The Research Proposal

Summary of Proposed Research:

“From Developmental to Cultural Nationalism in Asia?”
We seek support for our research initiative on Asian nationalism which is centered on two workshops bringing together the UVic Team of co-applicants, and graduate students, with a group of outstanding scholars of nationalism in different Asian regions and countries. The October 2003 workshop will comparatively examine the dimensions of the phenomenon in various parts of Asia, settle on a common framework of theory and analysis, delineating its chief themes, and assigning each theme to a sub-group charged with carrying out new, original research. The October 2004 workshop will critically discuss and coordinate the results of this research. We already have the enthusiastic agreement of the most outstanding scholars in the field to participate in this initiative. We have also garnered local financial support at UVic which matches the funds which we are requesting from SSHRC.
The chief research outcome will be a new comparative approach to studying Asian nationalism and assessing its implications for the future of Asia and for world politics in the 21st century. It will have direct implications for the conduct of Canada’s foreign relations. The knowledge transfer is aimed at scholarly, policy-making, student and general public audiences. The research advances will be set out in a volume of articles written by the Contributors and edited and introduced by the PI and the CIs. Teaching materials and methods evolved for Professional Specialization Certificate courses will be aimed in the first instance at civil servants, professionals and students, but adaptable for wider uses. A permanent interactive website will service world-wide network of scholars centered on Canada and focused on Asia – its nationalisms, cultures, political economies and state forms. Finally, radio and TV news and documentary programming based on the workshops and special interviews aimed at the general public will make a direct contribution to public awareness and understanding of the subject.
The Problem: Working on particular countries and regions of Asia, we and our Contributors in a variety of disciplines have identified a strong resurgence of nationalisms in Asia recently. These are nationalisms of a new type. Whereas through most of the 20th century, nationalisms in Asia were pitted against colonialism, semi-colonialism or Communism and emphasised developmental matters, today’s Asian nationalisms tend to be preoccupied with issues of identity, whether religious, ethnic or cultural. “Asian Values”, “Hindutva”, “Confuciansim” and “Nihonjinron”, and a variety of complex intermeshings of national identity mixed with Islamism, define the new resurgent nationalisms.
Nowhere is this resurgence reflected at the level of general and comparative understanding of Asian nationalism. Eminent scholars of nationalism such as Eric Hobsbawm had predicted the demise of nationalism by the later 1980s, and dismissed the resurgence of suppressed nationalities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia after the break-up of the Soviet Union as merely passing phenomena. We live, they claim, in a globalizing “post-nationalist” age. And Samuel Huntington’s much vaunted “Clash of Civilizations” thesis saw geopolitical confrontation defined in terms of civilizational wholes, ignoring internal and international specificities of concrete national formations as well as the range of relations possible among states.
Our Innovation: Our research indicates that these theses have always been problematic, and are even more so in the age of the War on Terrorism. Our Research Development Initiative

a) confronts the “globalization”/ “post nationalist” and “Clash of Civilizations” theses with the detailed empirical and theoretical work done by us and our contributors on resurgent Asian nationalisms
b) inquires into the changes in these nationalisms wrought by the global economic malaise since the Asian financial crises
c) interrogates the effect of the War on Terrorism on them
d) subjects work on individual Asian nations and regions to interrogation based on other national experiences.
Unlike the vast majority of work on Asian countries, and on Asia hitherto, it takes the entire continent as its focus on the grounds that there are both important linkages and major historical parallels among countries across the continent.

The Research Problem:

Nationalisms in Asia have recently been as complex and volatile as their implications for Asia and the world are momentous. However, current scholarship has failed to register their dimensions and implications. Most accounts discount nationalisms’ importance, even their possibility, in the post-cold war, globalizing world which is deemed to have diminished the importance of borders and entire apparatuses of nations and states – national cultures, identities and governments (e.g. Hobsbawm 1996, B. Anderson 1996). If the trajectory of nationalisms in Asia in the 20th century was intimately tied to imperialism, the emergence of Communism, and, by implication, Non-Alignment, with the demise of Communism in Europe and its excoriation in China, nationalisms in Asia have become demoted to a minor concern. What now holds popular attention is the rise of Islamic fundamentalism – in West and Central Asia in particular. Other accounts, captive of Samuel Huntington’s much vaunted “Clash of Civilizations” thesis, hold that the main forms of geo-political confrontation are defined in terms of civilizations. This view ignores both the internal specificities and the international importance of concrete national formations, as well as downplaying the range of relations possible among states. Major policy-makers and analysts have seen current events surrounding the War on Terrorism, mistakenly in our view, as confirming this thesis.

