SPACE AND PLACE IN EAST ASIA
R. Kenji Tierney
Union College
First offered as an ExEAS course at Columbia University in Fall 2003
Course Description

The course will consider East Asian societies through a variety of approaches. Beyond considering the nation and national borders, the course will also explore how a consideration of space and place can contribute to theoretical concerns such as identity, trans-nationalism, globalization, nationalism and gender.

The course will be organized around universal questions such as: What constitutes a place? What is the relationship between culture and society and locality? How is space constructed? Where and how are boundaries drawn? How are social relationships formed and maintained through space and its manipulations?

Similarly, the course will consider how East Asian societies have long been regarded as having different relations to space and place. Concepts such as “empty core,” “vertical society,” hierarchical relationships, and guanxi have long been used to characterize differing social relations. If spatial relationships serve to structure social relationships, how is the “public sphere” composed, and what is the relationship between public and private? Where does the individual end and the public begin? If public spaces are gendered as male, and the domestic as female, how does this inform our understanding of East Asian cultures and societies? These are some of the questions that we will be engaging in this course.

All of the readings are in English and all films shown will have English subtitles. No knowledge of East Asian history, culture or language is required for this course.

Requirements:

Participation 30%
(class discussion and weekly Courseworks postings)
Class Presentations 10%
Take-home Mid-term 20%
Annotated Bibliography 5%
Take-home Final 35%

Class Presentations :

Each student will lead two joint class presentations (no longer than 10 minutes) examining that day’s readings as a way to direct the subsequent class discussion. To prepare the class for the presentation, the discussion leaders will post thematic questions to the Courseworks discussion board. Class discussion will be based upon questions and ideas circulated on the web discussion board course log before each class session. All students will be required to read the other students’ postings and to also post to the board each week.

Take-home Mid-term

DUE ON OCTOBER 9 TH

The take-home mid-term will be a short paper (pp. 5-7) that engages with the theories or approaches presented in two of the readings to date, while also exploring out the broad directions for the final paper. An example of this would be to consider the differing theoretical or ethnographic approaches to gender and space in two of the readings. Students are required to discuss their paper topics with the instructor during office hours.

Annotated Bibliography

DUE ON NOVEMBER 13 TH

This short assignment (2-3 pages) consists of one-paragraph analyses of at least five sources (excluding required course readings) relevant to your final paper. These may include academic books, academic articles or ethnographic interviews. This assignment will be explained more in class.

Take-home Final Exam

DUE ON DECEMBER 4 TH

The take-home final exam will consist of a lengthy paper (pp. 15-20) that is an expansion of the take-home mid-term. This in-depth research paper will consider one aspect of culture in East Asia. A list of suggested topics will be handed out during the third week of the course, or students may research a topic of their own choosing after consultation with the instructor. Building on the initial theoretical engagement of the mid-term take-home exam and the annotated bibliography assignment, the final exam will consist of original research on any of three topical areas: 1) ideologies (e.g. purity, history, tradition); 2) peoples (e.g. newcomers, natives, refugees, migrants, tourists); 3) consumption (e.g. food, media) in the construction of place. Allowing for both archival and ethnographic research, students are encouraged to re-think the delineation of the field of their study and the “received wisdom” of boundaries and localities.

Required Readings

Books: Available at Labyrinth Books 536 W. 112th Street (Between Broadway & Amsterdam) 212 865-1588 or on-line, such as Amazon.com

– Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1997) Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation. Armonk , NY and London: M. E. Sharpe. Available at Labyrinth Books

– Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. (1999) Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. Ed. Yang. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Available at Labyrinth Books

Articles:

– JSTOR.ORG (Journal Storage) – this is a free electronic resource accessible through the Columbia Library ( http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?AMG1286) – students are required to download these articles on their own

– Course Reader (this will contain all of the required reading not from JSTOR.ORG) available at Copyquick ( 1211 Amsterdam Ave. between 119th & 120th Streets)

Class Schedule

Week One

Introduction

September 2: Introduction

September 4: Defining Spaces and Locating Places

Readings:

