of status and civilization in global diplomacy until the 1940’s. They perpetuated ‘unequal treaties’ with Asian and African states until they had met a perceived normative level of alignment with Western values. Developments such as the inclusion of many non-European states into the League of Nations in 1919 brought hope for many states subject to unequal treaties and extraterritorial courts for international reform. Many League members, particularly China, used their newfound position within international society to abolish these treaties and courts system. However, the diplomatic route proved to be unsuccessful, and the extraterritorial system not only remained entrenched but was reinforced by new hurdles. The League of Nations introduced new conceptions of ‘civilization’ and modernity, creating additional normative hurdles for non-European states to bridge. In this project, I analyse the politics behind the removal of extraterritoriality and how their demise was due to expediency rather than by the alignment of non-European states with Western law. This topic is part of an accepted future postdoctoral project that aims to examine the role of international organisations in the formation and evolution of international norms, to assess to what extent international organisations convey status and equal international personality.
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Non-Fiction Books on National Culture for Primary School Children in the Era Of Globalization: A Conceptual Study
Authors: Tu Anh Ha & Phuong Anh T. DangPurpose: The theoretical study aims to build a framework of writing non-fiction books on national culture for primary school children in the age of globalization so as to help children understand their identity and respect cultural differences as an educational solution to ensure cultural diversity and avoid cultural homogenization as a result of globalization. Methods: A literature review of related theories was carried out in order to build the theoretical framework. Findings: The framework includes the following components: contents, writing style, illustrations and length. Our findings point out that the contents of those books need to satisfy three requirements: (i) be able to create and construct “agency” and “identity”, (ii) integrate both global and local elements, (iii) and ensure cultural diversity. Regarding the writing style, the books need to have a logical structure with comprehensible language, accurate information, concrete examples that consider readers’ background with the tone that does not patronize children and brings the feeling that there is a real person behind the information. About illustrations, they need to be appealing and convey information related to the contents. The length should be suitable for the amount of vocabulary that children totally get the meaning. Moreover, it also depends on a specific with either opaque or transparent orthographies that can influence readers’ decoding fluency and the difficulty of the contents as well. Originality: The study contributes to building a theoretical framework as a suggestion for authors to follow to write non-fiction books on national culture for primary children in the age of globalization.
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Mrs Browne and the Bengalis:An Early Transcolonial Story of Domestic Service, 1816-1821
More LessIn 1816, the Indian-born Sydney merchant and landowner, William Browne, brought a group of Indian servants into the New South Wales colony to work for him. Three years later the colonial governor Lachlan Macquarie would hold a magisterial inquiry into the alleged mistreatment of these workers, and the workers were then sent back to India. This episode in Australian history is regarded as one of the very earliest of the fleeting and failed attempts to experiment with indentured Indian labour. In this paper, I draw upon the 1819 testimonies of Browne’s workers – reproduced as evidence for an 1828 British inquiry into slavery under the East India Company – to focus on the key role played by women, including Browne’s wife Sophia. Approaching the story from the perspective of women’s labour illuminates the often overlooked importance of carework in colonialism. This paper is part of an ARC Discovery project, Ayahs and Amahs: Transcolonial Servants in Australia and Britain 1780-1945, led by Victoria Haskins, with Claire Lowrie and Swapna Banerjee.
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When Jāwa Was Not Java: Sumatra in Pre-Modern Arabic Geographies
More LessThe article looks into pre-modern Arabic descriptions of Sumatra and discusses the conceptions and ideas of the island they present. Sumatra, the westernmost island of the Malay Archipelago, was the first part of the region to become familiar to Middle Eastern sailors and traders. It was on their way to China and served as a source of fresh water and food supplies, as well as camphor, benzoin, and other jungle products. The coastal areas of Sumatra were visited by Middle Eastern ships as early as the first centuries of Islam, which is reflected in Arabic geographies and travel accounts. Before 1450, these texts appear to contain more information on Sumatra than on the other islands of the archipelago. There can be distinguished three major areas in the island known to pre-modern Arab writers: the northern coast of Sumatra, the western coast facing the island of Nias, and the eastern coast in the vicinity of present-day Jambi and Palembang. Each of the areas has Arabic place names associated with it, which appear in geographical texts from the ninth up to the fifteenth century and beyond. Besides topographical data, Arabic sources provide ethnographic descriptions of local populations. The article offers a brief review of the accounts of Sumatra found in these texts and their authors’ ideas of pre-modern Sumatran geography and cultures.
