India China Institute

Trauma & Dissociation
2013-02-26 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Trauma & Dissociation: 9/11 and the two faces of violence in the India/Pakistan partition

While the scope of destruction of 9/11 and of the India/Pakistan Partition in 1946-48 can hardly be compared, they nevertheless have in common trauma and dissociation. In 9/11 both therapists and patients were equally affected. Dr. Alan Roland, psychoanalyst, will speak both of his own reactions and those of his patients, how current trauma arouses past traumas, and how paranoid anxieties are aroused in many people. He will give specific examples of both.

While reams have been written about Partition, not until the 1990s has there been systematic study of the psychological effects of the two to three million killed in communal riots, 16-18 million refugees, 100,000 women raped, and 30,000 women abducted to be married by the other side. The aftermath of Partition violence is still causing tremendous tensions and conflicts between India and Pakistan.

Building on the work of Jayanti Basu, a Kolcata psychoanalyst, Dr. Roland will cite case material from two kinds of violence: 1) interviews with two brothers and their wives, the former as boys having been on a train from Pakistan where only 250 out of 5,000 persons survived a massacre, and 2) patients of families who were able to leave the Punjab well before widespread violence occurred. The differences in repercussions are dramatic but both categories were deeply affected. The familial effects of trauma of South Asians will be contrasted with the more individualistic emphasis on trauma in the United States after 9/11.

About Alan RolandAlan Roland, Ph.D., is a practicing psychoanalyst on the Faculty and Board of Directors of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. He has written three books on Asians and Asian Americans, including the latest one, Journeys to Foreign Selves: Asians and Asian Americans in a Global Era (Oxford University Press). He has also participated in Ashis Nandy’s research project on interviewing Victims and Perpetrators of Partition Violence.

Economic Development and Inequality: What Can the Asian Experience Teach Us?
2013-02-27 18:00 - 19:30
A lecture by Vamsi VakulabharanamSchool of Economics, University of Hyderabad, India

Moderated by Mark Frazier, Professor of Politics, NSSR, and ICI Academic Co-director

Discussants: Carl Riskin, Professor of Economics, Columbia Universityand Sanjay Reddy, Professor of Economics, NSSR, and ICI Academic Co-director

Development and Inequality: What can the Asian Experience Teach Us?

The Asian experience of growth from the 1950s until now has had some of the most profound transformational effects on the global economy. The well-known East Asian Miracle, and the closely following miracles of China and India have had dramatic effects on the structures of global production as well as on global measures of poverty and inequality. Perhaps less explored are the very divergent natures of their take-offs. In the first wave of Asian growth, some Asian economies (such as Japan and the ‘Tiger’ economies) experienced a relatively equal early capitalist growth/development process between 1950s and 1980. Subsequent growth however became much more unequal. In the second wave of growth in countries such as China and India, early capitalist growth/development since 1980 is associated with a sharp increase in inequality. How might one understand these different phenomena, given that there is no clear standard economic theory that provides an explanation? In this paper, I propose an explanation that draws from local political and economic structures of these economies and the deeper changes in global economy since 1980s. I seek to re-incorporate political economy insights to obtain a more holistic understanding of Asian growth and its effects on the global economy. In analyzing Asian economies, the shift in regimes of global and local capitalisms, and the implications for a deeper understanding of the relation between development and inequality are brought into sharp focus.

About Vamsi Vakulabharanam

Vamsi Vakulabharanam is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Hyderabad in India. He is currently a grantee at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) working on a project titled, ‘Economic Development and Inequality: What Can the Asian Experience Teach Us?’ He was also a Fellow of the India China Institute of the New School between 2008 and 2010. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004. He taught at the City University of New York between 2004 and 2008. He has focused his research on inequality in contemporary Asian economies including, India and China. He has written on globalization and agrarian change in India, and income/consumption and wealth inequality in China and India during the period of economic reforms. He has also worked on patterns of workforce development in China during the last decade. He has published his work in academic journals, including World Development, Development and Change, Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Development Studies, Review of Radical Political Economics, Economic and Political Weekly, and Ethics and Economics, and has chapters in multiple books.

India China Interactions: Second Interdisciplinary Symposium for Emerging Scholars on India China Studies
2013-03-06 08:30 - 17:00
Please note that this event is by invitation only. Please contact indiachina@newschool.edu if you would like to attend. Due to space limitations we are unable to accommodate all requests.

