5 Nov 2024 | Asst. Prof. Jaeyoung Kim | Seminar: The Rise and Fall of Status-Seekers: A View from Historical East Asia
Why do some status-seeking states rise while others fail to do so? Status-seeking has emerged as a flourishing avenue of research in international relations (IR). However, a general theory to explain the rise and fall of status-seeking states remains underdeveloped. To address this gap, I propose a theory that examines the synchronization between their strategies and the structural conditions surrounding them. In particular, I focus on status-seeking during periods of international political change, when the interplay between international social structure and states becomes salient as structural constraints loosen and the room for agency expands. To examine the validity of my theory, I compare the status-seeking strategies of Korea and Japan and their outcomes during the Ming-Qing transition (1583-1683) and the Westphalian transition (1839-1912), two pivotal changes in historical East Asia.
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29 Aug 2024 | Assoc. Prof. Lina Benabdallah | Seminar: One Celestial Road, Two Messagings? Between Ancient and New Silk Road Nostalgias
This paper examines Chinese state narratives of the New Silk Road in two contexts, Beijing’s relations with East Africa and Central Asia from a political nostalgia lens. In particular, the paper seeks to unpack both the material and symbolic construction of a nostalgic narrative of the New Silk Road not as a physical space where exchanges of goods, ideas, and practices took place but as a time, an era that simultaneously looks to a past constructed around positive markers, and to the future with the revival of the Silk Road symbolising the possibility for a return to the Golden times. Branding Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in East Africa relies heavily on narratives around 15th century Maritime expeditions in the Indian Ocean led by navigator Zheng He and romanticised images of the Ancient Silk Roads. In Central Asia, Beijing harks back to reenactments of Tang Dynasty aesthetics that link the Silk Road to 7th century cultural innovations and Golden age. In both cases Chinese officials are leaning on a history of imperial relations (in the Tang or Ming dynasties) which prompts an interesting research puzzle. How do we make sense of Beijing’s harking back to imperial history while trying to promote a discourse of its increasing global influence as one that’s different from Euro-American powers? How are memories of the past (re)constructed in China’s relations to East Africa and Central Asia and what do these tell us about memory-narratives and global order? The paper argues that the combination of memory-narratives about a peaceful, inclusive, and flourishing Sino-centric global order as well as material infrastructure projects and archaeological excavation investment that serve to memorialize these early encounters are necessary conditions that enable Beijing to both play up its imperial past, market it as a humble gesture of solidarity, and even more importantly as a promise for a bright future global order in which China’s interests are put at the centre.
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22 May 2024 | Assoc. Prof. Naosuke Mukoyama | Seminar: Peace-Making and State-Making: The Case of Early Modern Japan
What drives the formation of sovereign states? Existing accounts, most of which are based on European experience, argue that war-making is essential to state formation. This paper draws on a non-European international system to present a different explanation: peace-making and state-making. Departing from the existing theory that emphasizes the role of constant warfare under anarchy, it argues that it was the relative stability of hierarchical international order that emerged after a period of warfare that promoted state formation. It substantiates this argument through an examination of domanial states in Tokugawa Japan, which were officially under the shogunate’s rule but retained significant autonomy. It shows that state formation in premodern Japan accelerated after the end of the Warring States period, not during it. The introduction of loose hierarchical order and relative stability enabled states to build institutions and resources needed to demarcate their territories and bring society under their control. This paper thus tackles Eurocentrism in IR and offers an alternative account of state formation based on a non-European case.
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26 April 2024 | Assoc. Prof. Manjeet S. Pardesi | Seminar: Interconnected Asian History and “Open” World Orders
Historical Asia was an interconnected system of “open” world orders. This is a crucial theoretical takeaway for International Relations (IR) theory from historical Asia. There were multiple, unevenly overlapping orders in historical Asia. This perspective which is rooted in the global historical approach to IR challenges the Eurocentric notion of the ‘containerized’ version of Asian regional worlds and world orders that only came into meaningful contact with each other because of the early modern European expansion. At the same time, this global and historical perspective also challenges all essentialist views of the East Asian past that characterize that part of the world as living in splendid Sinocentric isolation from the rest for thousands of years until China and East Asia were “opened up” by the West. Two crucial periods/processes of Asian history show the deep and transformative impact of the entanglements between South Asia and East Asia for Asian world orders: the Indic-Buddhist impact on China in the first millennium (and into the early centuries of the second millennium), and the role of India in the so-called “opening up” of China by the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These processes provide two crucial insights. First, historical East Asia was not a China-centered system for 2,000 years. Second, and relatedly, pre-European East Asia was not a “closed” system. Asia and its sub-regions defy singular and all-encompassing orders, and Asian history points towards a plurality of open and overlapping orders. Notably, the emerging regional orders in Asia are also pointing towards such a configuration. Asia is not one, but Asia is not disconnected either.