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British Trade at Hakodate during the Boshin War
More LessThe Boshin War (1868-69) fought between loyalists to the Tokugawa Shogunate and an alliance of domains rallying around the Japanese emperor was a major turning point in Japanese history. Though foreign powers, Britain included, remained officially neutral during the larger part of this civil conflict, several foreign actors contradicted this position. Existing literature and popular histories assume that British actors were no exception and they are suspected to have favored the Imperial forces against the Tokugawa Shogunate despite official neutrality. Utilizing the British consular reports from Hakodate, I examine the activities of British merchants during the later stages of the Boshin War. Hakodate, an open port which switched hands several times during the conflict, was occupied for seven months by the so-called ‘Ezo Republic’ which offered the final resistance to new Meiji regime. During this occupation, the British consulate and British traders continued to operate and the sources they produced provide an on-the-ground insight into the reality of British trade and neutrality. I argue that British were actively involved in the conflict by the sales of weapons and other key military supplies, as well as in conveying troops for both sides. These risky business activities contradicted the official policy of neutrality but were tolerated by the consular authorities. This marked the peak in Hakodate’s foreign trade, at least for British merchants.
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Temporary Transformation of Thai New Middle Class into Lower Class in Labour Migration: A Case Study of Thai Technical Intern Trainees in Japan
More LessThe literature on the international migration of Thai workers, particularly unskilled labour during the 1970s and 1980s, emphasised the networks of family, relatives, and friends that enabled Thai workers’ migration and adaptation to life in host countries. Thai migrant workers throughout those periods were predominantly from the lower class with limited social capital. As a result, social networks played a critical role in the migratory process. However, there is an emerging trend of the Thai new middle class migrating to industrialised host countries as unskilled labourers. I argue that the need for temporary foreign labourers in host countries, together with the social capital of the Thai new middle class, results in a migratory pattern characterised by the temporary downward mobility of migrants’ social strata. By examining a case study of Thai workers in Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) who were employed temporarily by Japanese companies in 3D (dangerous, durable, dirty) jobs, this study illustrates the migratory pattern of young adults from rural Thailand who became unskilled workers in Japan. Social capital plays a critical role in this trend of migration for the new middle class. The role of social networks is lessened and partially replaced by an official migratory system organised by both sending and receiving countries. This study highlights the importance of transnationally considering migrants’ social strata to gain a better understanding of their migratory patterns.
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Defence is the Best Attack. Jesuit Astronomy as a Tool for Conversion in Early Modern Japan
More LessThis contribution examines the Jesuit adaptation of astronomy as a tool for proselytization in Japan, focusing on the first known work of Western science authored in the country: Pedro Gomez's De Sphaera (1593). Said work offers a snapshot of Western cosmology as part of a compendium, coupled with the Aristotelian theory of the soul and an exposition of Christian theology. Taken together, the trilogy served as a textbook for Japanese students preparing for priesthood. The utilization of astronomy for a theological education in Japan stands in stark contrast to the discomfort this science caused to the Catholic Church in 16th century Europe – here, cosmological discourse was routinely censored by ecclesiastic authorities seeking to defend theological dogma. This study discusses this apparent paradox: How a science considered subversive to the Catholic faith at home could be used to corroborate Church doctrine abroad. The argument first explores how the Jesuits were involved in the defence of traditional cosmology in 16th century Europe. A textual comparison between Gomez’s textbook and other prominent exponents of Jesuit astronomy in Europe then specifies what kind of knowledge he brought to Japan in order to illustrate the purpose it served in the missionary context.