Such generalist verdicts ring false to us, and our Contributors. As scholars working closer to the ground realities of individual nations, our work has testified, instead, to another reality: below the surface appearance of globalization, behind the more eye-catching reality of Islamic Fundamentalism, in one country after another, there is a resurgence of nationalisms. The resurgent nationalisms are also new. Nationalisms have always contained two dualities: identity and economy, and future and past orientations. While they are usually combined in very complex and intricate ways in any individual case, we think it may be plausibly hypothesized that whereas the classical 20th century “developmental” Asian nationalisms emphasised economy and future orientations, the resurgent nationalisms which promise to characterize the Asia’s 21st century emphasise identity and past orientations. They have different names - “Asian Values”, “Hindutva”, “Confucianism” and “Nihonjiron”, e.g. - and are self-consciously cultural nationalisms – with a powerful emphasis on ascribed identity, whether religion, ethnicity or culture. In many countries they have extremist wings. In this project, the Project Research Team is committed to give articulating this reality in a general, theoretical and comparative format, to founding a new, more accurate approach to understanding Asian nationalisms and their implications.

The Anticipated Impact: All members of the UVic Team have worked on aspects of this resurgence in one part of Asia or another (Blue 1987 and 2002, Bodden 1996a and 2002, Desai 2002 a and b, Keefer, 1992, Moore, 1994 and 1996, Wright 1996, 2000). So have our Contributors (See H: Supporting Documents). We believe the time is ripe a new approach to the comparative theorization and analysis of the dynamics of Asian nationalisms in the 21st century. This can only be constructed on the basis of intense interaction between scholars of individual countries and regions. This is what our two workshops facilitate, moving the deliberations and research of the Project Research Team from country- and region- focused analyses to general comparative theory and analyses. This is our main anticipated impact.

This new approach and knowledge will be transferred to the relevant audiences through many different means (see below). The project will result in a new network of scholarship and intellectual collaboration on Asian nationalisms and associated themes - culture, political economy, state forms and theories of nationalism - centred on Canada. Our permanent interactive website will facilitate this network. Through it a large number of Asian Scholars, based in Asia and elsewhere, will enrich the Asian Studies community in Canada. It will establish closer academic links between Canada and various parts of Asia. Asian studies will also be more fully integrated into the study of nationalism, and associated subjects such as Democracy, Civil Society and Culture through our participation in graduate student training and the Professional Specialization Certificate (see Training and Role of Students).

Meeting RDI Objectives: The two workshops aim to “provide the means for researchers to collaborate in exploring innovative ways to develop and disseminate knowledge” (Objective 3). The Project Research Team and graduate students will engage new forms of intellectual collaboration, create new networks of scholarly collaboration, prepare teaching materials and disseminate this knowledge through conventional means such as peer-reviewed books and journals, and through the Internet, TV and Radio.

In interrogating received scholarship on Asian Nationalism, and doing so in fields as diverse as “globalization” studies, comparative politics, cultural studies and political economy, the project will also “encourage critical analysis and assessment of the intellectual and social contribution of research and researcher training, including its impacts, strengths and state of development” (Objective 1). It will lay a theoretical and historical foundation for the comparative analysis of 21st century Asian nationalism and its implications for the world and for Asia, lifting new research and analysis of national cases to a broader and more theoretical understanding of its characteristics, impulses and conditions of existence.

This multi- and inter-disciplinary initiative, involving political scientists, historians, areas studies scholars, Sociologists, Anthropologists, scholars of Literature and of International Relations aims precisely to “identify and define new conceptual and methodological perspectives directions and priorities in conducting research, dissemination and researcher training” (Objective 2). We detail this immediately below.

The Research Strategy: The Project Research Team will come together in two workshops in October 2003 and October 2004 and will collaborate over the course of the project via e-mail and the permanent interactive website.