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2023 GRADNAS Seminar Series
This series of nine online seminars showcases the cutting-edge academic research on Asian security by GRADNAS members. It presented an exciting opportunity for research exchange involving the network, providing a regular occasion for GRADNAS scholars to share and receive feedback on their ongoing and published research. All enquiries to gradnas@anu.edu.au. (All dates below in Australian Eastern Time.)
Click here to view the schedule, and click here for the full details of the seminar series.
19 October 2022 | Yusuke Ishihara | Renegotiating Japan’s Post-War Bargains: The Transformation of Japan's Foreign Policy and the Pluralisation of U.S. Hegemonic Order in the 1970s.
The 1970s witnessed significant changes to the post-war international order: the rise and fall of U.S.-Soviet détente, Sino-U.S. rapprochement, the crisis of the Bretton-Woods system/the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and shifts to a multilateral landscape in East Asia. In this research seminar, Yusuke Ishihara shows that Japan made major and important decisions on these geopolitical, economic, and regional-political processes. His PhD research explains the evolution of Japan’s post-war international standing, including how and why the vital post-war bargains that were embraced in the 1950s, when Japan was occupied by the U.S., were renegotiated by Tokyo during the 1970s.
2020-21 Women in Asia-Pacific Security Research (WIAPSR) Seminar Series
This series of eight seminars showcases the cutting-edge academic research of women in the fields of Asia-Pacific security broadly-defined, and is targeted at international scholarly communities working on this important region. GRADNAS jointly supported this event. It is part of the ANU Women in International Security Series (ANUWIIS) initiative.
7 November 2019 | Priyanka Sunder, Amy King, and Evelyn Goh | Talking Across the Economic-Security Divide: Development, Securitization and Infrastructure
In the 1940s, E.H. Carr argued that the economic and security dimensions of policy making ought to be studied in a more integrated way, and yet a persistent and artificial divide remains, both in scholarship and policy practice. One fruitful way to straddle the economic-security divide is through the lens of development.
9 November 2018 | GRADNAS International Exchange and Workshop Programme
To celebrate our third anniversary in 2018, three GRADNAS partners at the Australian National University, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), and the University of Southern California (USA), launched a pilot international exchange and workshop programme for pre- and post-graduate students and early career researchers for research exchange and career development.
27 November 2017 | Rosemary Foot | 2017 Robert O'Neill War Studies Lecture: Chinese Power and the Idea of a 'Responsible State' in a Changing World Order
Analysts and observers of China's role in world and regional politics have been preoccupied with determining whether its behaviour could be deemed 'responsible' when measured against a range of dominant global norms. As one consequence of China's resurgence globally and regionally, that approach no longer seems appropriate.
21 November 2017 | Helen E.S. Nesadurai | SDSC-IR Joint Research Seminar: Private Standards and Norm Contestation: The Credibility Politics of Palm Oil Sustainability
Palm oil, a major global agricultural commodity, has long been condemned for driving deforestation, carbon emissions and social conflict, especially in its principal producers of Indonesia and Malaysia. Here, economic development priorities and the patronage-based palm oil political economy have contributed to these problems. Yet, voluntary private sustainability standards developed by NGOs and global corporations to reduce these ills from palm oil production have become normative benchmarks.
17 November 2017 | Rosemary Foot | SDSC Research Seminar: China, the United Nations, and Human Protection: Ideological Beliefs and International image
Human protection is an area of international concern that has largely been advanced normatively in the period since the late 1990s – that is, in the period of China’s growing material power and increasingly active role in global governance. It is an area of policy that embodies a more expansive definition of security that prioritizes the security of the individual.
17 August 2017 | Professor Andrew L. Oros | Seminar - Japan's Security Renaissance: New Directions in Regional and US-Japan Relations
Over the past decade, Japan's "security renaissance" has enabled Japan's military to become more involved in the Asian region and global security. Moreover, Japan is 'the key US ally in Asia, in a new presidential era when the role of allies is being called into question. As the third largest economy in the world and one of the world's largest military spenders, what role will Japan play in regional affairs and in US Asia policy?
30 March 2017 | Chin-Hao Huang | Manuscript Review Seminar: Power, Restraint, and China's Rise
The conventional wisdom holds that China's rise is disrupting the global balance of power in unpredictable ways. In contrast, Power, Restraint, and China's Rise tackles the puzzle: how and why does China constrain its power even as its military capabilities are increasing at unprecedented rates? It reasons that if rising powers care about their acceptance within the international community, they can be motivated to act beyond zero-sum considerations.
