Asia Colloquia Papers
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YCAR’s Asia Colloquia Papers Series aims to make available to wider audiences the content of selected lectures, seminars and other talks presented at YCAR.
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Browsing Asia Colloquia Papers by Subject "Anthropology"
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Item Open Access Asian Futures, Old and New(01-01-2014) Li, TaniaIn this keynote address to the York Centre for Asian Research’s (YCAR) 2013 international graduate student conference, Tania Murray Li tackled a number of entrenched ideas about “Asia” as the shining future, which underpin the “new” discourses motivating and shaping many contemporary engagements with and analyses of the region. Her reflections on the implications for Asian studies of this “old” often orientalist discourse in the guise of the “new,” contributed to the conference’s theme, (Re) Constructions: Researching and Rethinking Asia. It also sparked the kind of critical, multidisciplinary discussion envisioned by the organizers, which aimed to rethink what it means to study Asia and Asian diaspora, especially by reconstructing existing conceptual frameworks.Item Open Access Denouncing Party Politics: Indignation and Domestic Confinement in Karachi(01-01-2013) Ahmad, TaniaDelivering her lecture as part of the 2012 York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR) Urban Asia Series, Dr. Tania Ahmad examines the events surrounding the 12 May 2007 Karachi riots, the discourse of self-described “ordinary residents” who were compelled to stay indoors during the conflict, and their sense of indignation towards party politics and the political violence. Ahmad suggests that the shared experience of non-participation during the incident was not an instance of depoliticization for these residents, but rather a mode of political engagement. The sociality formed around discourses of non-involvement through domestic confinement was shaped by the denunciation of events occurring in the streets.Item Open Access Poverty and the Imagination of a Future: The Story of Urban Slums in Delhi, India(04-01-2012) Das, VeenaHow do the poor see themselves? In their daily struggles, how do they use creative imaginings to withstand various stresses and their seemingly never- ending effort at subsistence? In this paper, Veena Das explores the many revealed ways the poor exercise creativity, boldness and enterprise in their attempts to cope and transcend, even for brief moments, daunting states of deprivation and the destitute roles that both experts and society seemed to have consigned them to. In this lecture, delivered as part of York University’s 50th anniversary celebration, Dr. Das shares with her audience insights from her ongoing multi-year research on the residents of New Delhi slums including the not often assumed ability of the poor to think, feel and act in ways that are all-too-human – both spontaneous and rational. Equally insightful responses are provided by Vanessa Rosa and Mark Ayyash, PhD Candidates in the Graduate Program in Sociology at York University.Item Open Access The Intermediary Trap: International Labour Recruitment, Transnational Governance and State-Citizen Relations in China(01-01-2013) Xiang, BiaoDelivering the 2012 York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR) Asia Lecture on the occasion of YCAR’s 10th anniversary, Dr. XIANG Biao explores the high cost of legal transnational labour migration for unskilled Chinese labourers. Although legal labour migration from China has become more effective, efficient and streamlined, the costs of finding and securing work overseas have been on the rise. In his exploration of the reasons why, Xiang points to intermediaries—commercial labour recruiters— as the key. He argues that intermediaries’ dominant position in cultivating, facilitating and controlling legal migration allow them to charge high fees to potential migrants. This results in the “intermediary trap”, where both the state and the migrants depend on intermediaries to manage and facilitate labour migration overseas. In this text based on his lecture, Xiang examines China’s hierarchical chains of migration intermediaries, from Beijing to rural villages, arguing that they constitute a transnational labour disciplinary system and point to new state-citizen relations.