East Asia Workshop

“Detour of Translation:
Structuration of Brokers and the Crystallization of Modern Political and Social Terms in Chinese, 1890-1930”

Presenter: Le Lin
Doctoral Student of Sociology
University of Chicago

4:00-5:30pm, Tuesday
May 15, 2012
Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Abstract
This nascent project probes the way in which Western modern social and political terms were translated into and crystallized in Chinese from 1890s to 1920s. I ask why, given the existence of several competing Chinese translation versions and leading Chinese translators’ opposition to the Japanese version, such version from Japanese was accepted and had become the dominant version by 1920s. Several existing explanations are examined. I suggest shifting our focus to the structuration of brokers—the relative and dynamic structure of each version’s carriers in promoting their version. Initial explorations of causal mechanisms regarding the structruation of brokers’ knowledge system, organizational capacity and affinity with the rising power are discussed. Finally, I point to the potential theoretical linkages and significance of this research.

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/
Student coordinator: Yang Zhang (yangzhang@uchicago.edu)
Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang and Dingxin Zhao

This presentation is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance, please contact the student coordinator in advance.

“Revolution from Within: China’s Bureaucratic Insurgency, 1966-1971”

Presenter: Andrew Walder
Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

4:00-5:30pm, Tuesday
May 1, 2012
Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Abstract: In 1967, after a few short months of protest, one of the world’s most cohesive and formidably organized civilian dictatorships collapsed. In the first year of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, insurgent students and workers attacked local party-state organs, leading quickly to the collapse of the civilian state and a prolonged and violent effort to implement military rule. This outcome has long been understood as a mass insurgency that fits closely with standard resource mobilization and political opportunity analyses of contentious politics. In this view, the immobilization of the party’s organs of repression, and the encouragement of rebellion by China’s supreme leader, fostered a remarkably successful mass mobilization against the state by aggrieved social groups. Detailed narrative accounts of “power seizures” in cities and counties, however, combined with systematic data on political events across more than 2,100 local jurisdictions, suggests a different explanation. Instead, the rapid collapse of China’s civilian power structure was due to an insurgency within party-state organs, as officials and staff scrambled to distance themselves from top officials at each level by initiating “rebellions” of their own. Instead of a bottom-up insurgency by aggrieved elements of “society” against “the state”, the rapidity and depth of the insurgency is the product of a cascading “inside-out” rebellions by China’s own elites, motivated not by grievances against the status quo but by strategies to avoid becoming implicated in a rapidly escalating and unpredictable party purge. This suggests a new variety of “state-centered” analysis. Instead of offering summary external judgments about the cohesiveness of the state and its impact on political opportunity for aggrieved groups, the internal characteristics of state structures and the motives and actions of individuals within them are brought directly into the analysis.

Andrew Walder is the Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the Department of Sociology at Stanford. He is currently the Director of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, and the Chair of Stanford’s Department of Sociology. His recent related publications include Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (Harvard University Press, 2009), and “Ambiguity and Choice in Political Movements: The Origins of Beijing Red Guard Factionalism,” in the American Journal of Sociology (2006).

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/
Student coordinator: Yang Zhang (yangzhang@uchicago.edu)
Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang and Dingxin Zhao

This presentation is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance, please contact the student coordinator in advance.

“The European Sovereign Debt Crisis and EU-China Relations”
(In Chinese)

Presenter: Wenxiu Liu
Associate Professor of International Relations
Renmin University of China

4:00-5:30pm, Tuesday
April 17, 2012
Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Abstract
The sovereign debt crisis in Euro zone countries continues to ferment, and has become an important factor affecting international financial stability and world economic recovery. Accompanied with continuous deepening of the crisis, the Euro zone’s future is questioned, and thus exacerbated by different opinions within EU Member States over the reform directions of the Economic and Monetary Union. The European integration process is in a crossroad. European debt problems are essentially an explosion due to the impact of financial crises under the institutional defects of the European integration. What are the possible impacts of European debt crisis on China’s economy? How do China-EU relations develop under the background of European debt crisis? This talk will give thorough analysis on these questions.

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/
Student coordinator: Yang Zhang (yangzhang@uchicago.edu)
Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang and Dingxin Zhao

This presentation is sponsored by the Department of History, the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance, please contact the student coordinator in advance.

DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA
当代中国的发展与社会变迁

University of Chicago
Social Science Research Building
1126 East 59th Street, Chicago
April 6, 2012

Working Language: Chinese

INTRODUCTION
Over a hundred thousand collective actions of different scales and forms (such as protests, demonstrations and riots) happen in China every year. Collective actions in China are also taking new forms due to the changing of state policies, the opening up of the Chinese media, and the rise of micro-blogs as mobilization vehicles. What impact do these recent sociopolitical developments have on the patterns of collective actions in China? What patterns are there in the state’s responses to the recent developments in collective actions? Can the Chinese regime sustain increasing grassroots challenges in the age of micro-blog? This conference, which brings leading scholars from China and the US for a timely discussion of these and other issues, aims to set agendas for further research on collective actions in contemporary China.

SPONSORS
The Confucius Institute, University of Chicago
The China Committee of the Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago
Zhejiang University, China

CONVENER
Dingxin Zhao, Professor of Sociology
The University of Chicago

The event is free and open to the public. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance, please contact the student coordinator in advance: Yang Zhang (yangzhang@uchicago.edu).

MORNING SCHEDULE

8:30-12:00, April 6
Social Science 122 (SS 122)
1126 East 59th Street

8:30-8:35 ZHAO Dingxin, Welcome Address
赵鼎新，欢迎辞
8:35-8:40 LI Youmei, Guest Address
李友梅，来宾致辞

8:40-10:10, Session One
Moderator, FENG Gang
主持人，冯钢
8:40-9:00 SHEN Yuan, Housing Transforms China: The Homeowners’ Rights Campaign in B City
沈原，居住改变中国——B市的业主维权运动
9:00-9:20 YING Xing, The Mechanisms of Grassroots Mobilization in Collective Actions in China
应星，中国社会集体行动中的草根动员机制
9:20-9:40 FENG Shizheng, Managing Public Disorder: The Conceptualization of “Mass Event” as Political Agenda-Setting in China
冯仕政，“群体性事件”作为国家政治议程：概念的兴起及内涵
9:40-10:10, Q&A

10:10-10:30 Coffee Break

10:30-12:00, Session Two
Moderator, ZHANG Wenhong
主持人，张文宏
10:30-10:50 MAO Dan, Internet and China’s Transition: The Making and Remaking of Political Opportunities of Social Movement
毛丹，网络与中国转型：社会运动政治机会的形成与再塑造
10:50-11:10 LIU Yuzhao, Ideological Competition as Interest Demand Tools: Property Rights and Community Boundary in Land Acquisition Disputes
刘玉照，作为利益诉求工具的意识形态之争——征地纠纷中的产权与村落边界
11:10-11:30 SUN Yanfei, Dance with the State: The Rise of Protestant Christianity in Post-Mao China
孙砚菲，基督新教在中国的兴起
11:30-12:00 Q&A
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

14:30-18:00, April 6
Social Science Tea Room (SS 201)
1126 East 59th Street

14:30-16:00 Session One, Discussion on the Moring Presentations
Moderator: LANG Youxing
第一场，讨论上午报告
主持人，郎友兴

16:00-16:20 Coffee Break

16:20-17:50 Session Two, New Trends of Social Movement in China: Microblogging, Wukan Incident, and the Left Movement
Moderator: MAO Dan
第二场，中国社会运动新趋势——微博、乌坎事件与左翼社会运动
主持人，毛丹

17:50-18:00 ZHAO Dingxin, Concluding Remarks
赵鼎新，总结

SPEAKERS AND GUESTS

FENG Gang, Professor, the Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University
冯钢，浙江大学社会学系教授

FENG Shizheng, Associate Professor and Vice Dean, School of Sociology and Population Studies, Renmin University of China
冯仕政，中国人民大学社会与人口学院副院长、副教授

LANG Youxing, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Sciences, Zhejiang University
郎友兴，浙江大学政治学系系主任、教授

LI Youmei, Professor of Sociology, and Vice President, Shanghai University
李友梅，上海大学副校长、社会学教授

