Non-local Upcoming Events
Workshop on Popular Culture in Southern China and Northern Vietnam
Date: May 2012
Location:
Institute of Culture, Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences
For Chinese, Lingnan refers to southern China. For Vietnamese, Linh Nam means “South of the border (with China)” in other words, the area now known as northern Vietnam. Whatever the exact geographical coverage of Lingnan/Linh Nam, it is clear that modern southern China and modern northern Vietnam share a common cultural heritage despite their divergent political histories after the tenth century.
During the 1950s, in both Vietnam and China the socialist state sought to radically transform local culture, by banning practices that were deemed superstitious and wasteful. Over the last three decades, economic reforms and political liberalization have led to the revival of traditional practices at the local level; in many cases, this revival is abetted by global actors such as UNESCO.
This workshop is intended to highlight some of the commonalities between the popular cultures of southern China and northern Vietnam and to compare the experiences of Chinese and Vietnamese in transforming, preserving and reviving local religio-cultural practices. Above all, it seeks to bring together scholars of Vietnam and China with the idea that they can benefit from such connections and comparisons.
Social Welfare Development and Transformation of Governance: East Asian Drama
Date: June 2012
Location: Central China Normal University
This workshop will bring together scholars from different regions and areas of study, mainly the fields of political, sociological and public policy studies in East Asia, and will lalow for the exchange ideas on the following themes:
Theme 1: current trends and the future of East Asia welfare regimes
Theme 2: the inter-government relationship in social welfare provision
Theme 3: the role of the state and its relationship to civil society in social welfare provision
Theme 4: seeking good governance in social welfare development
For more information, please contact Zhou Fenghua (siluoip@163.com).
Women in Academia: Meritocracy and Gender Equality
Date: June 2012
Location: Seoul National University
Sponsored by the Harvard-Yenching Institute, the Korea Institute at Harvard University, Institute for Gender Research at Seoul National University and the Korean Association of Women’s Studies
Organizers: Sun Joo Kim, Harvard-Yenching Professor of Korean History, Harvard University; Chung Chin-sung, Professor of Sociology, Seoul National University; Lee Na-young, Sociology, Chung-ang University
Women’s status in modern Korea has recently made much improvement, and now Korean women enjoy almost equal legal status as men in all aspects of life. With the legal inscription of gender equality in both domestic and public realms, women now have more representation in politics, business, and education. Discrimination of daughters in higher education has nearly disappeared as women comprise almost half of college students in Korea, and increasingly more women pursue graduate and professional degrees. Yet employment data, at the managerial and professional levels in particular, is not parallel to the educational level. In academia, institutional efforts have been made to hire more women faculty by assigning special employment quotas and by creating more congenial work environments for women over last decade. However, the representation of women in most departments and schools, except for a few women-dominated fields such as education, arts, and nursing, is still very meager and there are a number of departments at major universities that do not have a single woman faculty. More objective hiring and reviewing practices, such as grading publication records, have been introduced to put into practice true meritocracy. Whether adopting this type of conceivably more objective criteria in hiring and promotion practices has improved gender equality and meritocracy is controversial and questionable. This conference aims to analyze this discrepancy between legal and institutional prescriptions and employment practices in realizing gender equality, and tries to understand where the major obstacles exist. Comparative data and practices in China, Japan, and the United States will further enrich our understanding of the current status of gender equality in academia in these countries, and will give an opportunity to examine how different cultures and ideologies make impacts on policy making and practices.
Training Program: Social Sciences Approaches to Chinese Everyday Life since 1978: Family, Education, Religion and Consumption
Date:
June 20 - July 3, 2012
Location: Johns Hopkins University - Nanjing University Centre for Chinese and
American Studies
The Harvard-Yenching Institute, Nanjing University and the University of Sydney are pleased to announce a new training program on "Social Sciences Approaches to Chinese Everyday Life since 1978: Family, Education, Religion and Consumption". The aims of the program are to spotlight the international implications of Chinese experiences against the background of globalization; to provide young scholars of the world engaged in China studies an opportunity to understand China; to share academic wisdom with outstanding researchers and be enlightened by criticisms from the younger generation; to initiate world-wide communication and cooperation among institutes for China Studies; and to advance international studies of China and promote their intellectual accumulation.