The Second Interdisciplinary Symposium for Emerging Scholars on India China Studies is part of ICI’s continuing commitment to build a community of scholars who are engaged in research that focuses on new and innovative approaches to understanding India-China relations. Presenters selected for this symposium share a broad interest in India-China relations in a globalizing world. Held in conjunction with India China Institute’s major spring 2013 conference, Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalaya, the symposium will provide a platform for a select group of early career scholars from India, China, and the United States to present their work and to participate in multi-disciplinary investigation and deliberation with distinguished scholars.

When discussing the work of each of the presenters, we hope to identify relevant methodological and substantive questions, and where possible answers, through a productive confrontation of diverse disciplinary perspectives. Relevant cross-cutting themes will include that of the role to be played by received and privileged spatial and institutional frames, such as that of the nation-state, in scholarly analyses within the field, and that of how to relate historical and contemporary concerns while avoiding anachronistic fallacies.We hope that the symposium will provide a milestone in the intellectual definition and institutional development of the field, enhance the sense of community within it, and help to foster more productive directions for teaching and scholarship.

Preliminary Symposium Agenda

Revealed: Himalayan Meltdown
2013-03-06 18:00 - 20:00
Revealed: Himalayan Meltdown Film Screening

When: March 6, 2013, 6-8pmWhere: Theresa Lang Center, 55 W 13th St., 2nd Fl.Food and refreshments will be provided

In the prelude to the Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalaya conference (March 7-8), the India China Institute invites you to join us for the screening of Revealed: Himalayan Meltdown, an award-winning documentary co-produced by the UN Development Programme, Discovery Asia, and Arrowhead Films. The film explores the impact of the glacial ice melt on communities in Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India and Nepal, and illustrates how the affected communities are adapting and preparing for the inevitable changes in the Himalayan glaciers.Following the film screening, a discussion and Q&A session will be held with Cherie Hart, the Executive Producer and UNDP Regional Communications Advisor (Thailand), Anil Chitrakar, Chairperson of the Himalayan Climate Initiative, and Li Bo, ICI Fellow and environmental consultant.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4pkE6JFurs&version=3&hl=en_US]

About the panelists

Anil Chitrakar, Chairperson of the Himalayan Climate Initiative, is a social entrepreneur from Nepal. Trained as an engineer and energy planner at the University of Rajasthan (India) and the University of Pennsylvania (USA), Anil started his career as an energy engineer and continues to work on designing and spreading renewable energy solutions across Nepal. He has received the Ashoka fellowship, and more recently the Silicon Valley Tech Award for his work. Anil is also engaged in recovering and restoring the built and living heritage in the Kathmandu valley and across Nepal, particularly Lumbini. Anil was part of the team that implemented the National Conservation Strategy for Nepal, preserving its globally unique natural endowment. Anil has also managed venture funds for environmental groups all over Nepal. In 1993 he was one of the 100 “Global Leaders for Tomorrow” awardees at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Cherie Hart has more than 25 years experience in media and communications. Her area of expertise is in development writing and reporting. Her professional background extends to television, radio and print reporting from more than 50 developing countries. Ms. Hart is currently the UNDP Regional Communications Advisor in Bangkok, where she collaborates with UNDP Country Offices to promote development work through media in the Asia and Pacific region. She has been Executive Producer of three Discovery Channel documentaries on low-cost solutions to global disaster-related challenges. Himalayan Meltdown recently won the Platinum Prize for Best Documentary at the Worldfest Film Festival.

Li Bo currently serves as the Secretary General of Friends of Nature, the oldest environmental NGO in China. He was also a former India China Institute Fellow (2008-2010). In addition he is a consultant with the Stockholm Environmental Institute-Asia (SEI-Asia) in Bangkok, a research associate at the Center for Human and Economics Development Studies at Peking University, and an adjunct researcher of environmentaljustice at the Institute of Environmental Laws at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, Central China. As a fellow, Li explored the extent to which democratic decision making at the grassroots level is conducive to strong local stewardship of natural resource management and sustainable livelihoods.

Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalaya
2013-03-07 - 2013-03-08
Conference Program

Jai Bhim Comrade: Film Screening and Conversation with Anand Patwardhan, India's Leading Documentary Filmmaker
2013-03-13 18:00 - 21:00
India China Institute and School of Media Studies at The New School invite you to a screening of the award-winning film, Jai Bhim Comrade,and a conversation with Anand Patwardhan. Nidhi Srinivas (Associate Professor of Nonprofit Management at Milano, The New School) will chair a discussion following the event. Sumita Chakravarty (Associate Professor of Culture and Media, The New School) and Toral Gajarawala (Assitant Professor of English at NYU, and an expert on Dalit issues) will serve as discussants.