LIU Yuzhao, Professor, School of Sociology and Political Science, Shanghai University
刘玉照，上海大学社会学院教授

MAO Dan, Professor and Vice Dean, the School of Public Administration, Zhejiang University
毛丹，浙江大学公共管理学院副院长、教授

SHEN Yuan, Professor and Chair, the Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University
沈原，清华大学社会学系主任、教授

SUN Yanfei, Mellon Research Fellow, Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Columbia University
孙砚菲，哥伦比亚大学博士后、社会学系讲师

YING Xing, Professor and Dean, the School of Sociology, China University of Political Science and Law
应星，中国政法大学社会学院院长、教授

ZHANG Wenhong, Professor and Dean, School of Sociology and Political Science, Shanghai University
张文宏，上海大学社会学院院长、教授

ZHAO Dingxin, Professor, the Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
赵鼎新，芝加哥大学社会学系教授

Is Japan an Anomaly?

Japan’s Consistent Security Policies in the Postwar Era

Presenter: Yoneyuki Sugita

Associate Professor of American history

Osaka University

4:30-6:00pm, Tuesday

April 3, 2012

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Abstract

This presentation examines Japan’s security policy in the post-World War II era. Many researchers regard this policy as anomalous, but, in this regard, Japan has been turning into a “normal” state in the 21st century. This presentation claims that, since World War II, Japan has been conducting a pragmatic and consistent security policy, using all its assets, including Article Nine of the Japanese constitution and its economic vulnerability to maximize its security. The rise and fall of American hegemony changed Japan’s tactics, but the consistent essence of its security policy has been to tread a line minimizing its defense contributions without jeopardizing the Japan-U.S. alliance. This essence was established during the Allied occupation.

With the rise and fall of U.S. hegemony, Japan adroitly changed its tactics to maintain this golden rule. As the 9.11 terrorist attacks further eroded U.S. power and prestige, Japan was expected to play a more active security role. Japan’s security policy seemed to change dramatically, but the change was well thought out, careful, and flexible enough to avoid making Japan a permanent warmongering country and to maintain the alliance with the United States.

Spring 2012 Workshop Schedule

March 27
“Theatres of Land Reform: Repertoire and Campaign in Su’nan and Taiwan, 1950-53”
Julia Strauss
Senior Lecturer in Chinese Politics, University of London
April 3
“Is Japan an Anomaly? Japan’s Consistent Security Policies in the Postwar Era”
Yoneyuki Sugita
Associate Professor of American history, Osaka University
April 17
“The European Sovereign Debt Crisis and EU-China Relations”
Wenxiu Liu
Associate Professor of International Relations, Renmin University of China
May 1
“Insurgency and its Suppression in China, 1966-1971”
Andrew Walder
Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology, Stanford University
May 15
“Detour of Translation:
The Social Crystallization of Chinese Political Terms from English 1850-1920”
Le Lin
Doctoral Student of Sociology, University of Chicago
May 29
“The Emergence of Grassroot Environmental Protest Leadership in China:
Assessing State-Leader Relationships and Movement Outcomes”
Jean Lin
Doctoral Candidate of Sociology, University of Chicago

Unless specified, the workshop meets on alternate Tuesdays 4:00-5:30pm at Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Avenue.

Workshop on East Asia: Politics, Economy and Society Presents

“Extra-Budget Funds in China: Source of Corruption or Good Governance?”
Presenter: Yeonju Lee
Doctoral Student of Political Science, University of Chicago

4:00-5:30pm, Tuesday
March 6, 2012
Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

The workshop will be followed by a reception, in which drinks and snacks will be provided for celebrating the end of the winter quarter.

Abstract: China’s continued growth has remained as critical puzzle especially to those, who believe that non-democracies are inherently self-destructive. With no imminent signs of a significant economic slow-down at sight, these scholars have turned to problematize the quality of the growth; bad quality of the economic growth led to huge governance deficits such as urban-rural inequality, corruption, and deteriorating public finance (Pei 2006; Huang 2007; Wong and Bird 2008; Wong 2009). They point to the increasing amount of extra-budget funds (EBFs) as the principal driver of the bad-quality growth, in particular, corruption. The paper challenges this claim by arguing that EBFs are not inherently detrimental, and that they may improve governance. I also present under what conditions EBFs are expected to be harmful, and when they are expected to improve governance.

