SEMINAR SCHEDULE - WOLLONGONG - 2007: ABSTRACTS

5 December : Everyday human-robot interaction in Japan

Abstract 
Robotics is one of the main areas of Japanese technological research, and robots are popular with ordinary Japanese people. The Aichi 2005 World Exposition in Japan displayed many prototypes of robots designed to interact with humans, attracting a large number of Japanese visitors.

This paper considers the developing nature of human-robot interaction in Japan. Using theatre and performance studies perspectives, I discuss the concept of the performing object in terms of puppetry as an initial point of entry into this complex area. The viewer's active engagement, or reading, within a given theatrical frame makes puppet theatre work. Objects become social objects when they are interpreted within social and cultural terms. I explore the socially and culturally conditioned reception of robots in the contemporary Japanese situation.

Bio-note
Dr Yuji Sone is a practitioner-researcher and lecturer in Performance and Digital Culture at Macquarie University. His current research considers technology and machines as performers in social contexts and in artworks. It considers cross-cultural comparisons of human-machine interaction, viewed as performative. Dr Sone has published in theatre and performance studies journals such as Performance Paradigm, Australasian Drama Studies, and Body, Space, Technology, and held a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at The University of New South Wales.

21 November : Globalisation and Development: An Inter-state Analysis of India

Abstract
India and China, the two fastest growing countries in the world, are often projected in the literature as the ‘poster states of globalisation’ and ‘engines of global growth. This, however, does not take into account that globalisation, even within these two countries, is not inclusive in nature. In this context, the present study specifically seeks to understand what globalisation means for the different states of India, particularly its largest, but less developed state, Uttar Pradesh (UP). Following a multi-indicator approach, this paper shows that the so-called benefits derived from globalisation are meaningless for a state where development indicators have performed poorly.  It highlights that in the less developed regions or states physical and human infrastructure development takes primacy, and it is these areas that need to be tackled before the benefits of globalisation can be reaped.

Bio-note
Rashmi Umesh Arora submitted her doctoral thesis in development studies to University of Auckland in 2007. She is on study leave from her employment with the Reserve Bank of India as Assistant Advisor in its economic policy department. Currently, she is a postdoctoral writing fellow in the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies. Her research interests include economic development, economic reforms, development finance and less developed regions.

7 November : New Burden Korean Cinema: Outside Looking in at the Latest Golden Age, 1996-?

Abstract 
This paper examines what I call South Korea’s ‘post-burden’ cinema – a present-day film industry that has survived Japanese colonialism, US occupation, civil war, prolonged dictatorship, rapid industrialisation, economic crisis and script censorship. As a case study Im Sang-soo’s ‘The President's Last Bang’ (2005) is used to illustrate the divergent freedoms that have enabled representative filmmakers to transcend national and cultural borders, breaking free from these challenging constraints. Since the mid-1990s, South Korea’s national film industry – a.k.a. ‘Hallyuwood’ – has begun adopting business models of the Hollywood enterprise, which among other things has lead to a new golden age of cinema. Yet, this latest cycle of the film industry, which is rich in terms of unprecedented domestic attendance and global attention, has pointed to unexpected internal and external burdens confronting the national film industry’s future: cut-throat domestic competition, sweat-shop labour conditions, piracy, and a residual form of censorship.

Bio-note
Brian Yecies is Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wollongong. He received his PhD in Cinema Studies in 2001 from La Trobe University. His research interests include film policy and industry in colonial Korea and post- colonial South Korea, and the coming of sound to the Australian cinema. In 2003 he received a research grant from the Asia Research Fund to conduct archive work in the US and South Korea, and in 2005 he was a Korea Foundation Research Fellow at the Korean National University of the Arts.