About Jai Bhim Comrade

For thousands of years India’s Dalits were abhorred as “untouchables” denied education and treated as bonded labor. By 1923 Bhimrao Ambedkar broke the taboo, won doctorates abroad and fought for the emancipation of his people. He drafted India’s Constitution, led his followers to discard Hinduism for Buddhism. His legend still spreads through poetry and song.

In 1997 a statue of Dr. Ambedkar in a Dalit colony in Mumbai was desecrated with footwear. As angry residents gathered, police opened fire killing 10. Vilas Ghogre, a leftist poet, hung himself in protest.

Jai Bhim Comrade, shot over 14 years, follows the poetry and music of people like Vilas and marks a subaltern tradition of reason that from the days of the Buddha, has fought superstition and religious bigotry.

Reviews of the film are available on the film’s website.

Anand PatwardhanAnand Patwardhan is India’s leading documentary filmmaker. For over four decades his investigative documentaries have charted life in modern India, from the nature of its economic development to the power of nationalism and religious fundamentalism, and the struggles by the poor and the marginalized for justice. It has taken legal action, including a decision by India’s Supreme Court, to prevent successive Indian governments from censoring his films and blocking them from being screened.

Both Tool & Art: Chinese Calligraphy
2013-03-15 18:00 - 19:30
Chinese artist and painter Mansheng Wang will be discussing Chinese calligraphy and its role in Chinese art and culture, both in the past as well as today. This workshop will also include a hands-on calligraphy demonstration by Mr. Wang.

About the ArtistWang’s calligraphy and paintings have been shown both in China and the United States. Among his exhibitions, he has held shows at the Beijing Art Museum and Today Art Museum in Beijing, at Wave Hill House Gallery in Bronx, New York, and at galleries and museums in the New York area and the Northeastern U.S. In addition, he has lectured on Chinese art and culture and given demonstrations of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, other museums and universities.

The Cultural Foundations of Chinese Communism: Mining the Anyuan Revolutionary Tradition
2013-04-15 18:00 - 20:00
How do we explain the surprising trajectory of the Chinese Communist revolution? Why has it taken such a different route from its Russian prototype?

An answer, Elizabeth Perry suggests, lies in the Chinese Communists’ creative deployment of cultural resources – during their revolutionary rise to power and afterward. Skillful “cultural positioning” and “cultural patronage” on the part of Mao Zedong, his comrades, and successors helped to construct a polity in which a foreign political system came to be accepted as familiarly “Chinese.” Illustrated by numerous colorful images, Perry’s talk traces this process through a case study of the Anyuan coal mine, where Mao and other early Communist leaders mobilized an influential labor movement at the beginning of their revolution. Once known as “China’s Little Moscow,” Anyuan came over time to serve as a touchstone of “political correctness” that symbolized a distinctively Chinese revolutionary tradition. Perry explores the contested meanings of that tradition as contemporary Chinese debate their revolutionary past in search of a new political future.

Elizabeth J. Perry is the Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. She is a comparativist with special expertise in the politics of China. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, she sits on the editorial boards of nearly a dozen major scholarly journals, holds honorary professorships at six Chinese universities, and has served as the President of the Association for Asian Studies. Professor Perry’s research focuses on popular protest and grassroots politics in modern and contemporary China.

Her books include Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845-1945 (1980); Chinese Perspectives on the Nien Rebellion (1981); Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China (1992); Proletarian Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution (1997); Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (2001); Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China (2011); and Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition (2012). Her book, Shanghai on Strike: the Politics of Chinese Labor (1993), won the John King Fairbank prize from the American Historical Association. Her article, “Chinese Conceptions of Rights” (2008), won the Heinz Eulau award from the American Political Science Association.

Food and Immigrant Life: The Role of Food in Forced Migration, Migrant Labor, and Recreating Home
2013-04-18 - 2013-04-20
Day 1: Tishman Auditorium, 66 W 12 St., First FlDay 2: Theresa Lang Center, 55 W 13th St., Second Fl.

This conference will examine the complex relationships between food, migration, and immigration. Food scarcity is not only at the root of much human displacement and migration. The food industry also offers migrants an entry point into the U.S. economic system while, simultaneously, confines migrants to low wages and poor, if not unsafe, work conditions. In addition, food is a primary vehicle for migrants to maintain their cultural identity, which is so important to displaced peoples. Thisconference is an opportunity to firmly place issues of immigration and food service work in the context of a broader social justice agenda and to explore the central role food plays in expressing rich cultural heritage.The keynote address will be given by Dolores Huerta, co-founder and first Vice President Emeritus of United Farm Workers of America, on Thursday, April 18 at 6:00pm.