– Margaret C. Rodman (1992) “Empowering Place: Multilocality and Multivocality” American Anthropologist, Vol. 94, No. 3., pp. 640-656. ( JSTOR)

– Yi-Fu Tuan (1975) “Place: An Experiential Perspective”

Geographical Review, Vol. 65, No. 2. pp. 151-165. ( JSTOR)

Recommended Readings:

– Marc Auge (1995) “From Places to Non-Places” in Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. New York: Verso Books (75-115)

Week Two

Overview

September 9: The Public Sphere

Readings:

– Mayfair Mei-hui Yang "Introduction" in Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. (Yang, ed.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. (Pp. 1-34).

Location: EAST ASIAN

c.1 Shelved in: EAST ASIAN RESERVES

Call Number: HQ1767 .S6 1999

– Frederic Wakeman, Jr. (1993) “The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture”

Modern China , Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 108-138. (JSTOR)

Recommended:

– Ana Maria Alonso (1994) “The Politics of Space, Time and Substance: State Formation, Nationalism and Ethnicity” Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 23. pp. 379-405.

September 11: Native terms of Space and Place

Readings:

– Denise L. Lawrence and Setha M. Low “The Built Environment and Spatial Form” Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 19. (1990), pp. 453-505. ( JSTOR)

– Tessa Morris-Suzuki (1997) “Chapter 1: Introduction” (Pp. 1-8) in Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, NationM. E. Sharpe.

Recommended:

– M. Kearney (1995) “The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism” Annual Review of Anthropology , Vol. 24. (Pp. 547-565) ( JSTOR)

Week Three

The Nation-State: Its Traditions and Imaginings I

September 16: History and the Nation

Readings:

– Prasenjit Duara (1998) “The Regime of Authenticity: Timelessness, Gender, and National History in Modern China” History and Theory, 37/3 (Pp. 287-308). ( JSTOR)

– J. Victor Koschmann (1997) “Asianism’s Ambivalent Legacy” in Network Power : Japan and Asia (Katzenstein and Shiraishi, eds) Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (Pp. 83-110) ( READER)

September 18: Imagined Communities

Readings:

– Benedict Anderson (1991) Chapter 8 “Patriotism and Racism” (Pp. 141-154), Chapter 10 “Census, Map, Museum” ( Pp. 163-186), and Chapter 11 “Memory and Forgetting” ( Pp. 187-206) in Imagined Communities. (Revised Edition) New York: Verso. (READER)

Week Four

The Nation-State: Its Traditions and Imaginings II

September 23:

– Eric Hobsbawm (1983) “Introduction: Inventing Traditions” in The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Pp. 1-14) ( READER )

– Tessa Morris-Suzuki (1997) “Chapter 2: Japan” (9-34) in Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, NationM. E. Sharpe.

– Stephen Vlastos (1998) “Introduction” in Mirror of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Pp. 1-16) ( READER )

Recommended:

Dipesh Chakrabarty (1998) “Afterword: Revisiting the Tradition /Modernity Binary” in Mirror of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Pp. 285-296)

September 25:

– Carol Gluck (1998) “ The Invention of Edo” in Mirror of Modernity (Vlastos, ed.) Berkeley: University of California Press. (Pp. 262-284). ( READER )

– Louise Young (1998) “ Colonializing Manchuria: The Making of an Imperial Myth” in Mirror of Modernity (Vlastos, ed.) Berkeley: University of California Press. (Pp. 95-109). ( READER )

Recommended:

– Jordan Sand (1998) “At Home in the Meiji Period: Inventing Japanese Domesticity” in Mirror of Modernity (Vlastos, ed.) Berkeley: University of California Press. (Pp. 191-207).