17 October : Comedy in Japan and the United States: An analysis of Japanese manzai and American stand up

Abstract 
In the field of applied linguistics, the interface between language and culture is being explored from various perspectives (eg language socialisation, language and cognition, language and identity, interactions in foreign/second language classrooms). However, few studies have been conducted that illustrate how members in a particular discourse community utilise language to communicate humour. In this study, I attempt to contribute a new perspective to examine the interrelationship between language, culture, and humour by conducting a cross-linguistic analysis of Japanese stand-up comedy, known as manzai, and American stand-up comedy. Based on a micro-level discourse analysis of live comedy performances, the study will demonstrate some pervasive patterns of communication in comedy performance. Drawing on the notions of “keying” and “frame” (Goffman, 1974), as well as “contexualization cues” (Gumperz, 1982; 1992; 1996), I will identify differing patterns of structuring humour in American stand-up and Japanese manzai. Contrasting ways of communication will also be illustrated through the analysis of boundary markings in the performance.

Bio-note
Hanae Katayama received her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the Pennsylvania State University, USA, in 2006. She has research interests in cross-cultural communication, second/foreign language education, and pop culture discourse. Dr Katayama is currently a postdoctoral writing fellow in the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies.

5 October : Hybridised Whiteness in ‘Rosé’: the displacement of colonial racial/gender discourse in a Japanese queer magazine in the 1970s

Abstract 
This paper discusses the ways in which the Japanese queer male magazine Barazoku (Rose tribe) functioned in the 1970s to unsettle the dominant colonial dynamic that existed between Japan and the West (predominantly the US) through the tactical use of hybridisation, creolisation and parody.  Focusing on the magazine’s deployment of the popular understanding of ‘Japan as feminine/small’ versus ‘West as masculine/big’, this paper examines processes in which this text succeeded in deconstructing the master narrative in a dialectical fashion.

Launched in 1971, Barazoku became the first Japanese gay male-oriented magazine that had a national circulation. It has since played a substantial role in constituting the self-identity of the Japanese gay community. As several studies have shown, Barazoku, in its initial stage, attempted to represent Japanese gay men as masculine and domineering partly due to its aim to subvert the pre-existing mainstream stereotypes which presented gay males as feminised (Aoki 2006, Ishida 2007). In this paper, I bring a new understanding to the study of this text by analysing what I call the ‘contact moment’ between ‘Japanese’ and ‘Western’ forms of gay male masculinity. I argue that Barazoku provided a liminal space in which the Orientalist trope of gender hierarchy between Japan and the West was overtly and wilfully re-appropriated in a parodic mode, resulting in the denaturalisation of its original intent. This unsettled the hegemony of ‘White’ masculinity, which in effect served as a negative benchmark against which the normative masculinity of Japanese gayness was measured.

The paper is based on a discourse analysis of the contents of the magazine Barazoku in the 1970s with a specific focus on the representation of ‘contact moments’. The theoretical framework draws on the literature of post-colonial studies and queer theory. The concepts of hybridity, creolisation and parody are adapted mainly from writings by Homi K.Bhabha, Robert. J. C. Young, and Judith Butler.

Bio-note
Katsuhiko Suganuma is a PhD candidate in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on contemporary Japanese sexuality politics, queer globalisation and post-colonial feminism. His PhD thesis looks at ways in which ‘contact moments’ between Japanese queer male culture and that of the West (Euro-America) have affected the identity formation process of Japanese queer selves in post-war Japan. He is a co-editor (with Mark McLelland and James Welker) of Queer Voices from Japan (Lexington Books, 2007).

19 September : Ghosts, headhunters and neighbours: the uncanny faces of social pluralism in Kepulauan Riau, Indonesia

Nick Long
University of Cambridge , Visiting Scholar, School of Asian Studies, University of Sydney

Absract:
Since the publication of William Walter Skeat’s Malay Magic in 1900, scholars studying Malay societies have tended to interpret ghosts, spirits, and other ‘mysterious creatures’ (makhluk gaib) as part of an overarching cultural framework: ‘the Malay worldview’. Yet stories of such beings are often filled with local resonance, reflecting and contributing to ongoing anxieties surrounding social pluralism and demographic change, whilst constructing new geographies of danger and safety in the local landscape.