Confirmed speakers are Aurora Almendral, Sean Basinski, Yong Chen, James Hathaway, Ellen Ernst Kossek, Saru Jayaraman, Arup Maharatna, Fabio Parasecoli, Dwaine Plaza, Krishnendu Ray, Monique Truong, Koko Warner, and Jane Ziegelman. Visit the online program for all details.

The New School’s Center for Public Scholarship and the Food Studies Program presents this, the 29th Social Research conference, in collaboration with the Writing Program, India China Institute, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, Center for New York City Affairs, Global Studies Program, Gender Studies Program, and International Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Citizenship (ICMEC).Visit the event website for up-to-date program information, speaker biographies, paper abstracts, and ticket information at www.newschool.edu/cps/food.

Gender Equality & Social Inclusion in South Asia
2013-04-26 18:00 - 20:00

EVENT FULL: Political Obstacles in the Post-Insurgency Reconstruction in Nepal
2013-05-02 18:00 - 20:00
ATTENTION: This event is now overbooked. You may come to the venue but seats will not be guaranteed for those guests who have not RSVP'ed.

Professor S.D. Muni is a Visiting Research Professor at The Institute of South Asian Studies. He was India's Special Envoy to Southeast Asian countries on UN Security Council Reforms (2005-06), and also the editor of Indian Foreign Affairs Journal. At Jawaharlal Nehru University he was Chairman of the Centre for South, Central and Southeast Asian Studies (1991-93) and held the prestigious Appadorai Chair of International Relations and Area Studies.

Film Screening: "Highway"
2013-05-04 17:00 - 19:00

China's 99%
2013-05-22 18:00 - 20:00
Please join us for a conversation about China’s 99%, in partnership with the Dissent magazine.

Wednesday, May 22, 6:00-8:00 p.m.The New School55 W 13th St., 2nd Fl. (Dorothy Hirshon Suite)New York, NY 10011

The latest issue of Dissent magazine offers a behind-the-headlines view of China, focusing on how those belonging to the country’s laobaixing (“the 99%”) have been responding to complex and challenging times. Edited by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, the collection of articles overturns received wisdom in the U.S. about dissent within China—dissent about gender, labor, youth, and nationalism. Join us for an in-depth conversation about emerging currents of dissent in China.

Participants:

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine and a regular contributor to newspapers, magazines, blogs, and journals of opinion. He is the author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2010), an updated edition of which will appear in June, and co-editor (with Angilee Shah) of Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land (University of California Press, 2012).

Ross Perlin is a writer and linguist based in Brooklyn. He has written on language, labor, and China for publications large and small. His first book, published in 2011, was Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy.

Maura Elizabeth Cunningham was editor of The China Beat from 2010 to 2012, and her writing has appeared at Forbes.com, Dissent, the Ms. Magazine blog, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Time Asia. She was the 2011-2012 ChinaFile Fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations in New York and is currently a visiting scholar at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Megan Shank is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and translator of Chinese language materials who is co-editor of the Asia Section of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her work has appeared in periodicals such as Ms., Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Washington Independent Review of Books, and Dissent, and is also featured in the books Women Worldwide: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on Women (2010) and Chinese Characters (2012).

Mark Frazier is Professor of Politics and Co-Academic Director of the India China Institute. His research focus is on labor and social policies in China, and more broadly on state-society relations, urban politics, inequality, and public policy. He is the author of Socialist Insecurity: Pensions and the Politics of Uneven Development in China (Cornell University Press 2010) and The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace (Cambridge University Press 2002).

India & China: Thinking, Doing, Relating
2013-08-11 - 2013-08-12 | Delhi University, India, Benito Juarez Marg, South Campus, South Moti Bagh,, New Delhi,, Delhi, 110021, India
Concluding conference of the India China Knowledge & Capacity Building Initiative. Supported by the Ford Foundation in partnership with Delhi University and Calcutta University.More information TBA.

Inclusive Growth and Development: Mirage, Promise or Reality?
2013-08-13 18:00 - 22:15 | India International Centre (IIC), 40 Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi, Delhi, 110003, India
For full program details and schedules, as well as to RSVP, please visit: http://www.ickcbi.org/conference/

Lo Sze Ping - "Environmental Challenges and the Growing Citizens Discontent in China"
2013-09-26 11:30 - 12:30
Public talk by former ICI Fellow and Chinese environmentalist Lo Sze Ping, “Environmental Challenges and the Growing Citizens Discontent in China.” Lo Sze Ping is a prominent environmentalist in China and has over 20 years of experience in campaigning and advocacy. He is currently the CEO of Greenovation Hub and the founder of Forward Works.