Week Five

Citizenship, Transnationalism and Diaspora I

September 30: Diasporas and national imaginings

Readings:

– Abelmann, Nancy (1997) “Women's Class Mobility and Identities in South Korea: A Gendered, Transnational, Narrative Approach” The Journal of Asian Studies, 56/2. (Pp. 398-420). ( JSTOR)

– You-tien Hsing (1997) “Building Guanxi Across the Straits: Taiwanese Capital and Local Chinese Bureaucrats” in Ungrounded Empires (Ong and Nonini, eds.) New York: Routledge. (Pp. 143-164). ( READER )

– Liu, Xin (1997) “Space, Mobility, and Flexibility: Chinese Villagers and Scholars Negotiate Power at Home and Abroad” in Ungrounded Empires (Ong and Nonini, eds.) New York: Routledge. (Pp. 91-114). ( READER )

Recommended:

– Robin Cohen (1996) “Diasporas and the Nation-State: From Victims to Challengers” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), 72/3. (Pp. 507-520). ( JSTOR)

October 2: Globalization

Readings:

– Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1997) “Chapter 8: Globalization” (Pp. 161-84) in Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, NationM. E. Sharpe.

– Ong, Aihwa (1999) Chapter 1 “The Geopolitics of Cultural Knowledge” (Pp. 29-54) and Chapter 4 “The Pacific Shuttle: Family, Citizenship, and Capital Circuits” (Pp. 110-136) in Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logic of Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. ( READER )

Recommended:

– Willams, Brackette (1990) “Nationalism, Traditionalism, and the Problem of Cultural Inauthenticity” in Nationalist Idealogies and the Production of National Cultures (Fox ed.) Pp: 112-129.

– Ong, Aihwa (1999) Chapter 8 “Zones of New Sovereignty” (Pp. 214-239) in Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logic of Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. ( READER )

Week Six

Citizenship, Transnationalism and Diaspora II

October 7: Transnationalism

Readings:

– Ang, Ien (1998) “ Can One Say No to Chineseness? Pushing the Limits of the Diasporic Paradigm” Boundary 2, 25/3, (Pp. 223-242). ( JSTOR)

– Mitchell, Katharyne (1995) “Flexible Circulation in the Pacific Rim: Capitalisms in Cultural Context” Economic Geography, Vol. 71, No. 4. (Pp. 364-382). ( JSTOR)

– Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1997) “Chapter 9: Citizenship” (Pp. 185-210) in Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, NationM. E. Sharpe.

Recommended:

– Holston, James and Arjun Appadurai (1996) “Cities and Citizenship” Public Culture 8: 187-204. ( READER )

October 9: Film

MIDTERM TAKE-HOME PAPER DUE

Overstayby Ann Kaneko (74 mins) (1998).

Location: Lehman-Social Work Reserves

Readings: none

Recommended:

– Upham, Frank (1993) “Unplaced Persons and Movements for Place” in Postwar Japan as History (Gordon, ed.) Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp: 325-346. ( READER )

Week Seven

Rural/Urban, City/Nature I

October 14: Rural

Readings:

– Park, Siyoung (1981) “Rural Development in Korea: The Role of Periodic Markets” Economic Geography, 57/2: 113-126. ( JSTOR)

– Wigen, Kären E. (1992) “ The Geographic Imagination in Early Modern Japanese History: Retrospect and Prospect”The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 51, No. 1. (Feb., 1992), pp. 3-29. ( JSTOR)

– Wigen, Kären E. (1999) “Culture, Power, and Place: The New Landscapes of East Asian Regionalism” The American Historical Review, 104/4. (Pp. 1183-1201). ( JSTOR)

Recommended:

– Ivy, Marilyn (1995) “Chapter 3: Ghastly Insufficiencies: Tôno Monogatari and the Origins of Nativist Ethnology” (Pp. 66-97) in Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

October 16: Urban (Screening of “Neighborhood Tokyo” (29 minutes) Bestor)

Readings:

– Bestor, Theodore (1989) “ Chapter 2: The Development of a Neighborhood” Neighborhood Tokyo. (Pp. 46-81). ( READER )

– Robertson, Jennifer (1998) “ It Takes a Village: Internationalization and Nostalgia in Postwar Japan” in Mirror of Modernity (Vlastos, ed.) (Pp. 110-129). ( READER )

Recommended:

– Low, Setha M. (1996) “The Anthropology of Cities: Imagining and Theorizing the City” Annual Review of Anthropology (25: 383-409). ( JSTOR)

Week Eight

Rural/Urban, City/Nature II

October 21: City

Readings:

– Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1997) “Chapter 4: Culture” (60-78) and “Chapter 7: Civilization” (Pp. 140-70) in Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, NationM. E. Sharpe.