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the Riau Archipelago, this paper asks what is at stake in narratives of makhluk gaib. Why are Muslims’ houses so frequently haunted by Chinese ghosts? Why has there been a surge in the rate of possessions in recent years? Who or what should be held accountable for head-snatching raids? And how are these questions connected to the broader issues of identity politics and the claiming of public space?

5 September : Rural poverty reduction in the era of globalisation: Lessons from the experience of a Bangladesh NGO

Dr Rie Makita
Postdoctoral Writing Fellow, CAPSTRANS, University of Wollongong

Abstract:
Income generation programmes for the poor are now required to be more market-oriented.  However, market-driven economic activities tend to be dominated by local elites, especially in rural South Asia.  This seminar explores how to realise market-driven business development for the poor through observation of an NGO’s programmes in poultry and silkworm rearing, implemented in rural Bangladesh.  The two cases show feasible ways for the poor to open up market-driven economic opportunities in the elite-controlled rural economy through market differentiation and the use of a stagnant industry.  At the same time, the limited life of such opportunities suggests that efforts should be concentrated on enabling the poor to get the maximum benefit in the short term from specially arranged opportunities.

15 August : In the Name of the Father: on being foreign and kin - sex, tourism, relationships (Puerto Galera, the Philippines)    

Dr Rosemary Wiss
Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University

Abstract:
Intricate relationships are currently being created between Filipinos and foreigners in the context of tourism, sex tourism and expatriation. Foreigners, who originally travelled to Sabang for the transient and anonymous experience of sex tourism, often stay for kinship reasons, marrying women from the bars and producing children. These men enter a complex realm of connections - and disconnections - as categories of insiders and outsiders are created. This paper explores these issues with an account of accusations of the rape of a child by foreign male expat and the father of the child to show how paedophilia is associated with foreigners, while incest relates to Filipinos.

8 August : Alternatives to "Race-to-the-Bottom": Responses of Labor Press, Labor Unions, and the State to Workers' Spontaneous Minimum-Wage Strikes in Vietnam

Professor Angie Ngoc Tran
Professor of Political Economy, California State University, Monterey Bay. Visiting Fellow, CAPTRANS, University of Wollongong.

Abstract:
The minimum-wage strikes victory in Vietnam, which erupted in December 2005 and ended in January 2006, provides a powerful case study to demonstrate alternatives to the “race-to-the-bottom” thesis. I argue that labor organising and spontaneous collective actions can still be successful even in a one-party/one-union state. I explain how the Vietnamese General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), still the only nationwide general labour union, responded to workers’ spontaneous strikes. It is the "third sleeve," the official pro-labour media arms of the VGCL, which triggered concrete responses from the VGCL and the state to worker-led strikes in export processing zones in Ho Chi Minh City. This nuanced analysis, showing the complex and non-monolithic nature of the Vietnamese labour unions, addresses the common skepticism about the lack of union independence in a one-party state. On the one hand, the labour newspapers use their forums to champion workers’ rights and interests and empower the VGCL to negotiate with state bureaucracies and management on the workers’ behalf. On the other hand, the labour press has to respond to policies and agendas of the VGCL and the state, both of which maintain a strong grip on their power to monitor and control workers’ collective actions.

25 July : FLYING PIGS, POLITICAL HOSTAGES AND REVOLUTION Exploring the Cultural Imperative in International Affairs

Professor Stephen Hill
Honorary Professional Fellow, CAPSTRANS, University of Wollongong

Abstract:
The centerpiece of Stephen Hill’s CAPSTRANS seminar is his direct experience while serving for a decade as a United Nations Regional Director and Ambassador based in Indonesia. In the seminar he places a case-study focus on managing a 128 day hostage crisis in 1996 after members of his staff were kidnapped and held in the jungle by the rebel Free Papua Movement; flying 108 pigs by helicopter to the people of Mapnduma in the West Papuan highlands in reparation for the effects of military-rebel conflict; tracking the path of deep jungle tribal people as they engaged for the first time with modern city life; opening up media freedom and education across Indonesia in the aftermath of the 1998 fall of President Soeharto’s New Order Government; and dealing with the healing of conflict and trauma amongst children caught up in revolution, subsequent sectarian violence and the 2004 Tsunami disaster. The theme Professor Hill explores through these dramatic events is the imperative of culture and an understanding of the dynamic of cultural interaction within conflict resolution and development strategy. His conclusions are as pertinent to the operational management of international affairs as they are to cultural theorizing about a globalising world.