Chat-n-Chai Fall Event
2013-10-03 20:00 - 22:00
India China Institute’s Fall Informational and Presentation Session. Come learn about our exploratory travel grants to India and China, fellowships, volunteer opportunities, research assistantships, public events, talks, seminars, workshops and more! Refreshments will be provided. Seating is limited – please RSVP to indiachina@newschool.edu.

International Relations Theory: Views Beyond the West Conference
2013-10-14 | Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, 55 West 13th Street, New York, NY, 10011, USA
The Julien J. Studley Fund and the India China Institute present:

International Relations Theory: Views Beyond the West

Monday 14 OctoberTheresa Lang Community and Student Center (55 W 13th St.)

This conference reflects a textbook project for International Relations (IR). It seeks to amend two main problems in contemporary IR theorizing:

(1) The widespread division of labor in IR whereby “the West”/“the Center” produces theories deemed universal and “non-Western”/“out-of-Center” scholars serve only as native informants when localities deviate from the status quo.

(2) The lack of concepts, debates, and authors from the Global South that address their issues and challenges, obligations, and aspirations.

The conference/project does not seek particularism, but allows for and gives legitimacy to different claims of universalism. We propose, in short, to voice other kinds of IR: that is, how the Global South and the Global North co-make world politics into what it is today.

Students of IR from the Global North and Global South will benefit from this conference/project. Global North students will learn why the Global South experiences “the international” differently but also where some important commonalities may lie. Global South students will finally have a text that speaks to them for them, with concepts and examples that are familiar, and with their needs taken into consideration. Ultimately, this conference/project will help all students develop lives and careers in a globalizing context.

Speakers and panelists include:

Julien J. Studley Graduate Program in International Affairs Professor L.H.M. Ling; Payal Banerjee, Smith College; Navnita Behera, University of Delhi; Cristina Inoue, University of Brasília; Nizar Messari, Al Akhawayn University; Joao Noguira, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro; Karen Smith, University of Cape Town; and Arlene Tickner, Universidad de los Andes.

For the full program click here.

China and Global Stability - Talk by Professor Kostas Vergopoulos
2013-10-18 18:00 - 20:00
The New School for Social Research, Department of Politics and the India China Institute present:

China and Global Stability

A special lecture by Prof. Kostas VergopoulosProfessor of Economics, University of Paris VIII

Is China driving the world economy out of the current international crisis? Is it a moving force leading to some new international order? Join us for a talk on China as a major economic power in the international community and the future of global stability.

Moderated by Michael Cohen, GPIA Director. RSVP requested.

The Influence of Critical Theory in China - Talk by Zhong Minghua
2013-10-21 20:00 - 22:00
India China Institute (ICI) and the Department of Politics at The New School present:

The Influence of Critical Theory in China

A talk given by Professor Zhong Minghua

Dean of the School of Social Science Education, Sun Yat-sen University

Moderator: Professor Mark Frazier, Professor of Politics and Academic Co-Director, ICI

Monday, October 21st | 4pm – 6pmHirshon Suite | 55 W. 13th St.

RSVP NOW

The Frankfurt School was imported into China in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was a study that was massively introduced, translated, and commented on in the 1990s and accompanied by deeper research after this period. This school of thought, an important current division of Western Marxism, had become an essential resource to cope with the problems of China during its era of opening reforms. Today, the resources of the Frankfurt School are significant to China in building modernity and constructing culture.

Seating is limited. RSVP is requested.

Refreshments will be provided.

Higher Education in India - Public Talk by Sukhadeo Thorat
2013-10-28 21:00 - 22:30 | Orozco Room, The New School, 66 West 12th Street Room 712, New York, NY, 10011, USA
Read Professor Thorat’s discussion paper for his talk. Discussion Paper (PDF)

3rd Annual Emerging Scholars Symposium - China
2013-11-01 12:30 - 13:30 | Yunnan University, Science Hall, Kunming, Yunnan, China
We’re excited to announce an upcoming international symposium to support young emerging scholars in China. The symposium will take place at Yunnan University in Kunming on November 1, 2013.The symposium is a part of ICI’s continuing commitment to build a community of scholars who are engaged in research that focuses on innovative approaches to understanding India China relations. For nine years ICI has provided a space for the establishment and strengthening of scholarly networks for emerging scholars of India and China who wish to share their research and explore opportunities for advancing individual and collaborative scholarship. The emerging scholars program also draws on The New School’s tradition of fostering horizontal and vertical knowledge-sharing across disciplines and amongst scholars in different stages of their careers. You can find more information about the symposium at this link, and below.

