Asian Studies Centre

Dr S Y Quraishi gives the Oxford India lecture 2016. Guest of Honour: H.E. Mr Navtej Sarna, Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom

This event is co-organised with the Oxford India Society.

Dr Reshmi Banerjee speaks at the South Asia seminar. Borders have always witnessed social and cultural interaction. They are dynamic trans-national zones/spaces which have seen both cooperation and conflict. They are treated as 'margins' of societies and economies and have hardly figured in the national consciousness and policies. The Indo-Myanmar border is a challenging area as it faces multiple issues of illegal migration, trafficking of drugs and people, armed conflicts, ecological devastation, movement of non-state actors and insurgent groups etc. The Mizos and the Chins who have shared common ancestral roots, religion, cultural and ethnic linkages etc are divided by a border which is creating differences. The presentation would aim to not only narrate a story of the history of these two communities but will also dwell into the current disputes that have arisen. Emotions have ranged from that of solidarity and toleration to hostility and animosity. The aim would be to give a glimpse of the region's 'contested' past and present in order to understand the intriguing power equations, complicated social relations and perennial xenophobia. Politics of exclusion and competition for livelihoods has interfered with the maintenance of durable peace. Understanding of these processes and giving a 'voice' to the voiceless is crucial for a better future in the region.

Dr Reshmi Banerjee is currently a visiting scholar in the Asian Studies Centre in St. Antony's College. She was previously a research associate in the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) in SOAS, University of London where she worked on land conflicts in Myanmar and on the political economy of the Indo-Myanmar frontier. She has been a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of International Relations in the University of Indonesia (UI) and was a researcher in the Economic Research Center, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) in Jakarta. Reshmi has worked as a fellow in the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (RGICS, New Delhi), has been a Visiting Professor in the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi) and has taught in Delhi University and in the University of Indonesia. She is a political scientist with specialisation in food security and agricultural policies and has an MPhil and PhD in the subject from the Centre for Political Studies (CPS), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her edited book Climate Change in the Eastern Himalaya: Impact on Livelihoods, Growth and Poverty was published in February 2015.

NB: The first minutes of the presentation were not recorded. Professor Danny Quah speaks at the International Politics of East Asia Seminar Many writers have noted how the international system might be on the cusp of a change, where the "America Century" will no longer describe world order. If, however, the challenge to the established international regime arises from East Asia in general, or from China in particular, the numbers are, at best, ambiguous. Moreover, the conventional narrative ascribes to the established system intangible attributes such as soft power that are difficult to dislodge.

This talk develops an alternative approach—of economics, demand and supply, and rationality—to analyse the rise of Asia and its potential disruption to the current world order.

Short reference: An Economic Perspective on the International System: Demand, Supply, and a Rational World Order, 16 December 2015 article by Professor Quah.

Longer reference, Ordering the World: Truth to Power (2016, incomplete book manuscript).

Professor Danny Quah is Professor of Economics and International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at LSE's Institute of Global Affairs. He had previously served as LSE's Head of Department for Economics, and Council Member on Malaysia's National Economic Advisory Council.

Quah is Tan Chin Tuan Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore, and lectures regularly at Peking University. He studied at Princeton, Minnesota, and Harvard, and was Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at MIT before joining LSE.

Quah gave the third LSE-NUS lecture in 2013, TEDx talks in 2014 and 2012, and the Inaugural LSE Big Questions Lecture in 2011. His current research is on an economic approach to world order - global power shift and the rise of the east.

This seminar series has been organised in association with the China Centre.

Dr Dag Erik Berg speaks at the South Asian seminar. There has been a tendency in caste studies to explain the origins and existence of caste, relying on structural approaches to explain how it is produced and by whom.

This paper seeks to step aside from such a focus in order to analyse enduring caste-based oppression of Dalits in India. To do so, I introduce the concept of mechanism of oppression, which means that upward social mobility is a trend that co-exists with atrocity. I suggest that the concept "mechanism of oppression" follows up common sense explanations among Dalit activists and that it represents one realist approach to address "the Dalit question" and caste exclusion. As an adequate starting point for analysing atrocities, this concept opens possibilities of understanding legal developments pertaining to the Scheduled Castes in India. The paper will refer to cases in Andhra Pradesh and lessons concerning dominance, atrocity and caste.

Dr Dag Erik Berg is a postdoctoral research fellow associated with the group on "Diversity and Inequality" at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Göttingen, Germany. Before joining CeMIS, he was Associate Professor in Intercultural Studies at NLA University College, Norway and has been previously affiliated with University of Bergen and SOAS, London. Berg has published articles on Dalit movements in Andhra Pradesh, law and governance in India as well as caste and race in intercultural perspective. His ongoing book project is concernDed with studying the Dalits in India and the relation between embedded social complexities of caste based oppression and the legal responses to redress social injustice. This presentation follows up his article in Asian Journal of Law and Society "Structural mechanism of oppression, law and the Dalit question in India" (2015).

This seminar series is organised with the support of the History Faculty.

Drs Matteo Dian and Silvia Menegazzi give a talk on the AIIB at the International Political Economy of East Asia Seminar This presentation will analyse the strategy that led China to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and its likely consequences for the regional and global economic order. The creation of the AIIB embodies a considerable shift for the Chinese approach to regional and global governance, constituted by an increasing will to promote a transition from a 'Western-led governance' to a more inclusive 'East-West co -governance'.

