Transferring knowledge and skills through skilled labor has become a critical topic in contemporary migration studies. Countries that are traditionally non-immigrant destinations often turn to their diaspora communities to increase the chances of return flows and knowledge transfer. It has been almost twenty years since South Korea enacted the ‘Overseas Korean Act’ in 1999, which attracted a large number of overseas Koreans back to its shore. Yet there has been very little discussion over the policy implications and what particular ‘skills’ or contributions the returnees have brought to Korean society.

In this seminar, Jane Yeonjae Lee describes some of the research findings from her forthcoming book Quest for home: Transnational return migration of 1.5 generation Korean New Zealanders (Lexington Press, 2018). This book project, which has been based on a life-history and transnational ethnographic research with 49 Korean return migrants, partly investigates the implications for global knowledge transfer through skilled mobilities. Lee will discuss a number of different pathways of returnees’ particular influences on Korean society, and how their certain knowledge and skills can be transferred, hindered, or mutated.

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Symposium on "History of US-Japan Relations"

March 6, 2018

Philippines Conference Room

Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (Stanford University)

Program

9:00am     Registration and Breakfast
 

9:30am     Welcome Remark
                 Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University)
 

9:40am  Session 1: From Perry to the War with China

Presenter:
Kaoru Iokibe (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Peter Duus (Stanford University)
 

10:40am  Break
 

11:00am  Session 2: Pacific War and Occupation

Presenter:
Fumiaki Kubo (University of Tokyo)

Discussant:
Kenji Kushida (Stanford University)

12:00pm  Lunch
 

1:00pm   Session 3: Pax Americana and Japan's Postwar Resurgence

Presenter:
Makoto Iokibe (Prefectural University of Kumamoto and Hyogo)

Discussant:
Tsuneo Akaha (Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey)

2:00pm   Session 4: Neoliberalism and Redefinition of the US-Japan Alliance

Presenter:
Masayuki Tadokoro (Keio University)

Discussant:
Michael Armacost (Stanford University)

3:00pm  Break
 

3:20pm   Session 5: US-Japan Leadership Today

Presenter:
Koji Murata (Doshisha University)

Discussant:
Phillip Lipscy (Stanford University)

4:20pm   Closing Remark
               Makoto Iokibe (Prefectural University of Kumamoto and Hyogo)

Abstract:

The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result, Yascha Mounk shows, democracy itself may hang in the balance.

Using his own original research and on-the-ground reporting from countries around the world, Mounk makes clear in THE PEOPLE VS. DEMOCRACY what exactly is at risk if the current trends in America and Western Europe continue. Astounding numbers of people in all age, economic, and social groups are more open to military rule, media controls, and other hallmarks of authoritarianism than ever before.
    
“Under these radically changed circumstances, it would be foolhardy to assume that the stability of democracy is sure to persist,” Mounk writes in his introduction. “The first big assumption of the postwar era—the idea that rich countries in which the government had repeatedly changed hands through free and fair elections would forever remain democratic—has all along stood on shaky ground.”

Mounk shows that the two core components of liberal democracy—individual rights and the popular will—are increasingly at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of “rights without democracy” took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create something just as bad: a system of “democracy without rights.”

The consequence, Mounk writes, is that trust in politics is dwindling. Citizens are falling out of love with their political system. Democracy is wilting away. Drawing on vivid stories and original research, Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters’ discontent: stagnating living standards, fears of multiethnic democracy, and the rise of social media. To reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms that benefit the many, not the few.

Speaker Bio:

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A columnist at Slate and the host of The Good Fight podcast, he is a leading expert on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy.

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After the Cold War, Thailand became a poster child of democratizing processes in Southeast Asia. Student protests, farmers’ activism, a thriving civil society, and an expanding middle class suggested a model of successful democratic transition. In the last decades, however, many of the forces that supported that process turned sour on electoral politics. Dr. Sopranzetti’s book will explore how that happened—new class alliances, discourses of corruption and morality, questions of law.  In this context, he will portray Thailand as an experimental space for a new model of authoritarianism, inspired by Beijing and now spreading throughout the region.  The book, Owners of the Maps: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility, and Politics in Bangkok, will be available for sale at the talk.

Claudio Sopranzetti is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Owners of the Maps: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility, and Politics in Bangkok and he is currently working on Awakened,  an anthropological graphic novel on Thai politics.