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EU-Japan cooperation EPA: Wine and Motor vehicles: more than just tariff reduction: Deep Regulatory Cooperation through Free Trade Agreements
By Anke KennisThis brief paper aims to give an overview of the most important changes the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) brings to the wine and motor vehicles industry and why these changes have occurred. This paper analyses the most important changes to the wine and motor vehicles tariffs and regulations. The emphasis is on how regulatory cooperation between EU and Japan has reduced non-tariff barriers. By analysing the text of the EPA text and its annexes the paper aims to firstly, get an overview of the most important changes, and secondly, to understand why these changes could have occurred. After analysing the text of the EPA, the paper looks at the geo-political circumstances that could impact the level of regulatory cooperation between the EU and Japan. The main changes in both wine and motor vehicles are regarding tariffs, eradication of double-testing, recognition of certificates, accepting different processes, bottle size, and geographical indications. These are all forms in which regulatory cooperation can be manifested and show that the EU and Japan have developed a deep level of integration between their market regulations. This is partially the result of the benign relationship of trust that has been develop over the last decades between the two, but also the result of favourable geo-political and economic circumstances. Interviews with representatives on both sides have revealed that staying committed to trade liberalisation and taking a stance against protectionism formed important drivers. The US pulling out of the TPP and the TTIP caused the EU and Japan to put each other back on the priority list. The EU creating a free trade agreement with South Korea caused Japan to incentivise the negotiations due to risk of trade diversion.
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China’s New Silk Road in a Nordic Perspective: The Origins and Development of the Finland-China Rail Routes
Authors: Erja Kettunen & Claes G. AlvstamPrior research is scarce concerning transports by Nordic companies along the New Silk Road rail routes between Northern Europe and China. Due to geography, Finland has a favourable location for speedy rail transports to Asia compared to maritime transports. This paper focuses on two rail routes – Kouvola-Xi’an and Helsinki-Hefei – and investigates their origins, development, and use for exports and imports between Finland and China, as well as their extensions both in the Nordics and in Asia. Drawing on source materials from news archives and press releases, it is found that the traffic has increased strongly on one of the connections, whereas the other has faded. We analyze the reasons for this outcome and compare between the cases, and present possible explanations for the differences in operating the routes. We also find that the Finland-China rail routes are mainly used by Finnish exporters and importers, and less so by other Nordic companies, as Scandinavian countries are more easily accessed by sea transport. The different modes of transport differ from each other not only as to cost and time, but also regarding safety, reliability, and ecological impact, and it can be expected that in the future, sustainability will play a more significant role in the companies’ transport choices. Yet, railway traffic in Europe-Asia trade still constitutes a very small share of the entire volumes, even though the annual growth is impressive.
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The Sustainability of Crafts: Shifting the Paradigm of “Traditional Crafts”
Authors: Yuko Kikuchi & Hirotake ImanishiJapan is proud of its ‘traditional crafts’. However, the future of its crafts is by no means secure. The makers lack successors, supply chains are aging, materials are no longer available, while the new generation of customers have new tastes and the high prices fail to convince them. The rigidity of tradition and the reluctance to engage globally are hindrances to both marketing and sympathetically motivated research. A radical shake-up and paradigm shift is required. This paper combines the collaborating perspectives of a scientist-artist and an art historian, to explore the sustainability of crafts from cultural, economic and scientific perspectives. The research will focus on the case study of Kanazawa, the UNESCO designated city of crafts and folk art, and the surrounding Ishikawa prefecture which boasts the second highest number of ‘Living National Treasure’ residents in Japan after Kyoto. Moreover, Ishikawa’s Noto peninsula is regarded as the model of satoyama and satoumi sustainable living and has been designated Japan’s first ‘Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System’ (GIAHS) by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). By engaging with the current global debate on what it means to make ‘crafts’, the fieldwork and interviews gathered locally will be analyzed from multiple perspectives, with a view to determining where a sustainable future might be found and what actions could be taken to help generate a shift in paradigm that could provide crafts with a more certain future.