20 July : The Rise of the Multiplex Cinema in India

Dr Adrian Mabbott Athique
Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland

Abstract:
The appearance of multiplex cinemas in India since 1997 is indicative of a consistent push to create a globalised 'consuming class' in metropolitan India. Multiplex cinemas are therefore key sites in the long-running struggle over rights to public space in Indian cities, and an intrinsic part of the urban transformations that are accompanying economic liberalisation. The rise of the multiplex is also closely related to the re-organisation of working practices and of capital investment within the film exhibition sector — driven by leading players in pursuit of an agenda of 'corporatisation'. It is these new corporate entities, funded by institutional investors and public floatation, that dominate the multiplex sector, which stands in marked contrast to the loose agglomeration of family owned theatres that have previously characterised theatrical exhibition in India. As the leading multiplex brands embark upon a massive programme of expansion into India's second tier cities, this presentation provides a critical account of the emerging political economy of the multiplex paradigm.

11 July : Indians with Boats: Spanish perceptions of the Philippine Chinese

Dr William J. McCarthy
Department of History ,University of North Carolina Wilmington

Abstract:
As an instrument of empire, language has arguably been underestimated by historians.  While concurring that the lack of comprehension of the conqueror’s language has been an obvious disadvantage to subaltern groups, the full magnitude of the difficulty has infrequently been expressed by historians.  The power of language to create impression, to belittle the subaltern, to fulminate repressive policy, has been enormous.  It does not go unacknowledged by historians, but has been seen either to be too obvious for comment, or too incapable of tangible assessment, particularly for the tastes of those trained in customary historical methodology. Literary scholars have been well-aware of this crucial aspect of colonial dominance; the postcolonial canon is replete with instances of linguistic dominance, repression and effect.  A large proportion of the effort of postcolonial peoples to claim nationhood has, to be sure, focused on their keen and often problematic relationship to language.

This paper will argue that the Spaniards in the colonial Philippines had an enormous respect for language and its power, and that they employed language to effect, very self-consciously, in the maintenance of authority over the various groups of subalterns they encountered in the Philippines.  Focusing on Spanish interaction with the sizable Chinese community, this paper will explore some of the most powerful rhetoric of the Philippine colonial experience.  The Spaniards were intimidated by the large numbers of Chinese, their obvious skills in many areas, and the understanding that they represented a huge, powerful and potentially threatening empire.  Attempting to belittle the Chinese, then, and bolster their own confidence, the Spanish referred to them pejoratively, as dogs, sodomites, and “Indians with boats.”

The most frequently repeated charge against the Chinese was that they were notorious sodomites.  This perception alarmed the Spaniards significantly, and reveals that, at base, the narrative of colonial experience was driven by what would today be called homophobia.  Fear of Chinese numbers, wealth and power was defused by revulsion at their decadence.  As in Spain during an earlier era, the Spaniards sought to identify themselves as morally superior to an obviously sophisticated society due to their puritanical and blinkered assessment of their own behavior.  The historical record could not be more obvious on this score, giving credence to to the popular canon of postcolonialism that language is power.