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/
Student coordinator: Yang Zhang (yangzhang@uchicago.edu)
Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang and Dingxin Zhao

The workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance, please contact the student coordinator in advance.

Workshop on East Asia: Politics, Economy and Society Presents

“Authoritarian Survival and the Politics of Containment:
Why Local Governments in China Tolerate Unregistered Protestant Churches”

Presenter: Marie-Eve Reny
Postdoctoral Research Fellow of Political Science
University of Chicago

4:00-5:30pm, Tuesday
Feb. 21, 2012
Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Abstract: In an attempt to explain authoritarian regime survival, the comparative literature in political science has emphasized among other factors, leaders’ strategic use of cooptation to integrate parts of the opposition into a corporatist system of representation and repression to eliminate others. Yet, in reality, authoritarian regimes face a range of societal groups that they are unable to coopt and against which they cannot use extensive force. Using as an empirical terrain the case of local governments’ responses to underground Protestant churches in Mainland China, this paper argues that authoritarian state actors may choose informal tolerance over cooptation and coercion to contain the subversive potential of an uncooptable group in society. They are likely to embrace this strategy under two conditions: first, when existing institutions of cooptation are ineffective but their reform could compromise the survival of the regime, and when suppression is too costly for the political stability of the regime. Second, when members of the uncooptable space seek to minimize the risks of being harassed for rejecting cooptation, officials have an opportunity to trade informal autonomy for compliance on their part. Ultimately, containment contributes to authoritarian regime survival in that it increases the costs of political mobilization on the part of the informally tolerated groups, and creates divisions among compliant and politicized uncooptable segments of society.

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/
Student coordinator: Yang Zhang (yangzhang@uchicago.edu)
Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang and Dingxin Zhao

The workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance, please contact the student coordinator in advance.

Workshop on East Asia: Politics, Economy and Society Presents

“Revolutionary Ecology and the Rise of Taiping Rebellion, 1846-1853”
Presenter: Yang Zhang
Doctoral Student of Sociology, University of Chicago

4:00-5:30pm, Tuesday
Feb. 7, 2012
Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Abstract: The third quarter of the nineteenth century was the most turbulent era in imperial China and probably witnessed one of the greatest rebellions in world history, the Taiping Rebellion, which emerged as the first national, major rebellion among numerous others. This article proposes an ecological theory to explain why the Taiping Rebellion took off and stood out from local insurgencies that had been occurring since the late 1840s. Instead of using structural, preexisting factors to explain large, long-lived, and successful revolutions/rebellions, this article argues that the totality of rebellious and repressive forces constitute a revolutionary ecology in which certain rebellions could be better off by the coordinating and competitive inter-rebel relationships. Drawing on both court records and local gazetteers, the article presents a picture of rebellion, banditry, communal feuding, and increasing militarization in Guangxi Province starting in the late 1840s. The Qing state employed most of its regular forces to fight against familiar Triad rebels and bandits, and therefore overlooked the assembly of Taiping insurgents in late 1850 and had even not identified Taiping as rebellious until then. Even after the outbreak of Taiping in early 1851, the Qing state was unable to redeploy its regular forces to pacify Taiping, since it needed to cope with other rebellions as well. The Taiping rebels also applied a set of ecology-dependent strategies during this early period. This paper concludes that the emergence and development of Taiping and other major rebellions in this turbulent era could be better understood within the context of a changing revolutionary ecology.

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/
Student coordinator: Yang Zhang (yangzhang@uchicago.edu)
Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang and Dingxin Zhao

The workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance, please contact the student coordinator in advance.

Workshop on East Asia: Politics, Economy and Society Presents

Mutually Beneficial Upgrading?
China’s Changing Relationship with Developed Country Manufacturing Multinationals

Presenter: Gary Herrigel
Professor of Political Science
University of Chicago

4:00-5:30pm, Tuesday
January 24, 2012
Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/
Student coordinator: Yang Zhang (yangzhang@uchicago.edu)
Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang and Dingxin Zhao

The workshop is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance, please contact the student coordinator in advance.