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The Promotion of Democracy and Japan’s and South Korea’s Official Development Assistance Possibilities and Limitations in the Asian Mode of Foreign Aid
Authors: Hyo-sook Kim & David PotterDemocracy promotion evolved into an international norm in the 1990s and has been one piece of the international development regime led by the Western developed countries. Since the 2000s, however, the rise of democratic emerging aid donors has been remarkable. However, it is unclear whether they could provide an alternative to the promotion of democracy and encourage the reconceptualization of this idea. This study is an attempt to add the potential of Asian development experiences and ideas as an alternative to the promotion of democracy led by Western countries with a special focus on assistance to the political dimension of development. To this end, this study examines Japan’s and South Korea’s democratization assistance, particularly international electoral assistance.
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Restoring Femininity through Consumption: Female Fans of Male Porn Actors in Japanese Jôsei-muke AVs
By Maiko KodakaThis paper looks at female fans of male porn actors in Jôsei-muke Adult Videos (AV) in Japan. The genre of Jôsei-muke is a form of pornography aimed at heterosexual women that features good-looking male porn actors; Eromen and Lovemen. This new genre has emerged in reaction to the decline of mainstream porn studios due to the popularity of porn streaming websites and captures heterosexual women who had been neglected as audiences as a new market. Despite the media attention that the new genre has garnered as a female sexual emancipation, the phenomenon is supported by ‘fans’ of Eromen and Lovemen. Based on fieldwork at a series of Eromen and Lovemen fan events and on online communities as a part of my on-going doctoral research, I found that the women who self-identified as ‘fans’ of Eromen and Lovemen carefully designed their personas in the fan community. For instance, they used pseudonyms in order to conceal their public selves at work or home. Simultaneously, it has become apparent that female fans look for intimate interactions with male actors at these events in order to be recognized as feminine and have their confidence restored. The paper draws on conversations with female fans to elucidate the expectations fans have regarding their interactions with Eromen and Lovemen, and how this fan community influences their everyday lives.
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In Search of a Just Regional Order in Southeast Asia
More LessThe paper explores the historical quest of Southeast Asian states for a desired regional order. While the colonial period interrupted the original trajectory of local polities’ development, colonial political, economic and social experience made it virtually impossible to get back to that trajectory after decolonization. As a result, Southeast Asian states had to adapt themselves to the matrix of national borders emerged in the region after decolonization. They also had to search for the ways to enhance their international capabilities. ASEAN became instrumental in this regard. Taken together, the experience of collective action and necessity to survive as relatively weak political entities brought Southeast Asian states to the vision of regional order, which is inclusive, economy-centered and based on the international law. However, the practical implementation of this vision in the first decade of this century still proves to be problematic due to the challenges emanating from contending versions of the regional order, advanced primarily by China and the USA.
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Unknown Asian Russia: Nomadic, Turkic-speaking, Buddhist Tuva Facing Modern Challenges
More LessThe article discusses the research issues related to Tuva, the region with a unique Asian culture. It has been a Soviet-Russian territory since 1944. The “maternal” ethnic group of the Tuvans, the majority of the Republic’s population lives here. In Tuvan studies, the difference of research views and scholars’ affiliation to different traditions of the world’s schools of thought is very clearly noted. Researchers from different countries consider its legal status as a territory of Russia in different ways. One point of view is that the incorporation of Tuva into the USSR should be regarded as an annexation (it is a viewpoint shared by many researchers from Western Europe and the USA; after the 1990s some authors from the former territories of the USSR started to share it as well). The second point of view is common among Russian and Tuvan historians: the integration of Tuva was a natural result of the rapprochement of the Tuvan and Russian peoples. Researchers into the history of Asian countries, including China and Mongolia, express the third point of view: Tuva was a part of the Outer Mongolia and was taken away by Russia, but it must be returned. The geopolitical conundrum has identified the issue of different terminology used for designation of Tuva, as well as the assessment of the origin and idiosyncrasy of Tuvan culture. Today we can consider Tuva as a separate territory, an “unknown part” of Russia, and it is undiscovered even for many Russians. It is interesting as a limitrophe zone between civilizations. There is an issue of defining Tuva in the general zoning in Asian studies. But in any case, being a Russian region in a political sense and close to Mongolia in terms of culture and religion Tuva is an idiosyncratic local cultural world of Turkic-speaking nomads.
