TRANSCULTURAL ASIA: Unlearning Colonial/Imperial Power Relations 27-28 June 2013

TITLES & ABSTRACTS

DAMS AND DEVELOPMENT: A Case of Incompatible Policies and the Politics of the Green in the Northeastern Himalayas, India Payal Banerjee Smith College, USA Payal.banerjee@gmail.com

This paper articulates certain contradictions in Indias development policies with an emphasis on analyzing the apparent discordance between the so-called Green practices and the intense focus on building hydroelectric power (HEPs) projects and mega-dams. Specifically, this paper focuses on the experience of Indias northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, where the construction of several HEPs on the river Teesta has resulted in urgent environmental and socio-economic problems, such as wildlife damages, frequent landslides, human displacement, and land privatization. The immediacy of these issues has not only mobilized an anti-dam protest movement but has also challenged the legitimacy of Sikkims Green Mission, a state government-lead development program designed to institutionalize sustainable growth, promote organic agriculture and eco-tourism, and preserve the states immense bio-diversity. The simultaneity of socio-ecologically hazardous HEPs and the conservationist Green Mission might indicate a contradiction or lack of co-ordination in the states policy spheres. This research, however, suggests that far from being discordant, these seemingly conflicting policies reinforce mutual viability and procure legitimacy for the states priorities in development and energy security, which are ultimately networked with Indias growth imperatives in neoliberal globalization. Anchored within the political economy of capital investments and market mandates, this papers analysis of the collective significance of Green Mission policies, the states sustained investments in HEPs, and anti-dam movements illustrates how contemporary regional governments intercede between the exigencies of the local and the transnational, and between dispossession and accumulation.

This paper draws on my fieldwork in Sikkim between 2011 and 2012-2013. Interviews were conducted with journalists, local researchers, academics, and NGOs knowledgeable of issues pertaining to the HEPs and Green Mission. Interview participants also included anti-dam activists of the Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), a grassroots organization committed to raising awareness on HEP-related social and environmental problems while mobilizing support for the rights of those impacted by the Teesta dams. In addition, this research included a collection of material in print, such as: anti-dam protest literature in the form of pamphlets published and distributed by activists; White Papers on HEPs in Sikkim; and, other relevant documents on Green Mission policies outlined in numerous publicly available information booklets, brochures, and posters issued by the Forests, Environment and Wildlife Management Department. This research reveals the complex nature of a protracted agitation involving the states people from all ethnic groups, activists, spiritual leaders, state officials, and hydropower corporations over a long list of urgent issues. These include: privatization and access to land for dams, encroachment into protected areas for ethnic Lepchas, loss of livelihoods, displacement, disputes over leases and compensation, and environmental damages. Moreover, the destruction of certain peaks, forests, and water-bodies venerated for spiritual practices has mobilized Buddhist monks to participate in anti-dam protests and integrate, into existing demands of ecological and socio-economic security, an articulation of distinct rights to preserve spaces of spiritual significance. In this political climate of dissent, the states Green Mission has provided a discourse of noble sustainable development that can be mobilized to grant a measure of justification to the severe disruptions in the riparian ecosystems and peoples lives caused by the Teesta dams. The paper will assess, given how the global economy is linked with economic growth in India and China, why it is important to analyze these countries growth-related energy needs as part of global circuits of transfer and consumption of human labor, natural resource extraction, and energy.

DIALOGUE OF CIVILISATIONSTHE PROBLEM NOT THE SOLUTION? A Critical Security Studies Perspective Pinar BILGIN Bilkent University pbilgin@bilkent.edu.tr

The purposes of this paper are twofold: (1) to consider the extent to which Dialogue of Civilizations (DoC) initiatives are likely to address insecurities that they identify; and (2) to adopt a critical security studies perspective to point to other insecurities that are likely to remain unidentified and unaddressed in the process. In their present conception, DoC initiatives risk falling short of addressing the very insecurities they prioritise (i.e. the stability of inter-state order) let alone attending to those experienced by non-state referents, which they overlook. The first part of the paper advances two points. First, I point to how projects of civilizational dialogue have bracketed civilization, thereby leaving intact the Huntingtonian

notion of civilizations as religiously unified autochthonous entities. Second, I argue that while contributing to opening up space for communication, DoC initiatives have nevertheless failed to employ a dialogical approach to dialogue between civilizations. The second part of the paper adopts a critical security studies perspective. Here, I tease out the notion of security underpinning DoC initiatives and argue that the proponents DoC, in their haste to avert a clash, have defined security narrowly as the absence of war between states belonging to different civilizations. Theirs is also a shallow notion of security insofar as it fails to capture the derivative character of security and insecurity. The paper concludes by pointing to the need for recognising multiple agencies in the making of what we presently view as Western ideas and institutions; re-think Western and Islamic civilizations (among others) along nonessentialist lines to allow for further dialogue; and seek socio-political insight into the dynamics of intra-civilizational relations. An alternative approach to DoC that elaborates on the notions of civilization, dialogue and security, whereby the problem of difference and ethics of security are not deferred, would likely have very different implications for the security of individuals, social groups and states.