– Bestor, Theodore (2003) “Markets and Place: Tokyo and the Global Tuna Trade” (Pp. 301-320) in The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture. (Low, S. & Lawrence-Zúñiga, D., eds.) Malden, MA: Blackwell. ( READER )

October 23: Nature

Readings:

– Clunas, Craig (1996) “Chapter 1: The Fruitful Garden” in Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (Pp.16-59) ( READER )

– Kelly, William (1990) “Regional Japan: The Price of Prosperity and the Benefits of Dependency” Daedalus 119/3: 209-227 ( READER )

– Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1997) “Chapter 3: Nature” (Pp.35-59) in Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, NationM. E. Sharpe.

Recommended:

– Hashimoto, Mitsuru (1998) “ Chihō : Yanagita Kunio's ‘ Japan’” in Mirror of Modernity (Vlastos, ed.) (Pp. 133-143).

Week Nine

Memory, Museums, and Tourism I

October 28: The Anthropology of Museums

Readings :

– Ann Anagnost (1993) “ The Nationscape: Movement in the Field of Vision” Positions 1/3: 585-606. ( READER )

– Takashi Fujitani (1996) “Introduction: Inventing, Remembering, Forgetting” (Pp. 1-28) and “Epilogue: Toward a History of the Present” (Pp. 230-246) in Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. ( READER )

– Lisa Rofel “Museum as Women’s Space: Displays of Gender in Post-Mao China” in Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China. (Yang, ed.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. (Pp. 116-131).

Recommended:

– Jones, Anna (1993) “Exploding Cannons: The Anthropology of Museums” Annual Review of Anthropology. 22: 201-220. ( JSTOR)

October 30: The Politics of Memory

Readings :

– Harootunian, Harry (1999) “Memory, Mourning, and National Morality: Yasukuni Shrine and the Reunion of State and Religion in Postwar Japan” in Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Pp. 144-160). ( READER )

– Yoneyama, Lisa (1999) “Part One: Cartographies of Memory” (Pp. 43-82) in Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press. ( READER )

– Dominguez , Virginia R. (1993) “Visual Nationalism: On Looking at ‘National Symbols’” Public Culture 5: 451-455. ( READER )

Week Ten

Memory, Museums, and Tourism II

November 4: ELECTION DAY – UNIVERSITY HOLIDAY

November 6: Tourism

Readings:

– Martinez , D. P. (1990) “Tourism and the Ama: The Search for a Real Japan” in Unwrapping Japan: Society and Culture in Anthropological Perspective (Ben-Ari et al., eds.). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. (Pp. 97-116) ( READER )

– Oakes, Tim (1998) “Introduction” (Pp. 2-20) and “Tourism and Modernity” (Pp. 21-57) in Tourism and Modernity in China. New York: Routledge. ( READER )

Recommended:

– MacConnell, Dean (1986) “Introduction” (Pp. 1-16), “Chapter 4: The Other Attractions” (Pp. 77-90) and “Chapter 5: Staged Authenticity” (Pp. 91-108) The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class . New York : Schocken Books. ( READER )

  • Lowenthal, David “Geography, Experience, and Imagination: Towards a Geographical Epistemology”Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 51, No. 3. (Sep., 1961), pp. 241-260. ( JSTOR)
  • – Robertson, Jennifer (1988) “Furusato Japan: The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 1/4: 494-518. ( READER ) 

Week Eleven

Gender I

November 11: Gender and Space

Readings :

– Schein, Louisa (1997) “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China” Modern China 23/1 (Pp. 69-98). ( JSTOR)

– Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. “From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference: State Feminism, Consumer Sexuality, and Women’s Public Sphere in China” in Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. (Yang, ed.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Pp. 35-67.

– Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1997) “Chapter 4: Culture” (60-78) and “Chapter 7: Civilization” (Pp. 140-70) in Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, NationM. E. Sharpe.

Recommended:

– Kristeva, Julia (1986) “Women’s Time” in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Margaret Waller. New York: Columbia University Press. (pp. 187-213).

November 13: Women’s Spaces

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE

Readings:

– Virginia Cornue “Practicing NGOness and Relating Women’s Space Publicly: The Women’s Hotline and the State” in Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China. (Yang, ed.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. (Pp: 68-91).

– Dai Jinhua. “Rewriting Chinese Women: Gender Production and Cultural Space in the Eighties and Nineties” in Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China. (Yang, ed.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. (Pp: 191-206).

– Ueno Chizuko (1996) “Modern Patriarchy and the Formation of the Japanese Nation State” in Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern (Denoon et. al.) (Pp. 213-223). ( READER )

Week Twelve

Gender II

November 18: Disciplining Bodies

Readings :

– Kondo, Dorinne (1990) “Chapter 3: Disciplined Selves” in Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Pp. 76-118). ( READER )

– Spielvogel, Laura (2003) “Chapter 2: The Discipline of Space” and “Chapter 3: The Discipline of Bodies” in Working Out in Japan Durham: Duke University Press. (Pp. 61-114). ( READER )

November 20: Film

Screening of Mayfair Yang’s “Through Chinese Women’s Eyes”

(videorecording 52 minutes). New York: Women Make Movies, 1997.

Week Thirteen

Ethnicity

November 25: History and Ethnicity

Readings:

– Amino, Yoshihiko (1996) “Emperor, Rice, and Commoners” in Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern (Denoon et. al.) (pp. 235-244). ( READER )

– Howell, David (1994) “Ainu ethnicity and the boundaries of the early modern Japanese state” Past and Present 142: 69-93. ( JSTOR)

– Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1997) “Chapter 5: Race” (Pp. 79-109) in Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, NationM. E. Sharpe.

November 27: UNIVERSITY HOLIDAY -- THANKGIVING

Week Fourteen

December 2: Koreans in Japan

– Hester, Jeffry T. (1999) “ Kids Between Nations: Ethnics classes in the construction of Korean identities in Japanese public schools” in Sonia Ryang (ed.) Koreans in Japan (pp. 175-194). ( READER )

– Yi, Hoesǒng [Ri Kaisei] (1971) “The Woman Who Fulled Clothes” (Pp. 342-376) in Flowers of Fire (Peter Lee, ed. 1986) Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. ( READER )

– Yang, Ji Lee (1988) “Yu-Hee” (Pp. 55-68) in New Japanese Voices: The Best Contemporary Fiction from Japan (Helen Mitsios, ed., 1991) Atlantic Monthly Press. ( READER )

Recommended:

– Nelson, Beverly (1979) “Korean Literature in Japan, A Case Study: Ri Kai Sei” (Pp. 126-159) in Studies on Korea in Transition. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. ( READER )

December 4: The Body

Readings:

– Brownell, Susan (1995) “Chapter 6: Training the Body for China: Civilization, Discipline, and Social Order” (Pp. 155-179) and “Chapter 9: Bodies, Boundaries, and the State” (238-262) in Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic ( READER ) and (1999) “Strong Women and Impotent Men: Sports, Gender, and Nationalism in Chinese Public Culture” in Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China. (Yang, ed.) (Pp. 207-31).

– Kuriyama, Shigehisa (1999) “Preface” and “Chapter 1: Grasping the Language of Life” The Expressiveness of the Body: And the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine New York: Zone Books. (Pp.7-60). ( READER )

Recommended:

– Bourdieu, Pierre (1990) “Programme for a Sociology of Sport” in In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (Pp. 156-167).

DECEMBER 12: TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM DUE

Final Paper

I will give you guidelines on this assignment after we return from spring vacation.