 20 June : The University Struggles of 1968-69 and the Interrogation of Progressivism in Postwar Japan

Professor Rikki Kersten
Dean, Faculty of Asian Studies & College of Asia
Australian National University

Abstract:
In 1968-69, university campuses all over Japan exploded in violent, seemingly anarchic revolt against authority. While Japan appeared to be part of an international phenomenon, the heart of the university struggles featured angst and despair of a kind that was particular to postwar Japan. At the epicentre of this fierce revolt was the interrogation of the intellectuals and ideas that had charted the course of idealism in the postwar world up to that point. Though the term ‘progressive intellectual’ would assume a pejorative hue even before these struggles began, it was those same progressive thinkers who had provided the demonstrators of 1968-69 with the conceptual toolkit for their movement.

What drove the savage rejection and mockery of progressivism in the late 1960s? Was the university struggle truly revolutionary in intellectual terms, or was it rather a logical and consistent outcome of the core ideas of postwar idealism? What does the language of confrontation and disparagement tell us about the ideas that are rejected, and the ideas that are embraced? We will address these issues by examining the struggle that erupted at Japan’s most prestigious university, the University of Tokyo, and how different actors and thinkers responded to this emergency.

22 May : Using New Media: Exploring research methods in the study of new media

Professor David Marshall
School of Social Sciences, Media & Communication, Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong

Abstract:
New Media present a challenge to the researcher, particularly those who have researched traditional media such as television, print media or film. This seminar isolates on how thinking through the category of the user to understand new media helps advance its study and differentiates some methods employed to investigate its play in different cultures.

Bionote:
David Marshall is Professor of New Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wollongong. He has published many articles and five books including New Media Cultures (2004), Web Theory (2003), Celebrity Culture Reader (2006), Fame Games (2000) and Celebrity and Power (1997). He was the founder of the Internet journal M/C - a journal of media and culture now in its tenth year of publication. Professor Marshall has also been a regular commentator on the media and popular culture both in Australia and internationally. His current research is an investigation into the cultural transformation from representational regimes to presentational regimes via new media.

23 May : Dragon and the Elephant: The Re-emergence of China and India in the World-Economy

Associate Professor Ravi Arvind Palat
State University of New York

Abstract:
It is scarcely possible to pick up a newsmagazine today without coming across an article discussing the awakening of the Chinese giant or the arrival of India on the world-stage. Yet, what does this mean? On the one hand, given their demographic weight, the scale and magnitude of economic growth in China and India marks a seismological transformation in world politics. On the other hand, unlike the case of other 'miracle' economies, rapid economic growth has been accompanied by a massive growth in income inequalities and they have also shown a marked reluctance to challenge the Euro-North American domination of the international stage-most notably over the US-led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. This paper explores the world-economic implications of the rise of the two Asian giants in the context of the contemporary crisis of overaccumulation.

Bionote:
Ravi Arvind Palat is Associate Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York, Binghamton and a Senior Visiting Fellow in CAPSTRANS. He is the author of Capitalist Restructuring and the Pacific Rim (Routledge, 2004) and Princes, Paddyfields, and Bazaars: Wet-Rice Cultivation and the Emergence of the Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250-1650 (forthcoming). Dr Palat is also the editor of Pacific-Asia and the Future of the World-System (Greenwood, 1993) and has previously taught at Universities of Hawaii and Auckland.

14 May : Ethnicity Unbound: Reflecting on transnational influences on ethnicity

Associate Professor Bandana Purkayastha
University of Connecticut

Abstract:
Most of the scholarly work on recent immigrant groups and their children continue to use the home-and-host country framework to analyse transnational networks and influences that shape their ethnicity. Using the experiences of the children of highly educated, non-white South Asian American post-immigrants to the US, I will discuss how the home and host country framework is no longer adequate to trace transnational dimensions of ethnicity.** While nation states continue to remain the node of ethnic experiences, ethnicity is shaped by factors such as geographically dispersed families and communities, multinational corporations selling cultures, global security blocks tracking potential charges, as well as ethno-religious movement organisations that use the web to reach out to claim members from different corners of the globe. The talk will begin by discussing the anatomy of a wedding to illustrate how the transnational political, economic, social factors structure ethnic events.
**This talk is based on my book, Negotiating Ethnicity: Second Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World, on the children of highly educated, non-white immigrants to the US.