THE CHINA ELEPHANT: Interpreting a Rising China in the West CAO Qing Durham University, UK qing.cao@durham.ac.uk

In the early 18th century the world is a much diversified place - China, India and the Middle East each has at least the same cultural, economic and political importance and gravity as that of Europe. In 1700, the combined GDP of China and India is 46% of the world total (in 1400 this figure is 75%). In the next three centuries, a dramatically rising West came to dominate the world culminating in the end of history in the 1990s. However, the early 21st century marks the shift of global power relations, with the re-emergence of these three civilisations alongside the growth of other regions in Latin America and Africa. The balance of cultural diversities, values, histories and traditions will be readdressed. But how this structural change is perceived and responded is crucially important and beginning to be debated. This paper discusses and assesses the latest Western responses to Chinas re-emergency as a global power, focusing on the cultural perspective. This study is based on the analysis of a range of Western academic books published since 2010 on dealing with the rise of China. It delineates diverse views of interpreting Chinas rising influence and various ways offered to deal with China.

WHY CANT YOU SORT OUT YOUR DIFFERENCES PEACEFULLY? A Critical Reflection on the Sino-Japanese Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands Dispute CHEN Ching-Chang Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan ccchen01@apu.ac.jp

The ongoing (and worrying) dispute over the ownership of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea between the Peoples Republic of China and Japan has been ridiculed by some Western observers as an unwise struggle for rocks. Others, especially those under the influence of the realist paradigm in International Relations, are quick to attribute the root causes of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands dispute to the exclusivity of territorial claims, natural resource competition, and the changing power configuration in East Asia. All this suggests that only China and Japan are responsible for allowing themselves to be consumed by their past (for their politicians respective domestic agenda, to be precise), or that there is little if not nothing they can do to handle their dispute peacefully. What has been missing in the scholarly and policy discourse is a recognition that this thorny territorial dispute would not have been as such had China and Japan not been socialized into the Westphalian society of states in a rather violent way in the late nineteen century. One must ask why they attach so much significance to those trivial specks in the first place. This paper maintains that the seed of the contemporary Sino-Japanese rivalry cannot be separated from the expansion of European international society after which China and Japan learned the need to be obsessed with sovereign independence and territorial integrity. While this is hardly a novel claim, I argue that the extinguishment of the Ryukyu Kingdom was a critical turning point through which Qing Chinese officials realized that Meiji Japan was no longer within the borders of a once-shared civilization and using force against Japan became more permissible, which prepared the ground for a series of violent conflicts between these two countries unusual in their millennium-old, largely peaceful interactions. A sustainable resolution of the Diaoyu/Senkaku issue, then, should go beyond calls for putting aside differences over sovereignty and conceive a more inclusive, post-Westphalian bordering practice for East Asia.

DIVERSITY AND RATIONALITY IN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Gavan DUFFY Syracuse University, US gduffy@maxwell.syr.edu

Implicit in the recommendations and warnings of scientific experts is a claim to rationality. If this claim cannot be redeemed, then the testimony of scientific experts should be suspect. This paper examines the development of standards of theory choice that putatively warrant scientific claims. It argues that the epistemologies dominant over the past century, from verificationism to the various forms of falsificationism, do not provide a rational standard. This failure, however, does not mean that science is, in the end, irrational. A contemporary form of simplism, alternatively called meaning holism, pragmatic realism, or simply pragmatism, provides a rational standard. This standard, however, requires the redemption of scientific claims within unfettered fora of competent speakers and hearers. In the natural sciences, where meanings can be assigned by convention, this requirement poses no special problem. However, in the social sciences, questions often transcend cultural boundaries, meanings often condition inquiry, and meanings are sometimes even at stake. When this is so, rationality requires cultural diversity among participants. The absence of diversity implies the absence of rationality. The paper concludes with reflections on the impact of these considerations on the practice of international studies.

