State and Society in East Asia

This course will discuss about and reflect on borders and frontiers in East and Southeast Asia. What are their varieties? How have they been delimitated and shaped? How are they evolving and for what realities in the region? 

Born out of the emergence of the modern state, colonialism, and the Cold War, the borders of East and Southeast Asia provide privileged spaces for observing societies and their transformations. Examining the Asian borderlands at a time of renewed tensions and of the redefinition of states and their regional and global alliances will constitute a transversal theme throughout this seminar.

Other meanings of the concept of borders will be placed at the heart of this course. It will thus address the relationships between individuals and collectives in East and Southeast Asia. Borders will also be understood in the sense of a frontier, engaging with natural environments whose resources are to be captured and extracted, but which, in turn, reshape the societies with which they interact too. The frontier is highly tangible, yet in many respects also imaginary, while profoundly influencing the trajectories and aspirations of societies. Another imaginary border with concrete consequences, the course will also seek to incorporate so-called “virtual” spaces to the topic, particularly those opened up by arts and new technologies.

 

Students will acquire epistemological and theoretical tools to analyze practices unfolding in, and constitutive of borders and frontiers, as a site of interaction between state and society in the authoritarian political contexts of the late socialist countries under scrutiny. The course will foreground the complexity of sociospatial dynamics as observed in the field.

Overall, students will acquire knowledge of the historical and social diversity of the different areas of Northeast and Southeast Asia.

The instructor will provide a state of the art during the first lesson. The course will then function as a research seminar, based on guest lectures in which different speakers’ present aspects of their research in the making, before opening for questions and answers. Both delivered by the instructor, a mid-term and concluding lecture will help “tie up” the various threads running across the talks.
This course is given in English. It will include lectures by researchers with various expertise geographically and disciplinary-wise. The Introduction, mid-term review, and concluding sessions are given by the professor. All classes are given and must be attended on-site. 

Support(s) de cours

• Université virtuelle

Contacts

Pierre Prouteau :pierre.prouteau@ulb.be

Campus

Solbosch

Méthode(s) d'évaluation

• Examen écrit

Examen écrit

• Question ouverte à développement long

The written exam will consist of 1, 2 or 3 questions for which the students should be able to provide syntheses of the different conferences and argue on transversal issues addressed in them. Mandatory readings on the topic will be assigned and it will be expected that students mobilize them in their answers. Presence is mandatory. Absence must be justified and medical attestation provided in the three days following the course, if applicable.

Construction de la note (en ce compris, la pondération des notes partielles)

Langue(s) d'évaluation

• anglais
• (éventuellement français )