Each workshop, supported by graduate students, will involve the Project Research Team in structured face-to-face discussions over two and a half days. As designed by the PI and CIs, the 2003 workshop will comparatively examine Asian nationalisms in various parts of Asia. It will be organized regionally and will be primarily exploratory. It will have one session each on Asia’s four major regions – East Asia, South East Asia, South Asia and West and Central Asia – chaired by the PI and CIs according to their expertise. Each session will have been prepared for by them in consultation with the Contributors in their region over preceding months. Each session will discuss position papers expressing the existing scholarship on the resurgent nationalisms by scholars of the region. Each session will be attended by the entire Project Research Team. By not planning concurrent sessions, we ensure that each scholar is party to the whole discussion, an indispensable condition for moving research to a general, comparative and theoretical level. There will be one general session at the end, chaired by the PI, which will plan the next, theoretical and thematic stage of the research. Its aim will be to settle on a common framework of theory and analysis, delineating its chief themes, and assigning each theme a sub-group charged with carrying out new, original research.

In October 2003 the Project Research Team will subject each resurgent nationalism to the scrutiny of other scholars of the phenomenon in other countries and regions of Asia. It will create a dialogue about similar or parallel developments in each region and about important variations. In this fecund scholarly interaction, each national experience will be put under broader scholarly scrutiny, while the broad understandings generated, at this stage, will be put to the test of national experiences. Critique of the various national accounts, particularly their exceptionalisms will deepen the knowledge of each participating scholar and enable a broader theorization of the various processes under examination.

The main questions in the2003 workshop are therefore primarily exploratory in nature:

a) What are the characteristic themes of each resurgent Asian nationalism of the 21st century? How do they differ from the classical themes of 20th century nationalism in that country and more generally?
b) In so far as the new nationalisms are primarily cultural, how do they relate to cultural systems – schools, universities, the media and the culture industries?
c) What social groups form the basis of the new nationalisms? How do these differ from those of the classical nationalisms of earlier periods?
d) What are the media of choice for the articulation and propagation of these new nationalisms? What are the implications of these media for the dynamics of the new nationalisms?
e) What sort of economic programmes do these nationalisms embody, if any?
f) How do these nationalisms relate to state structures, and to established political forces – parties and movements?
g) How do these nationalisms articulate the national destiny in the international sphere?

The 2003 workshop will therefore begin at the point where existing research on the subject of the resurgent Asian Nationalism finds itself: at the point of national or regional studies of the phenomenon. The formal sessions and the informal discussions – during mealtimes or free time – will create new collaborations between scholars on a thematic basis, ending in the identification of the themes around which the sessions of the October 2004 workshop will be organized.

Each UVic and Contributing scholar will also choose the theme(s) which s/he will work on, singly or in collaboration with one or more others, depending on expertise and the thematic interests which s/he have developed in the course of the October 2003 workshop. The final, general, session of the first workshop will formalise the themes of the October 2004 workshop and the subjects on the scholars or teams of scholars will be making their contribution(s) in it. Finally, the October 2003 workshop also deliberate upon and plan the various modes of dissemination, including initiating work on them as necessary.

While we cannot anticipate the results of the October 2003 workshop in any detail, we can see four broad thematics which will, in some version, be central to the deliberations of the final October 2004 workshop, the research outcome and in the content of the various modes of knowledge transfer.

The first is theories of culture and ideology. Over the last third of the 20th century, the period of the emergence of the resurgent Asian nationalisms, the production and consumption of culture, in Asia as elsewhere, is subject to ever deepening market relations joining culture and economy in a tightening embrace (Sayer, Jameson, Anderson). Any account of nationalism today, and cultural nationalism even more so, cannot afford to ignore this. In the vast literature on modernity, modernism, post-modernity and postmodernism the most penetrating and insightful accounts attempt to theorise the linkage between cultural developments and those in the political economy and sociology of capitalist societies (Jameson 1998, Harvey, P. Anderson 1998, Callinicos, Eagleton, Habermas 1987). Since nationalisms are also ideologies, inherently political, their popular reach and hold, production and reproduction, and conditions of emergence and stabilization must be explored.