Kunming, China

Yunnan UniversityNov 1, 2013Event Flyer (PDF)Event Schedule (PDF)

Emerging Scholars

Che Zilong: A Comparative Study of TV Industry Development in China and IndiaGong Ting: China-India-US Triangle in the Indian Ocean Region and Indo-Pacific:Towards a Win-Win ResultHuang Yinghong: Between Justice and Development: The Mixed Stories of Land Acquisition in India and ChinaLi Na: Power and discourse, discourse and power—studying the influence of language policy on China and India languages’ fateLiu Peng: National Interests of China and India in Trans-border Rivers and Asymmetric Interdependence — Case Study of Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahmaputra RiverSu Ying: Indians’ Attitudes towards EnglishTseng Chin-Yin: Flying Without Wings: Deconstructing the Northern Wei Feitian MotifXu Yang: Communist Movement in Nepal: The Origin and Rise of MaoistsZhang Yuan: Harsa and China: Focusing on the Six Diplomatic MissionsZhao Lei: An insight into the public opinion on China-India relationsZhou Jizhen: The differentiation of Industrialization phase between China and India and its Causes

Discussants

Rakhahari Chatterji, Guo Suiyan, Guo Yukuan, Ashok Gurung, Han Yue, Liu Jian, Tansen Sen, Shen Haimei, Sun Yinggang, Wang Bangwei,Yang Xiaohui,Yao Jide,Yao Yang, Zha Jianying, Zhao Bole, Zhu Li

Migration, Citizenship, and Development: Diasporic Membership Policies and Overseas Indians in the United States by Daniel Naujoks
2013-11-12 23:00 - 2013-11-13 01:00
The India China Institute (ICI), the Global Studies Program at The New School, and the International Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Citizenship (ICMEC) proudly present:

The Book Launch Event for:

“Migration, Citizenship, and Development: Diasporic Membership Policies and Overseas Indians in the United States”

by Daniel Naujoks

Tuesday November 12th, 2o13.

Please RSVP for the event.

You can view the event program here (PDF).

“Migration, Citizenship, and Development: Diasporic Membership Policies and Overseas Indians in the United States” by Daniel Naujoks

Returning to the History of 19th and Early 20th Century Immigration - Ranabir Samaddar
2013-11-26 22:00 - 2013-11-27 00:00
We are excited to announce an upcoming public talk by Dr. Ranabir Samaddar, Director of the Calcutta Research Group on “Returning to the History of 19th and Early 20th Century Immigration.” The event will be moderated by Professor Mark Frazier, Professor of Politics at NSSR and Academic Co-Director of ICI. You can find an outline of Professor Samaddar’s talk below.

Recent studies on aspects of welfare state and schemes suggest a different way of understanding modern governance in which the study of the nation is not at the centre of political understanding. Instead, of significance in such studies is the inadequately explored history of governing a mobile, unruly world of population flows. These works have given us a sense of the hidden histories of conflicts, of desperate survivals, and of networks new and old. Studies of hunger in the nineteenth century, of itinerant movements and preaching, transportations of coolies, spread of famines, shipping of children and adult girls, trafficking in sex and labour, and pieces of welfare legislation to cope with this great infamy tell us how actually we have arrived at our own time of subject formation. This is certainly different from conventional nation-centred histories. Working within this new strand of history-writing, labour historians have tried to recognise the political significance of labour migration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Their works suggest a different way of writing the history of the nation-form in the last two centuries, where the extra-nationalist narrative of mobile labour constitutes a different universe.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the period of several changing modes of labour process – the slave, the indentured, the contract, and finally the free. These modes historically never appeared as pure types, because much of the availability of labour depended on labour’s mobility. In fact, it was largely on the condition of making labour mobile that globalisation would proceed at that time. Transit labour then too, as it does now, occupied a crucial place in capitalist production. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a period of globalisation when migration controls were put in place. It was in that age that control of mobile bodies began constituting one of the most critical aspects of governance. The emergence of some of the different forms of labour subjectivities marking our world today can be traced back to that time.

Discussants will include:
Victoria Hattam, Professor of Politics at The New School for Social Research
Paula Banerjee, Associate Professor, Dept. of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Calcutta

RSVP for the event is requested. Please RSVP here.

Wronged by Empire: Colonial Memories and Victimhood in India’s and China’s Foreign Policy Today – Manjari Chatterjee Miller
2013-12-05 22:30 - 2013-12-06 00:30
Join us for an exciting talk by author Manjari Chatterjee Miller on her new book Wronged by Empire: Colonial Memories and Victimhood in India’s and China’s Foreign Policy Today. The event will be moderated by Mark Frazier, Professor of Politics at NSSR and Academic Co-director of ICI. More details to follow.