Is the AIIB initiative just an instrument created to sustain China’s economic prosperity and Xi Jinping’s call for a 'Chinese Dream'? Is it a consequence of China's growing frustration with the Bretton Woods' architecture? Or, is it rather a first stepping stone towards a new China-centered financial and economic order? Does this entail a relevant threat to the world's economic order and its institutions? Or is it more simply a symptom of the increasing normative and institutional plurality of the current international order?

In this light, the seminar will scrutinize Beijing's new multilateral project taking into account China's growing regional role, and in particular, it’s renewed centrality in the East Asian region. In the course of the seminar, particular attention will be devoted to the analysis of the challenges and priorities as discussed by Chinese scholars, policy analysts and think tank experts.

Dr Amy King, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, The Australian National University, gives a talk for the Asian Studies Centre. Conventional wisdom holds that the post-WWII international economic order was the product of a dominant Anglo-American power structure and the policy ideas of British and American officials. But this account overlooks the leading role played by Nationalist China at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, and the People's Republic of China at the 1955 Bandung Conference. How did Chinese officials conceive of the changing relationship between the state, the nation and the global economy during this momentous decade? How did they define the relationship between the international economic order and China’s security interests? How did the international economic order intersect with evolving notions of Chinese nationalism? This paper outlines the conceptual framework underpinning a new project that seeks to sharpen our understanding of the connections between economics, security and nationalism, and to expand the empirical record on how non-Western states contributed to the international economic order at a critical juncture in its evolution.

Dr Yaqoob Khan Bangash gives a talk on Pakistan and it's constitutional sovereignty on 19th January 2016. The constitution of a country is its 'Supreme National Institution.' Hence, the creation of a constitution is a central process in institution making in a country, as the incentives and disincentives provided in the constitution are critical for the political, economic and social progress of the country, as clearly shown by Douglass North and others. Further, while the constitution is the rule-making framework, the 'grundnorm' is the consensus through which such a framework emerges. An assessment of both the grundnorm and the constitution of a country is therefore critical for an understanding of its trajectory of development, and can provide insight into the reasons behind the creation of weak and failing institutions.In the case of Pakistan, the first constitution took nine long years to formulate. The constitutional discussions clearly exhibited the contested nature of the state and the complications in creating strong institutions to support its development and growth. This paper analyses the concept of 'sovereignty' as presented in the Objectives Resolution of Pakistan presented to the Constituent Assembly in March 1949. The Objectives Resolution was the 'grundnorm' upon which all the constitutions of Pakistan (1956,1962 and 1973) have been based. An analysis of this concept will help us better understand the processes of institution making in Pakistan, the problems such an endeavour was fraught from since the inception, and the lasting effects it has had on the polity of Pakistan.

Bertil Lintner (Independent Journalist and Author) speaks at the Southeast Asia Seminar on 20th January 2016. The United States and the West did not change their policy of isolating Burma because of their concerns were primarily with the lack of democracy and human rights. It was "the China factor". Burma was becoming a vassal of China, which was seen as a threat to the status quo and regional stability. At the same time, Burma's military was also concerned about China's growing influence and realised that it has to reach out to the West to avoid being absorbed by Chinese political, economic and strategic interests. But in order to "woo the West" they also realised that they had to liberalise the country's rigid political system - but not in a way that would jeopardise their hold on power.

Sheila Smith (Council on Foreign Relations) gives a talk for the Asian Studies Centre on 24th November 2015. No country feels China's rise more deeply than Japan. CFR Senior Fellow Sheila A. Smith will discuss her new book, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China. Smith explores the policy issues testing the Japanese government as it tries to navigate its relationship with an advancing China through intricate case studies of visits by politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, conflicts at the East China Sea boundary, concerns about food safety, and strategies of island defense.

Sheila A. Smith, an expert on Japanese politics and foreign policy, is senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She joined CFR from the East-West Center in 2007, where she directed a multinational research team in a cross-national study of the domestic politics of the U.S. military presence in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. Smith was on the faculty of the department of international relations at Boston University (1994–2000), and on the staff of the Social Science Research Council (1992–1993). She has been a visiting researcher at two leading Japanese foreign and security policy think tanks, the Japan Institute of International Affairs and the Research Institute for Peace and Security, and at the University of Tokyo and the University of the Ryukyus. Smith teaches as an adjunct professor at the Asian Studies Department of Georgetown University and serves on the board of its Journal of Asian Affairs. She earned her PhD degree from the department of political science at Columbia University.

Pingtjin Thum (Research Associate, Centre for Global History; Coordinator, Project Southeast Asia) speaks at the Southeast Asia seminar on 21st October 2015. The outcome of the recent general elections in Singapore was a shock to observers, who had predicted a far tighter outcome. The unprecedented six seats (out of 87, plus a seventh seat won in a by-election in 2013) won by the Workers’ Party in 2011 had led many to herald a "new normal" in Singapore, one which would see greater opposition participation in Parliament to act as a check and balance on the ruling People's Action Party (PAP). During the 2015 election period, the opposition was greeted by rapturous crowds and the ruling party often seemed on the verge of panic. Yet the PAP won decisively, holding on to all their seats, gaining back a seat from the Workers’ Party, and increasing their overall vote share by nearly 10%. Pingtjin Thum (Green Templeton College), who covered the election with The Online Citizen, Singapore's leading independent news website, will reflect on his experience and discuss the reasons for this outcome, by putting it in the overall context of Singapore politics and history.