There is, secondly, the political question of state forms in Asia and the pressures and impulses that are re-shaping them. This question is connected with that about differing forms of capitalism: Anglo-Saxon or neo-liberal versus various national capitalisms (Wade, Dore, Berger, Bernard et. Al.). A number of important reflections are being made about historically and geographically different state forms in the modern capitalist world - with a “Lockean Heartland” and variously different peripheries (Kees Van der Pijl, Runciman). Could such analyses be extended to Asia? There are complex but necessary linkages between forms of states and the character of their nationalisms.

Thirdly, this initiative will draw on theories and histories of nations and nationalism- seeking in particular to understand the specificities of Asian nations and nationalisms (Anderson, P, 1992 and 1998, Anderson, B, 1981 and 2001, Nairn 1977 and 1997, Gellner 1983 and 2002, Hobsbawm, 1990 and 1996, Leifer). It will also try to place the questions and conclusions regarding Asian nationalism in the context of more general reflections on the fate of nations and nationalisms in the 21st century.

Finally, we draw on political economy, in particular that of development and globalization (Leys, Strange 1996, Brenner 2002a and 2002b, Deyo, Tabb, Gowan 1999, 2002, Arrighi, Patnaik 1997, et. al) and the associated question of whether the variously developed national capitalisms - the famed “developmental states” of Asia among them, are under threat from neo-liberal “Anglo-Saxon capitalism” (Dore 2000a and 2000b, Hutton, Berger and Dore) and what this implies for the nation-state forms and nationalist ideologies and interests. Do the shifts in the economic imperatives and proclivities of Asian states account for shifts within nationalisms? In this matter, the changing social structures of Asian countries over the past three decades and more will be an important explanatory factor (Robison).

These themes intersect in a broader understanding of the phenomenon of the resurgence of specifically cultural nationalisms in Asia. Forged in struggles against Imperialism and Communism, the nationalisms of Asia as they emerged and prevailed in the 20th century bore the distinctive stamp of developmentalism. Japan, Korea and Taiwan (Deyo, Haggard, Amsden 1989 and 2001, Wade 1990, 1992 and 1996, Woo-Cummings, Tabb, Johnson, to name the most important from the voluminous literature on the subject) and, of course, China (Selden, 1988, 1995, Lippit), are regarded in the literature as paradigms of developmentalism. But they are not alone. Other models - whether those of South-East Asia (Anderson B, 1998) or India (Chakravarty, Frankel), are distinctive for their own, if weaker and less successful, versions of this. Even in regions of Asia not known for their developmentalism, regimes like Baathist Iraq and Syria, or Iran under the Shah stood and fell (respectively) in large measure on the basis of their performance on this front (Al-Azmeh 1996). The developmental content of nationalisms was usually the direct result of the scale and depth of popular mobilizations which had historically accompanied the respective nation-state building struggles (Desai, MS). As the latter have faded, so has the developmental content of nationalisms in Asia.

Plans to Disseminate Research Results:

Our knowledge transfer will be aimed at the academic research and scholarly community, policy-makers and civil servants, university students and the general public. An edited volume of inter-disciplinary scholarly essays, divided into parts according to the themes with a General Introduction by the PI serving as an overview of theoretical and historical issues and introductions for each of the parts by the PI and CIs. We expect the volume to be a landmark in the literature in the field and enclose McGill-Queen’s University Press’s Statement of Interest.

Another result will be professional and student training. Along with the Division of Continuing Studies we plan two Professional Specialization Certificate courses, directly contributing to Canada’s policy-making capacity. The UVic Team and the graduate students will prepare the teaching materials and the instruction. See “Training and Role of Students” for further details.

We have approached TV and Radio stations – in particular, Moses Zanmier CHUM TV and Clint Nickerson of its Victoria branch, CIVI (Statement of Interest enclosed), NDTV in New Delhi, India, the Knowledge Network and CBC radio – to begin consultations them about making news, documentary and interview programmes for Radio and/or Television. The workshops will represent the single highest concentration of comparative expertise on Asia and on Nationalism in Canada for decades and the opportunity to make news, interview, and documentary programmes which give the wider public the benefit of an opportunity like this cannot be missed.