RSVP requested for event. RSVP now.

Wronged by Empire breaks new ground by blending this historical phenomenon, colonialism, with mixed methods—including archival research, newspaper data mining, and a new statistical method of content analysis—to explain the foreign policy choices of India and China: two countries that are continuously discussed but very rarely rigorously compared. By reference to their colonial past, Manjari Chatterjee Miller explains their puzzling behavior today. For example, she demonstrates why in important cases (such as India going nuclear in 1998 or China’s fraught relationship with Japan) their foreign policy behavior is not consistent with the security explanations that are dominant in international relations.

More broadly, she argues that the transformative historical experience of a large category of actors—ex-colonies, who have previously been neglected in the study of international relations—can be used as a method to categorize states in the international system. In the process Miller offers a more inclusive way to analyze states than do traditional theories of international relations, which usually focus on the material power of states, meaning inevitably that they mostly discuss the behavior of states that have power enough to matter—in effect Western states.

Manjari Chatterjee Miller is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University.

The Great Hydraulic Transition: Modern Origins of Land and Rivers in South Asia w/ Prof. Rohan D'Souza
2013-12-12 21:00 - 23:00
Development, Though and Policy Lecture Series Presents:

The Great Hydraulic Transition: Modern Origins of Land and Rivers in South Asia

Presented by: Rohan D’Souza, Assistant Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Thursday, December 12

66 West 12th Street, Room 513

4:00 P.M. – 6:00 P.M.

This seminar is co-hosted by GPIA and The India China Institute

Please RSVP to development.newschool@gmail.com

Download event flyer here (PDF)

Abstract: Most writings on lands and rivers in South Asia have disingenuously accepted the “politics of separations.” Land as property and river as resource, thus, are overwhelmingly recognized as distinct conceptual domains. Histories about land settlements, rent extraction, the burdens of revenue, legal ownership, or the commons have occupied discussions only as the political economy of the soil. Rivers, on the other hand, became a technical subject involving infrastructure and the biographies of engineering and control. Professor D’Souza will argue that this politics of separations acquired a defining force in the region only through the course of the long nineteenth century. An amphibian South Asia with its soil-water admixtures actually characterized its environmental and social worlds before being transformed into the reptilian terrain of colonial modernity.

Bio: Dr. Rohan D’Souza is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy and the author of Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India (1803-1946), Oxford University Press, 2006. His edited books include The British Empire and the Natural World: Environmental Encounters in South Asia (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Environment, Technology and Development: Critical and Subversive Essays (Orient BlackSwan: Hyderabad, 2012). His interests and research publications cover themes in environmental history, environmental politics, non-traditional security, sustainable development and modern technology.

Chair: Manjari Mahajan, Assistant Professor of International Affairs, New School University

Discussants: Nikhil Anand, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota and Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Vyjayanthi Rao, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, New School University

Invisible Villages & Flying Monsters: Folktales About Place Among the Tibetans of Geza
2014-02-19 22:00 - 23:30
Invisible Villages & Flying Monsters:
Folktales About Place Among the Tibetans of Geza

