Wed 4 Feb

1:00 - 2:30 pm

CENTRE FOR SOUTHEAST ASIA RESEARCH

Searching for the Truth: Preserving Memories and Obtaining Justice from the Khmer Rouge Era
By Youk Chhang, Executive Director, the Documentation Center of Cambodia, Documentation Center of Cambodia

Youk Chhang left Cambodia as a young refugee from the Pol Pot regime and eventually immigrated to the United States, where he served as a community relations adviser to the Dallas Texas Police Department. With the success of the peace settlement in Cambodia in 1991, he returned as a UN observer of the 1993 elections, and subsequently worked as a researcher with the Cambodian Genocide Center of Yale University. He became Executive Director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) in 1997. DC-Cam, now operated entirely by Cambodians, gathers evidence of human rights violations committed by Pol Pot's "Democratic Kampuchea" regime. The Center's aims are to provide the public with a better understanding of that regime, and to assist those who might wish to pursue legal redress. The chief objective is to help prevent the return of the Killing Fields to Cambodia through legal and peaceful means. Youk Chhang's informed views on the impending Tribunal to try the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime will be of interest to students of human rights and international law. More information on DC-Cam is available at http://www.dccam.org/ and Youk Chhang may be contacted at dccam@online.com.kh.

Thurs 5 Feb

4:30- 6:00 pm

INSTITUTE OF ASIAN RESEARCHIAR

Grads Conference:
The Clash of Inspirations: Presumptive Universals vs the Cult of Local Knowledge
By Don Emmerson, Senior Fellow, Asia/Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

For academics and apprentice academics in North America now, the intellectual legacy of the late 20th century might be summarized only half-facetiously as an embarrassment of posts: post-colonial, post-modern, post-Cold War. The embarrassment comes from stumbling around in the dark in a vast residual category unable to name who, what, and where we are, let alone whither. The epistemological "morning after" in which we find ourselves, post-20th century, amounts to an exhaustion of credence in presumptive universals--the "white man's burden" of colonial rule, modernity's promise of Enlightenment, the "scientific socialism" whose intellectual bankruptcy helped end the Cold War. At the same, partly in response to these grand disappointments, a cult of the local has arisen to challenge the idea that anything can be universally, objectively true. Using illustrations drawn from nature, culture, language, law, theory, policy, and ideology, and with special reference to Asia, this talk will explore the attractions and limitations of generalization and particularity for ourselves as scholars hoping to think clearly and productively about our complex world--and about our own roles as analysts and actors living inside it.

Fri 6 Feb
8:30 - 7:00 pm

Sat 7 Feb
8:30 - 12:30

ASIA-PACIFIC: LOCAL KNOWLEDGE `VS' WESTERN THEORY

A Graduate Student Conference held at the Institute of Asian Research
The University of British Columbia1855 West Mall, C.K. Choi Building
February 6-7, 2004

The Institute of Asian Research (IAR) at UBC invites graduate students and faculty to attend this conference highlighting the work of graduate students in the social sciences and humanities. The keynote speaker is Dr. Donald K. Emmerson, Director of the Southeast Asia Forum and Senior Fellow, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. A detailed program will be available shortly.Conference costs: $25.00 (includes coffee breaks, Friday lunch and evening reception, banquet and entertainment). Register your attendance by 3rd February, 2004 by e-mail to: Holly Coutts (MAPPS Program/CJR) e-mail: sidergirl1@yahoo.ca on behalf of the organizing committee

Wed 11 Feb.

12:00-1:30pm

CENTRE FOR KOREAN RESEARCH

China's Xinjiang Problem: Cyber-Separatism or Sino-Centricism?
By Dru C. Gladney, Professor of Asian Studies and Anthropology, the University of Hawai'I, Manoa.

This talk examines Islam and Muslim minority identity in China, not only because it is where this author has conducted most of his research, but also because with the largest Muslim minority in East Asia, China's Muslims are clearly the most threatened in terms of self-preservation and Islamic identity. Through comparing three Muslim groups (Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Hui), it will be argued that successful Muslim accommodation to minority status in China can be seen to be a measure of the extent to which Muslim groups have been able to reconcile e dictates of Islamic identiy to their host culture. This goes against the opposite view that can be found in the writings of some analysts of Islam in China, that Islam in the region is almost unavoidably rebellious and that Muslims as minorities are inherently problematic to a non-Muslim state. The history of Islam in China suggests that both within each Muslim community, as well as between Muslim nationalities, there are many alternatives to either complete accommodation or separatism.

Thurs, 12 Feb

12:00-1:30pm

CENTRE FOR JAPANESE RESEARCH

The Emergence of a National Sport Culture: An Historical Comparison of Imperial Austria and Japan
By Dr. Wolfram Manzenreiter, Institute of East Studies, Univ of Vienna

With the increasing intensification of global interconnectedness, it has been argued that gobalisation processes generate the blurring of boundaries of the nation-state. The growth of large transnational corporations has changed the rules of the game on the field of global capitalism, accompanying the growing inability of the state to control global capital flows. Consequently, the primary focus of globalisation studies in sport has been on the question of whether global sport processes undermine nationalism and nation-state structural arrangements.By looking at the specific traits of modern sports in 19th century Imperial Austria and Japan, Dr. Wolfram Manzenreiter will discuss channels of import, agents of change, political interests, and social organisations related to the early period of institutionalisation of sport in the modern nation state. Contrary to the notions of path-directed modernization and the levelling power of globalisation, the comparative analysis of sportscapes clearly argues in favour of a balanced approach paying attention to the impact of local culture.

Fri 13 Feb

4:30 - 6:00pm

CENTRE FOR JAPANESE RESEARCH

How to Sell a Public Good:. Case Studies on the Current State of Sport Supply in Contemporary Japan
By Wolfram Manzenreiter , East Asian Studies, University of Vienna

Fri 27 Feb

4:30 - 6.00pm

CENTRE FOR JAPANESE RESEARCH

Japanese Farmers and Agricultural Settlements: Current Trends
By Tom Waldichuk, Social & Environmental Studies (Geography), University College of the Cariboo

Fri 27 Feb

4:00 - 5:30 pm

CENTRE FOR CHINESE RESEARCH AND DEPT. OF ASIAN STUDIES

Rhythm and Metaphor in Daily Life Chinese
by Professor Perry Link, Princeton University

Perry Link is a Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton. University. He specializes in 20th-century Chinese literature. He is well known for his advocacy of human rights in China and his work with Chinese intellectuals. His publications include: The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese Leadership's Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People - In Their Own Words, 2001; Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China's Predicament, 1992; The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System, 2000; and Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth Century Chinese Cities, 1981. He has also edited several anthologies of modern Chinese literature and many articles and reviews in the New York Review of Books and elsewhere.Published to predictable international controversy, The Tiananmen Papers, offers a sensational trove of documents, chronicling events leading up to, and following, the violent quashing of student protests in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, and vividly details for the first time what previously had only been surmised.