Reimagining Nation and Nationalism in Multicultural East Asia

Reimagining Nation and Nationalism in Multicultural East Asia
Author: Sungmoon Kim
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2017-09-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351715674

Since the late 1980s, many East Asian countries have become more multicultural, a process marked by increased democracy and pluralism despite the continuing influence of nationalism, which has forced these countries in the region to re-envision their nations. Many such countries have had to reconsider their constitutional make-up, their terms of citizenship and the ideal of social harmony. This has resulted in new immigration and border-control policies and the revisiting of laws regarding labor policies, sociopolitical discrimination, and socioeconomic welfare. This book explores new perspectives, concepts, and theories that are socially relevant, culturally suitable, and normatively attractive in the East Asia context. It not only outlines the particular experiences of nation, citizenship, and nationalism in East Asian countries but also places them within the wider theoretical context. The contributors look at how nationalism under the force of multiculturalism, or vice versa, affects East Asian societies including China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong differently. The key themes are: Democracy and equality; Confucianism’s relationship with nationalism, cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism; China’s use of its political institutions to initiate and sustain nationalism; the impact of globalization on nationalism in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan; the role of democracy in reinvigorating indigenous cultures in Taiwan.

Multicultural Challenges and Redefining Identity in East Asia

Multicultural Challenges and Redefining Identity in East Asia
Author: Nam-Kook Kim
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317093674

Globalization and increased migration have brought both new opportunities and new tensions to traditional East Asian societies. Multicultural Challenges and Redefining Identity in East Asia draws together a wide range of distinguished local scholars to discuss multiculturalism and the changing nature of social identity in East Asia. Regional specialists review specific events and situations in China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines to provide a focus on life as it is lived at the local level whilst also tracing macro discourses on the national issues affected by multiculturalism and identity. The contributors look at the uneven multicultural development across these different countries and how to bridge the gap between locality and universality. They examine how ethnic majorities and minorities can achieve individual rights, exert civic responsibility, and explain how to construct a deliberative framework to make sustainable democracy possible. This book considers the emergence of a new cross-national network designed to address multicultural challenges and imagines an East Asian community with shared values of individual dignity and multicultural diversity. With strong empirical support it puts forward a regulative ideal by which a new paradigm for multicultural coexistence and regional cooperation can be realized.

Multiculturalism in East Asia

Multiculturalism in East Asia
Author: Koichi Iwabuchi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1783484993

An examination of multiculturalism in East Asia using a transnational approach. The collection focuses in on Japan, Korea and Taiwan to examine key issues including policy, racial discourse, subjectivity and the implications for established ethic minority communities.

The Dignity of Nations

The Dignity of Nations
Author: John Fitzgerald
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2006-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9789622097957

Contributors to this book argue that everyday struggles for dignity and equality in the states of East Asia provide much of the impetus driving East Asian nationalism. They examine China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, which occupy one of the most volatile regions in the world today. Each of them harbors an historical grievance dating back half a century or more which limits its full or effective sovereignty. China seeks to recover Taiwan; Taiwan presses for de jure recognition of its de facto autonomy. Neither of the two Koreas is satisfied to remain separated from the other indefinitely, and Japan is divided over constitutional limits on the sovereign right to wage war. Each of these historical grievances is structured into the politics of the region and into its international relations. They are also embedded in popular memories that periodically spark pride, shame, and resentment – whether over a rocky outcrop, a history textbook, or an alleged US intervention on a sensitive issue of national sovereignty. Everyday struggles for dignity and equality, the contributors argue, should not be overlooked in any search for explanations of nationalist pride and resentment.

Constructing Nationhood in Modern East Asia

Constructing Nationhood in Modern East Asia
Author: Kai-wing Chow
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780472067350

A cutting-edge collection exploring identity-making in East Asia This is an interdisciplinary study of the cultural politics of nationalism and national identities in modern East Asia. Combining theoretical insights with empirical research, it explores the cultural dimensions of nationhood and identity-making in China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The essays address issues ranging from the complex relations between popular culture and national consciousness to the representation of ethnic/racial identity and gendered discourse on nationalism. The cutting-edge research on the diverse forms of cultural preacceptance and the various ways in which this participates in the construction and projection of national and ethnic identities in East Asia illuminates several understudied issues in Asian studies, including the ambiguity of Hong Kong identity during World War II and the intricate politics of the post-war Taiwanese trial of collaboration. Addressing a wide range of theoretical and historical issues regarding cultural dimensions of nationalism and national identities all over East Asia, these essays draw insights from such recent theories as cultural studies, postcolonial theories, and archival-researched cultural anthropology. The book will be important reading for students of Asian studies as well as for serious readers interested in issues of nationalism and culture. Kai-wing Chow is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Kevin Doak is Associate Professor of History. Poshek Fu is Associate Professor of History and Cinema Studies. All three teach at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Precarious Belongings

Precarious Belongings
Author: Chih-ming Wang
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2017-04-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1786602261

This edited collection explores affect in nationalism as method of producing inclusion and exclusion in Asia.