27 February 2017 | ANU-USC GRADNAS Exchange II: Graduate Workshop
Dr. Evelyn Goh (ANU) will share her own work and interact with USC graduate students as part of our recurring KSI series on graduate student mentoring with a particular focus on East Asia.
28 November 2016 | Iain Henry | PhD Seminar: Reliability and Interdependence in America's Asian Alliance System
This Seminar presented the findings of a newly-completed PhD thesis showing that US Cold War allies in Asia were unconcerned about American loyalty to their allied states. Counterintuitively, US displays of loyalty to one ally might be welcomed by other allies if Washington could show that it remained a reliable security partner for the others.
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20 July 2016 | Evelyn Goh and Amy King | Book Launch and Research Seminar
This launch and seminar showcases research conducted within SDSC's Asia-Pacific Security research cluster. Professor Evelyn Goh and Dr Amy King will launch their books which shed important new light on critical puzzles surrounding China's resurgence and Asian security issues.
20 July 2016 | Amitav Acharya, Raja Mohan, and Nicola Leveringhaus | Asian Security Research Roundtable
This special Research Roundtable will feature international expert scholars specializing in key aspects of Asian security. It will introduce postgraduate students and early career researchers to alternative approaches, concepts and methods for analyzing Asian security issues.
12 July 2016 | Bates Gill, Evelyn Goh, and Chin-Hao Huang | Launch Event: New Report on US-China Strategic Competition in Southeast Asia
The study marks the culmination of a two-year project, Emerging US Security Partnerships in Southeast Asia. Click on this link to access the report and for details on the July 2016 launch by project investigators Dr Bates Gill, Dr Evelyn Goh and Dr Chin-Hao Huang at ANU.
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6 April 2016 | Wang Jisi, Yan Xuetong, and Jia Qingguo | China and International Security: A Dialogue with Distinguished Chinese Scholars
This Public Forum provides a unique opportunity for dialogue with China’s leading experts on strategy and foreign affairs — Professors Wang Jisi, Yan Xuetong and Jia Qingguo — with ANU Chancellor Gareth Evans as Discussant, and Prof. Evelyn Goh as Chair.
6 Apr 2016 | Jia Qingguo and Yan Xuetong | Analysing China’s Foreign Policy and International Relations
This Research Seminar provides a unique opportunity to engage with two of China’s leading scholars to explore the major challenges of studying contemporary Chinese international relations. The discussion will address questions about research methodology and output.
14 March 2016 | ANU-USC GRADNAS Exchange I: International Security in Asia Workshop
During this event Evelyn Goh (ANU) and Chin-Hao Huang (Yale-NUS) will lead a presentation on "Emerging U.S. Security Partnerships in Southeast Asia", followed by working paper discussions.
26 Nov 2015 | GRADNAS HDR Masterclass: How to Ask and Answer the Right Research Questions About Asia-Pacific Security
This class critically reviewed some of the best PhD projects on Asia-Pacific security. It analysed, using examples and alternatives, the effectiveness of posing central questions in different ways; and took students through the key methodological steps for setting up a project related to regional security.
25 Nov 2015 | Yuan Foong Khong | Asian Security Reading Group Special Research Seminar: The Use and Abuse of Theory in Asia-Pacific Security Research
This seminar addressed the challenges of finding the balance between empirical integrity and theoretical rigour in the type of research that falls in the ‘grey areas’ between Political Science and Area Studies. Professor Khong discussed strategies for publishing in the leading international outlets, and developing international research networks and sources of funding.
24 Nov 2015 | Yuan Foong Khong | The American Tributary System and Asia-Pacific Security
This lecture employs the idea of the tributary system—most often associated with China’s international relations from antiquity—to interpret how America relates to the rest of the world. Professor Khong argues that the United States has instituted the most successful tributary system the world has ever seen.
1 Oct 2015 | Amy King and Evelyn Goh | Unpacking the Economic-Security Nexus in Asia
A research workshop convened by Dr. Amy King and Professor Evelyn Goh at the ANU on 1 October 2015, which brought together a group of scholars engaged in innovative research on the nexus between economics and security in Asia. Drawing from a range of disciplines including history, political science, economics, development studies, area studies and law, the participants discussed key concepts, questions, and methodologies driving their projects.
7 Sep 2015 | GRADNAS Launch
The Graduate Research and Development Network on Asian Security (GRADNAS) was launched at a one-day conference on 'Southeast Asian Strategies Towards the Great Powers', hosted by the Australian National University on Monday 7th September 2015. The event was held in the Great Hall at University House and brought together leading scholars and advanced PhD students undertaking cutting-edge research on strategic and security issues in Asia.