Public Talk by Eric Mortensen
Wednesday, February 19, 20145-6:30PM55 W. 13th St., 2nd Fl., Dorothy Hirshon Suite
The mountains of Geza are awash in old tales about invisible villages and wild people (Tibetan: nags myi rgod). This presentation assesses the oral performances of nags myi rgod stories, with a focus on the specific stories surrounding the flying monster called the myi rgod shung shung. In the Tibetan communities of Geza Township in rGyalthang (Xianggelila County of Northwest Yunnan Province), such stories are tied to the cultural memory of local geography, including the invisible village of Panlung, which can be heard but not seen.
Specifically, this project compares twenty six variant nags myi rgod stories and interview information about nags myi rgod collected and digitally recorded on four separate fieldwork trips to the Geza villages of Langdu, Gönpa, Geza (brgya rtsa), Nagara, and gter ma rong village in neighboring Dongwang. Although nags myi rgod (& Chinese ye ren) stories are widespread throughout Tibet and the Himalayas, several of the stories from Geza contain variant descriptions of an invisible village called Panlung. In the stories, a mushroom gatherer or herder – who was often identified as a relative of the storyteller – would stop in wonder and hear the rushing water and agricultural sounds typical of village life, but the village could (at least initially) not be seen. Nags myi rgod, who live in the forests looking down on the bucolic invisible village, mischievously invert human farming efforts and hunting practices and thereby make the village of Panlung uninhabitable, even for those lucky enough to breakthrough the invisible meniscus and see or enter the valley with its perfect pasturage and farmland. The stories involve frightful encounters with nags myi rgod, and longer tales recount how clever hunters or farmers trick the nags myi rgod, and escape being killed (through being tickled to death, squeezed, or pulverized by a nags myi rgod’s armpit stone) or used as a mate. Some families in the region maintain the surname Panlung, and consider themselves refugees from the invisible village. Panlung, also known as Zayzong in Nagara (zay zong is near to Bala) and Natöeyong in Dongwang, appears in many of the stories with the refugee element as the most common theme.
The centerpiece of the project is a comparative analysis of the performative function and cultural meaning of the invisible village in story. What does it mean for individuals to be refugees from an invisible dystopian village while facing current cultural, economic, and religious repression related to the land itself? In the context of this oral tradition, why, when, by whom, and to who are these stories of inversion and reversal told? [Degh 1958; Doniger 1998] To what degree are the performances of nags myi rgod tales subversive, intended for cultural maintenance, or simply fun for children? How can the variant tales inform upon the interrelated dynamics of place, identity, lament, and memory? [Mueggler, 2001]. As the myi rgod shung shung story is directly tied to features of the landscape of Geza, how do the performances of these stories contribute to local identity and inform upon the imagining of inhabitation of wildspace in this rapidly changing region?
Eric Mortensen is currently an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Guilford College, located in Greensboro, NC. He complete his undergraduate studies at Carlton College and had the opportunity to study abroad in Beijing, Nepal, India, and Bhutan. Upon graduating in 1993, he spent his graduate career at Harvard, where he studied languages, anthropology, religion, folklore, and history for ten years. During this time, he grew to love teaching and Asia, further fostering an academic interest in Tibetology. These two loves drew him to Guilford and its Religious Studies Department. Although he does not hold a degree in religious studies, he has made religion his specialty through his focused research on Buddhist religion and culture.

Refreshments will be served. Seating is limited – RSVP is required. RSVP Now.

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Screening of film ‘Mani, The Hidden Valley of Happiness at a Crossroads’ w/ Sonam Lama
2014-02-21 20:30 - 22:30
Screening of Mani, The Hidden Valley of Happiness at a Crossroads

Presented by Sonam Lama

Friday, Feb. 21st 3pm-5pm66 W. 12th St, Klein Conference Room (510)

Sonam Lama, a first time co-director, started the project of collecting inventories of the ancient architectural monuments in his home region Tsum in Oct 2012. He is an architect who advocates for protecting cultural heritage, appropriate infrastructure development in the remote Himalaya region of Tsum, Nepal.

The documentary film presents the architectural heritage and in relations to the upcoming infrastructure development in Tsum. The documentary reveals insightful information of these age old built heritage that have stood silent along the ancient salt-trade and pilgrimage foot trail for many centuries. Through extensive field interviews, and for the first time, the film significantly reveals the inner voice of the Tsum community on the sensitive and controversial issue of the motor road development. In the rapid pace of modernization in the 21st century, this film captured a moment of a once isolated and remote community facing a crossroads in the history of time.

Watch a trailer for the film here: http://vimeo.com/76061755

Passage: Migration w/ Ashmina Ranjit
2014-02-25 22:00 - 23:30
The India China Institute in association with the Vera List Center present:

Passage: Migration

Performance Art by Ashmina RanjitFulbright Scholar and Internationally Recognized Artist

Tuesday, Feb. 25th 5pm-6:30pm66 W. 12th St., 5th Fl., Klein Conference Room (510)

The performance aims to explore the narratives of transition and assimilation, the experiences in living in the liminal space of belonging, and the idea of prabas and prabasi, one who has left home to settle in a new land.

Discussant: Radhika Subramaniam, Director/Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Center and Assistant Professor of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons The New School for Design.

Learn more about Ashmina Ranjit and her work here.

Anti-Corruption Movements in China and India - Dissent Magazine + The New Yorker
2014-02-27 15:00 - 16:30
Anti-Corruption Movements in China and India

Thu, Feb 27, 2014 | 3:00-4:30 PM

Join the India China Institute for an exciting discussion about anti-corruption movements in China and India. The event will feature Dissent Magazine contributor Mehboob Jeelani, Dissent Magazine Editorial Member Jeff Wasserstrom, The New Yorker Contributor Jiayang Fan, and Jonathan Shainin, Web editor at The New Yorker. The event will be moderated by ICI Academic Co-Director Mark Frazier.

The event is free and open to the public, but an RSVP is requested. RSVP NOW. Share this with your friends! http://bit.ly/MYcuGu

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More information on Dissent Magazine and The New Yorker.