Transnational Trajectories in East Asia

Transnational Trajectories in East Asia
Author: Yasemin Nuhoḡlu Soysal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2014-11-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317592581

In recent decades, East Asia has become increasingly interconnected through trade, investment, migration, and popular culture at regional and global levels. At the same time, the region has seen renewed national assertiveness and nationalist impulses. The book interrogates these seemingly contradictory developments as they bear on the transformations of the nation and citizenship in East Asia. Conventionally, studies on East Asia juxtapose these developments, focusing on the much-exercised dichotomy of the national and transnational. In contrast, this book suggests a different orientation. First, it moves beyond the simplistic view that demarcates the transnational as "the West". Second, it does not view the national and transnational as distinct or contradictory spheres of influence and analysis, but rather, focuses on the interactions between the two, with a view on how these interactions work to transform the ideals and practices of the "good nation", "good society", and "good citizen". The chapters cover a broad range of empirical research--education, science, immigration, multicultural policy, human rights, gender and youth orientations, art and food flows, politics of values and regional identity--which highlight the ways in which the nation is reconfigured, and the relationship between the citizen and (national) collective is redefined, in relation to transnational dynamics and frameworks. Transnational Trajectories in East Asia provides a new perspective on and original analysis of transnational processes, bringing a fresh understanding to developments of the nation and citizenship in the region. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of transnationalization and globalization; comparative citizenship, migration, and multiculturalism; and Asian politics, society, and regionalism.

Patriotism in East Asia

Patriotism in East Asia
Author: Jun-Hyeok Kwak
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2014-09-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317816021

Current territorial disputes between the Northeast Asian countries have stimulated a resurgence of bellicose nationalism, and threaten to upset recent efforts to achieve regional cooperation and economic integration in East Asia. Alongside this, debates over pre-1945 Japanese wartime atrocities, aggravated by still unresolved territorial disputes between Japan and its neighbours have triggered diplomatic conflicts in Japanese-South Korean relations, virulent anti-Japanese protests in China, and a dramatic increase of right-wing nationalism in Japan. Many have perceived these phenomena as inevitable corollaries, inasmuch as they regard the Northeast Asian countries as historically homogeneous and nationalistic states, and have begun to question the feasibility of the post-Cold War efforts to replace nationalism with a moderate version of civic solidarity. This book contributes to the debates surrounding patriotism and nationalism in Northeast Asia, and investigates the feasibility of non-ethnocentric patriotism in countries across the region. In doing so, it highlights the differences between Asian and Western concepts of republican patriotism via theoretical discussions of the evolving discourses on nationalism, patriotism, democracy and civic solidarity. The chapters combine theoretical discussion with historical case studies such as modern state building in late Qing Dynasty; nineteenth century Japanese political thought; and the twentieth century Korean independence movement. In turn, the contributors explore the possibilities for republican patriotism in contemporary Northeast Asia, with a focus on the Chinese term minzu, and the possibilities it holds for an alternative configuration of national identity in the age of globalization; Maruyama Masao’s theories of nationalism in Japan; the National Security Law in South Korea, and the impact it has had on the country’s political culture; and the Taiwanese movement for self-governance. Patriotism in East Asia will appeal to students and scholars of Asian politics, political theory, Asian history and peace studies, as well as to those interested in issues of nationalism.

Political Cultural Developments in East Asia

Political Cultural Developments in East Asia
Author: P. W. Preston
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2016-11-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137572213

This book offers an interpretive and critical comparative politics analysis of the post-1945 development trajectory of the broad East Asian region and its component countries. The discussion considers the region and its countries in terms of their historical legacies (colonialism, war and the preoccupation with development) and argues that each country has constructed their own way of ordering political life, each created its own political logic. Arguing that it is an error to judge these countries’ performance against the model of Europe or America, Preston discusses the era of expansionist colonialism, the episode of breakdown in highly destructive regional warfare in the early twentieth century and the subsequent diverse records of China (with its party-state turned towards a nominal state-socialism), Hong Kong (confronting the problems of living with distant masters), Singapore (with its elite directed national building) and Thailand (mired in elite-resistance to popular political reform).