We plan to create a permanent interactive website for the project, a tool for dissemination as well as for gathering of views, information and other data, including audio and visual material. The website will act as a virtual agora and online library. Employing Java-based, server-side and common gateway interface technology, the site will act as a nexus through which discussions among the Project Research Team in the forms of both irc/ICQ real-time conversation. Usenet-style threaded bulletin boards will enable discussions to range freely over many interconnected themes. Mailing lists on the UVic listserver will keep the Project Research Team connected and regular updated on research developments.

The site will be designed for dynamic compatibility with a wide range of browsers and platforms, and ensuring legibility on older systems too. It will be designed also to make it a handy accompaniment to the planned Radio/TV forms of dissemination. For the duration of the project, it will function as an information central and a nexus for the Project Research Team and graduate students. After the duration of the project, it will serve as major site for intellectual exchange on the subject and an aid to the other research outcomes the projects: the book, the courses and the Radio/TV programmes.

The Work Plan:

The Uvic Team has invited and received acceptances from most Contributors. We hope to have the entire list in place by July 2003. We have also begun consultations regarding our modes of knowledge transfer with CBC Radio, CIVI/CHUM TV and NDTV, McGill-Queen’s University Press, and the Division of Continuing Studies, here at UVic (for the teaching component), to begin the detailed planning necessary to effective knowledge transfer. The Website will be established in July 2003.

Each Contributor has been sent a short statement, indicating the Research Problem, in light of which s/he will submit an abstract summarizing their expected contribution to the first workshop by 1 August 2003. The UVic Team will be consulting intensively with each other and with Contributors to ensure focus to each session, giving feedback, and collating and channeling emerging emphases. A two-page position paper summarizing each Contributors’ intervention at the 2003 workshop, will be due September 1 2003 and a full set will be sent to each Contributor by 15 September 2003.

The Contributors will peruse all the position papers in preparation for their interventions. The UVic Team will examine all the relevant position papers in designing each of the sessions while the PI will oversee the entire process. The Chair(s) of each session will prepare their strategies for their respective sessions. The Team will meet regularly in the run-up to the First Workshop to plan the sessions and plot the emerging thematic patterns. The aim will be to increase the efficiency with which the aims of the first workshop will be achieved: by its end, participants should have identified the theme(s) on which they wish to prepare their paper(s) for the second and final workshop a year later, and whether they wish to work singly or with one or more other members of the workshop.

During the two workshops, graduate students will produce summaries of each session, for use during the workshops themselves and a workshop wrap-up: the one after the first workshop will aid participants in preparing their contributions for the second one and the one after the second workshop will aid them in finalizing their contributions.

During the period between the two workshops Contributors will research and write on their paper(s). This will be period of intense research and dissemination activities for the UVic Team. They will work on their own research and writing, identifying and researching the lacunae in the project. They will also be engaged in the ongoing work on knowledge transfers in its various modes with the relevant agencies. For this period, we have applied for an RTS each for the PI and the CIs.

The entire work plan, including that of the final year is detailed in the Implementation Schedule below.

July 2003

Contributors finalized. Website Launched.

July 2003 - October 2003

Planning and design of research and knowledge transfers. Consultations within UVic Team and with Contributors re: content of Workshop I

August 1 2003

Deadline for abstracts. Full set to be sent to Contributors.

September 1 2003

Deadline for position papers. Full set to be sent to Contributors.

October 3-5 2003

Workshop I: Scholarly proceedings; coordination and execution of work related to radio and TV programming (recording, interviews etc.). PSC course I

October 2003-October 2004

Research intensive period: UVic team plans and researches their own contributions, coordinates those of Contributors, the academic and Paid work of the graduate students; maintenance and upgrading of the website content for intensive scholarly use; Preparation for Workshop II. Ongoing work re: knowledge transfers in various modes.

December 1 2003

Deadline for abstracts. Full set to be sent to all Contibutors

July 1 2004

Deadline for papers. Full set to be sent to all Contibutors

October 2004

Workshop II: Scholarly proceedings; coordination and execution of work related to radio and TV programming (recording, interviews etc.). PSC Course II

February 15 2005

Deadline for revised and final papers in view of discussion in Workshop II.

July 1 2005

Deadline for introductions to each part and the whole MS and mail-out to publisher for review.

July 2005 to June 2006

Completion of work on knowledge dissemination: UVic Team involved in finalizing the volume, the teaching materials, the radio/TV programming and Website.