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Economic Twins but Not Identical Vietnam and the Philippines: Potentials for Cooperation from an Economic Perspective
More LessThe security and economic landscape around the world has become fluid and shifting. As neighboring countries, the Philippines and Vietnam confront common geopolitical challenges. Here, the paper examines their economic structures while keeping an eye on possible venues for cooperation. At the macro-level, the two countries are very similar, almost like twins. They have around the same land area, population, and economic size. For this reason, an economic partnership between them could be enduring in the sense that one cannot dominate the economy of the other. At a closer look, they are very different. For one, their topographies are different with Vietnam located in mainland Southeast Asia and with the Philippines an archipelago in maritime Southeast Asia. More importantly, the main driver of their economies is different with the industry sector in Vietnam and the services sector in the Philippines. Their economic structures are not in direct competition and can be complementary with the other. Based on a detailed analysis of their current account balance, the two countries have many common interests to pursue in the international community: promoting a global regime that regulates FDI towards the improvement of human welfare in working conditions and environmental protection, lobbying the international community to promote worker welfare of exporting countries, information exchange on effective programs for their workers overseas, as well as developing effective programs and policies to address the social costs incurred when family members work overseas.
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China's Media Diplomacy In The South China Sea Disputes Case Studies Of The Scarborough Shoal Stand-off And The Oil Rig Crisis
Authors: Thi My Danh Le & Mark RollsThe Scarborough Shoal stand-off and the oil rig crisis hold symbolic value to the Chinese. During the crises, China’s sovereignty claims over the South China Sea have been recounted several times. As the way that the Chinese government has mobilized media tools to cover the crises and to shape its national image of their rival(s) via its narratives turned the territorial controversies into nationalist demonstrations, and deteriorated the bilateral relations, the demand to understand how the crises and media diplomacy could impact on the bilateral relations and the peace in the region has increased. Media diplomacy occurs when a government sends its diplomatic messages to its target audiences through speeches, press conferences, visits, or even leaks. To succeed, a government needs to have the ability to predict how different stakeholders will consume its message and how its target audiences are likely to respond. The paper uses the theoretical framework of media diplomacy to analyze media reports in China to understand how China deployed media tactics to fulfill its political goals in the crises and whether media diplomacy can be used as one of the ways to resolve the tensions.
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French Vloggers in South Korea: An Intercultural Perspective
More LessThe contemporary world goes through a fundamental change with the acceleration of processes and events, which has had an impact on the interactions between people and the ways in which we represent ourselves. Even if it has become easier to travel abroad, to meet and interact with people globally, through new technologies and modes of transport, our recent times have also seen tensions and prejudices growing within social and cultural in-groups and between out-groups. In this context, this paper aims to emphasize the importance of intercultural communication in crafting a global future. Too often in the literature about interculturality, the experience of living abroad is presented as an interculturalizing experience by itself. However, this research, based on a critical approach to interculturality, highlights the fact that international mobility is important but not sufficient to develop intercultural competences. Drawing on research about transnational cultural practices and global cultural connectivity, this paper will present the results of a case study on French people living in South Korea who produce videos on Youtube where they broadcast themselves but also frequently introduce South Korean-related topics to their French audience. Using both a critical intercultural communication approach and a media discourse analysis, I analyze how these French Youtubers broadcast themselves and represent their experiences of living abroad. The study shows that despite trying to engage in an intercultural perspective with their host country, their videos contribute, even implicitly, to reinforce several cultural stereotypes.
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