EXPLORING THE FRONTIER OF POSTCOLONIAL INTERNATIONAL THEORY John M. HOBSON University of Sheffield, UK J.M.Hobson@shef.ac.uk

In this paper I want to challenge various aspects of Edward Saids conception of Orientalism. In finding it too reductive I want to expand the boundary, or frontier of postcolonial international theory (PIT) outwards in several conceptual ways. In the first section I want to lay out my alternative conception by differentiating Orientalism into its two constituent components scientific racism and Eurocentric institutionalism before I suggest that these can be imperialist or anti-imperialist. This, then, is an exercise in expanding the current position of the boundary of PIT outwards so that it can make sense of the complexity of Eurocentric international theory in ways that avoid shoehorning all of it into a single

discursive imperial boot. However, as a recent blog forum on my 2012 book clarifies, my differentiation of Eurocentric institutionalism from scientific racism on the one hand, and my claim that post-1945 international theory is Eurocentric rather than racist on the other, has been queried by some of my postcolonial interlocutors. So I shall consider this in some detail in the second section. And finally in part 3 I shall briefly interrogate postcolonialisms critique of humanitarian intervention theory by asking if its non-interventionist politics is adequate in todays world. Ultimately my aim is to push the boundary of postcolonial IR theory outwards in parts 1 and 2 in order to see how other postcolonialists at this workshop respond, while part 3 constitutes a thought experiment in order to locate where this expanded boundary line of postcolonialism ultimately rests.

THEORIZING SANGGUO YANYI: Justice (yi) and Friendship (youyi) in Confucian Politics

HWANG Ching-Chane (Ginger), CHEN Boyu, and L.H.M. LING National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan and The New School, USA ginhwang@mail.nsysu.edu.tw, bychen76@staff.nsysu.edu.tw, LingL@newschool.edu

Many in East Asia draw on the 14th-century epic, Sangguo yanyi (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms), to understand inter-state relations in the region (e.g., US-China-Japan or ChinaJapan-Korea and so on). Typically, they place this ancient framework within contemporary realist analyses of International Relations (IR), transposing the relations between Shu, Wei, and Wu the three kingdoms of the title to the Westphalian inter-state system. Such transposition raises three key problems: (1) the Westphalian inter-state system does not map onto 3rd-century Confucian political relations as depicted in the epic, (2) this mismatch stems from the different ontologies and epistemologies that account for the Westphalian and Confucian world orders, especially (3) the notions of justice (yi) and friendship (youyi) that drive the epic but have no counterpart in Westphalian realism. What results is an intellectual debilitation: Asian analysts unnecessarily undermine their own ability to resolve problems in the region by shackling indigenous sources of political and strategic insight, like those from sangguo yanyi, to fit within the confines of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Morgenthau, Kissinger, and Waltz. This paper explores what Confucian notions of justice (yi) and friendship (you) could mean in terms of treating US-China-Japan relations, as an example.

THE ROAD AHEAD: What Penetrates Among Civilizations IKEDA Josuke Centre for the Study of Political Violence, Jindal Global University, India jikeda@jgu.edu.in

Perhaps one reason why civilization has been so handy but powerful, at the same time problematic, is because of its linkage with the conception of territory. Territory reflects another idea that every human life needs site or soil; and yet it must be demarcated for some reasons. This further gives the foods for imagination that framed territory can be regarded as different, self-standing, and thus independent in which every aspects of human lives are comprised in the name of kultur, or culture. People have also been creative enough to give a nametag of civilization, and apply one analogy to see as if it acts. Different stream came into civilization from the very idea of civis, connecting culture with sophistication. After all, civilization holds both descriptive aspect of socially constructed site, as well as normative aspect regarding the quality of human life. Now civilization has own history as idea, having been used and misused by a number of people. Having said, if we seriously seek anything other than civilization, without making similar mistakes, we would need to have a different fact on human life, that every sites necessitates roads to reach other sites. It is based on another observation that human life is always plural, comprising different lives of different persons. Roads may connect different sites, facilitating communications and mixture among people, while it is precisely during the journey through roads where interpretations, translations, merger and selection (thus inclusion and exclusion) of human thought occurs. Roads are not limited to terrestrial; there are some routes among oceans where interactions have also taken place. After all, roads have been more than just infrastructure; it has embodied dynamic social process of interaction and of human thought. Interestingly, however, it has been nothing more than physical infrastructure among those who are studying world politics. Then, if roads do have much richer meanings, why not incorporate its innovative aspect? The paper is an attempt to consider how we may include ideas of road in World Politics. It may be both territorial/de-territorial, political/a-political, and substantial/procedural. It may reinforce existing ideas of geopolitics and International Relations, but may also represent the very process of change and penetrate among civilizations. Through introducing a fresh perspective about road, the paper tries to consider to what extent we may liberate ourselves from terrestrial straightjacket, and after all, interstate politics.