Bionote:
Bandana Purkayastha is Associate Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. She is also the Deputy Editor of Gender & Society. She was born in Kolkata, India, and was educated at Presidency College (India), University of Massachusetts, and the University of Connecticut. She has published more than twenty-five peer reviewed journal articles and chapters on the intersections of race/gender, ethnicity, human rights, and women’s organising; these publications have appeared in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa, and India. Her recent books are a co-edited collection, The Power of Women’s Informal Networks: Lessons in Social Change from South Asia and West Africa, published by Lexington Books in 2004, and a research monograph, Negotiating Ethnicity: Second-Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World, published by Rutgers University Press in 2005.

2 May : Peripheries, corridors and heartlands: re-mapping and contesting the Kalimantan-Malaysia borderlands

Associate Professor Lesley Potter
Australian National University

Abstract:
Resource peripheries, with their intersections of economic, environmental, cultural and political values, have been shown to reveal ‘remarkably complex and fragmented global-local dynamics in ways not found in cores’ (Hayter et al 2003:21). International borderlands, extreme cases of resource peripheries yet often the focus of particular development initiatives by their respective states, may at the same time be heartlands of a biodiversity which transcends borders. This paper examines the proposed oil palm corridor in Indonesia along the Kalimantan-Malaysia border. Paradoxically, the corridor’s announcement closely followed the initiation of the ‘Heart of Borneo’ project, a trans-boundary conservation endeavour led by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).  Stakeholders include a variety of government, NGO and private interests as well as the borderlands population. Despite a reduction in corridor planting targets, many questions remain unanswered about the future of the region, especially its global/local and centre/regional dynamics. 

Bionote:
Associate Professor Lesley Potter is Visiting Fellow in the Department of Human Geography, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Her work has focussed primarily on Indonesia, especially Kalimantan and Sumatra, where she has researched and published on historical and current environmental and social issues. She is a joint author of In Place of the Forest: Socio-economic and Environmental Transformations in Borneo and the Eastern Malay Peninsula (1995), with Harold Brookfield and Yvonne Byron (Tokyo, United Nations University Press). Her most recent publication ‘Can Indonesia’s complex agroforests survive globalisation and decentralization?', has appeared in Environment, Development and Change in Rural Asia-Pacific, edited by John Connell and Eric Waddell (Routledge, Oxford, 2007).

2 March : LGBTIQ in Contemporary Indonesia: Progress or Regress?

Dédé Oetomo
GAYa NUSANTARA Foundation, Surabaya
Postgraduate Program, University of Surabaya

Abstract:
The presentation will survey the situation of LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer) people in contemporary (i.e. post-1998) Indonesia, characterized on the one hand with a wider democratic space, which has been interpreted by many people as more freedom, and on the other hand with a continuation of the state-, culture- and religion-sanctioned heterosexism and in some instances communal, and arguably political, homophobia. We shall look into the role of various media, segments of the state, civil society organizations and faith-based organizations (genuine or false) in creating the situation, and how LGBTIQ people are responding to survive.

Bionote:
Dédé Oetomo completed his PhD in linguistics and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell University (1984). In March 1982 he helped found Indonesia’s first homosexual organization, Lambda Indonesia (1982-1986). He is also co-founder (1987) and a member of the board of trustees of GAYa NUSANTARA Foundation, an organization originally working for the sexual health of gay men, transgenders, and male sex workers, based in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia. He is also active in the Asia/Pacific Rainbow network of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex/indigenous and queer (LGBTIQ+) organizations. He received the Felipa de Souza Award from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (1998), the Utopia Award for Pioneering Gay Work in Asia (2001) and the First Generation of HIV & AIDS Activists in Indonesia from the National AIDS Commission (2007). Academically, he is a Special Reader in the Postgraduate Program of the University of Surabaya. He has also been active in Indonesia’s pro-democracy movement since his student days.