CARTOGRAPHIC ANXIETY AND THE BORDERS OF THE MIND: Micro-politics of Boundary-making in Post-colonial North-east India Rafiul AHMED Sikkim University, India

ahmedrafiul@gmail.com

An important facet of the preoccupation of the post-colonial North-east India is the emergence of cartographic anxiety: a sense of suspension between the former colony and not-yet-nation. This paper illustrates how the shared boundaries between Assam and present Bangladesh, itself a legacy of imperial cartography, are violently produced in the discourses of the regions contemporary micro-politics around its boundary-making project. In doing so, this paper examines the emerging discourse of citizenship through the issue of foreign infiltration the so-called Bangladeshi migrants, the never-ending demands of the secessionist/regionalist movements for a barbed wire along the Assam-Bangladesh borderland. Such innumerable invocations regarding the sanctity of the fractured body politic, emerging out of regional politics, usually pushes to the margin that which produces borders. Borders are then transformed into a powerful monolith and any act of transgressing it without proper authorization is rendered an act of blasphemy against the nation-state. This compels us to reassess the imprint of post-colonial territoriality mapped on the psyche of the nationstate.

NATION-STATE PROBLEMATIC IN ASIA: The South Asian Experience Binoda Kumar MISHRA

Centre for the Study of International Relations and Development (CSIRD) India director@csird.org.in bkmishra27@gmail.com

The notion of nation-state as a manifestation of the modernity project served to establish order in the West (Medieval Europe) that was marred by perpetual conflict among a web of groups. Being backed by the demonstrated success of such nation-states, this Western idea of nation-state demanded universal acceptance either by persuasion or by imposition. The case of nation-state in South Asia is a clear case of such imposition discarding the age-old indigenous inclusive political ideas in favour of Western notion of nation-state as a panacea

to South Asias post-colonial political uncertainty. The proposed paper would argue that political ideas with inherent self-other binary are dysfunctional to Asian political space as evident by the near complete failure of the political units in South Asia in maturing into the status of so called nation-states. Rather it has put South Asia on the path of fission. The paper would suggest rediscovering inclusive political ideas based on Asias universalistic values such as the Indian philosophy of Vasudheya Kutumbakam (The whole world is a single family).

AFTER IMPERIAL REASON: A Postcolonial Engagement with Kant Mustapha K. PASHA University of Aberdeen, UK m.k.pasha@abdn.ac.uk Recent reincarnations of Kants cosmopolitan meditations rest on the expansive promise of transcending thick, meaning-bearing forms of association and belonging in favor of a thin, but universal (and universalizing), commitment to humanity. Without the burdens of political obligation and morality coded in particular instantiations of hospitality or tolerance, the new cosmopolitanism would produce a post-Westphalian ethics in a world of strangers. A key plank of this post-secular sensibility is the evacuation of all kinds of religious attachments presumed atavistic in modernitys global march. Relying on Gandhis critique of modern civilization, this paper challenges the lure of any cosmopolitan impulse nested in secularism. Rather, the latter may impose the hegemony of imperial reason in occluding alternatives based on recognition of difference and non-hierarchical cultural agency.

COSMOPOLITAN DISORDERS: Ignoring Power, Overcoming Diversity and Transcending Borders, Yet Again Everita SILINA The New School, USA silinae@newschool.edu

The discourse on global governance invites us into a strange world of disassociation from time and space we inhabit. Based on broadly Cosmopolitan principles, it invokes a global normative ethic, a kind of shared civic identity, which ignores the burdens of history, overcomes the obstacles of geography and the diversity of peoples and unites all humanity around a set of identifiable global problems. In order to avoid accusations of new colonialism and power politics, the common values articulated by this liberal model of governance are too thin, too abstract and too general to be useful guides for how to navigate the myriad of clashing interests, viewpoints and problems that constitute our daily interactions. Despite these attempts, the majority of Cosmopolitan models of governance are drawn on the experience and principles of Western liberal democracies. Their indifference to vagaries of time and space means that they operate on a limited conception of power and present an undertheorized notion of identity. Critical security scholars have tried to move away from the Western centric perspectives on governance and have advanced their own brand of cosmopolitan ethic, one anchored in the pursuit of bottom-up definition of a good and secure life. Unlike their Liberal counterparts, critical scholars offer a much more complex concept of identity, one that demands local models of governance and localized agents to articulate the problems that demand solutions. Yet, even the critical approach hopes that, by the end of the day, these locally derived narratives and locally empowered actors will converge towards a common global ethic grounded in individual human rights. Furthermore, the emphasis on individual agent and bottom-up perspectives tends to underplay the structured nature of global inequalities that foster the very problems they seek to overcome. I suggest that both, the liberal problem-solving approach to global interactions and its critical alternative, ignore the structural interpretations of global politics and therefore greatly underestimate the power of the global market and its effects on the relationships within and outside its economic sphere of influence. Consequently, they tend to reinforce rather than challenge the dominant power imbalance in the global sphere. I consider the implications of these dominant models for addressing the issues of power, identity and agency in the globalized environment and explore whether global governance ought to be more than an analytical tool.