• Course Objectives and Requirements
• Required Texts
• Schedule of Readings/Discussion
• Useful Links
  
  

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  Description of Objectives and Requirements:

This course explores the transnational forces changing the lives of nearly a quarter of humanity, the 1.4 billion people of Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the diasporic Chinese communities of the Americas, Europe, and East and Southeast Asia. This course is designed to be experimental in both subject and teaching methodology. In order to explore the political, economic and social processes of liberalization that have created this new era of the increased circulation of people, ideas, commodities and technologies across national boundaries, seminar participants must use materials and methods from many scholarly disciplines and traditions: political science, history, economics, anthropology, economics and media/cultural studies. And in order to study these increasingly mobile populations that often fall outside the boundaries of conventional area studies approaches, students must develop innovative comparative case study and survey methodologies.

Specific seminar topics include (1) globalization and the history of political and economic liberalization; (2) nationalism, nation-state formation and the politics of collective identification; (3) the transformation of traditional economic and cultural organizations under globalization; (4) consumerism and the emergence of a global market and industry for Chinese cultural media; and (5) energy, international security and population aging and mobility policies.

In order to do so we will be reading and discussing many theoretical and empirical works from many disciplines. As such, class participation will be an important part of your final grade (20 percent of total grade), including both everyday participation and two sessions in which you will lead discussion on a reading or set of readings.

A quiz on Chinese geography (5 percent) and a short essay assignment (15 percent) that critiques theories of globalization will help you lay the groundwork for guided, individual empirical work prepared in the final research paper. A commercial and public service advertisement analysis and presentation (20 percent) will help you explore the relationship between consumerism and collective-identity formation in China and the Chinese-speaking societies. In the final research paper (40 percent) you will critique and evaluate existing theories, as well as propose and evaluate some of your own, based on your empirical work. It can be written on any topic related to China and globalization, but must be one developed after consultation with the instructor.

Except for the in-class geography quiz, all written assignments must be double-spaced, carefully-proofread, meticulously-cited, legible (paginated and in equivalent of 12 point courier font size) hard copy and file copy (be sure and retain a hard copy for your own security). Hard copy for the essay can be turned in during the class. Hard copy for the final research paper can be slipped under the door of my office in Baker 224. Files for the essay and the final research paper should be sent via e-mail to swlewis@rice.edu and stevenwaynelewis@yahoo.com. The PowerPoint presentation file of the advertisement analysis exercise should be sent by noon of the day before the scheduled day of presentation, to swlewis@rice.edu and stevenwaynelewis@yahoo.com, and the presenter should also bring a copy on USB flash device or CD the day of the session, according to use on the Mac or PC in the seminar room (presenters should familiarize themselves with these machines before the day of presentation, and should not plan on accessing e-mail accounts in order to download their files on the day of presentation). Late papers will not be accepted. Any student with a disability requiring accommodations in this class is encouraged to contact me after class or during office hours. Additionally, students should contact the Disabled Student Services Office in the Ley Student Center.

• Lu, Hsun, (1921), The True Story of Ah Q, English ed., Boston: Cheng & Tsui Co.
• Lu, Xiaobo and Elizabeth Perry, ed., (1997) Danwei : The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
• Zhang, Xudong, (2001), Whither China? Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

• Barber, Benjamin, (1992), "Jihad Vs. McWorld," Atlantic Monthly, March; Available online at
  http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/foreign/barberf.htm
• Baumann, Zygmunt, (1998), Globalization: The Human Consequences, New York: Columbia University Press, selected materials.
• Peters, John Durham, (1999), "Exile, Nomadism and Diaspora," In Hamid Naficy, ed., Home, Exile, Homeland, New York: Routledge, pp. 17-41.
• Smith, Anthony D., (1990), "Towards a Global Culture?" Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 7, pp. 171-191.
• Tu, Wei-Ming, (1998), "Asian Values and the Asian Crisis: A Confucian Humanist Perspective," Transcript of talk given at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, October 17; available on the website of the Transnational China Project at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina/commentary/tu1098.html

Required Readings:

• Lu, Hsun, (1921), The True Story of Ah Q, English ed., Boston: Cheng & Tsui Co., all.
• Cheng, Li, (2004), "Political Localism Versus Institutional Restraints: Elite Recruitment in the Jiang Era," in Barry J. Naughton and Dali L. Yang, eds., Holding China Together: Diversity and National Integration in the Post-Deng Era, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 29-69.
• Bo, Zhiyue, (2004), "The Institutionalization of Elite Management in China," in Barry J. Naughton and Dali L. Yang, eds., Holding China Together: Diversity and National Integration in the Post-Deng Era," Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 70-100.
• Bo, Zhiyue, (2004), "The 16th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party: Formal Institutions and Factional Groups," Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 13, No. 39, (May), pp. 223-256.
• Naughton, Barry J., (2004), "The Western Development Program," in Barry J. Naughton and Dali L. Yang, eds., Holding China Together: Diversity and National Integration in the Post-Deng Era, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 253-296.
• Zhang, Xudong, (2001), Whither China? Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, selected chapters.
• Chu, Jou-Jou, (2000), "Nationalism and Self-Determination: The Identity Politics in Taiwan," Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 303-321; Available online to Rice Fondren Library users through JSTOR.
• Heng, Geraldine (1996), "State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality, & Race in Singapore", in Andrew Parker, et al, eds., Nationalisms and Sexualities, New York: Routledge.

Required Readings:

• Lu, Xiaobo and Elizabeth Perry, ed., (1997) Danwei : The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, selected chapters.
• Gold, Thomas and Doug Guthrie, David Wank, (2002), "An Introduction to the Study of Guanxi," in Thomas Gold, Doug Guthrie and David Wank, eds., Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture and the Changing Nature of Guanxi, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-20.
• Potter, Pittman B., (2002), "Guanxi and the PRC Legal System: From Contradiction to Complementarity," in Thomas Gold, Doug Guthrie and David Wank, eds., Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture and the Changing Nature of Guanxi, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 179-196.
• Ownby, David J., (2000), "Falungong as a Cultural Revitilization Movement: An Historian Looks at Contemporary China," Transcript of talk given at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, October 20; Available on the website of the Transnational China Project at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina/commentary/ownby1000.html

Required Readings:

• Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk, et al, ed., (2002), Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis, Surrey, England: Curzon Press, selected chapters.
• Baranovitch, Nimrod, (2003), "China Diversified: An Overview of Popular Music in the Reform Era, 1978-1997," in China's New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender and Politics, 1978-1997, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 10-53.
• Chiao, Peggy, et al, (2001), "Contemporary Chinese Cinema in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong: A Collective Force in the Global Market," transcript of an academic roundtable at the University of Texas, April 17; Available on the website of the Transnational China Project at
  http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina/commentary/chiaoroundtable0401.html
• Liao, Ping-Hui, (2003), "Image consumption and trans-local discursive practice: decoding advertisements in the Taipei MRT Mall," Postcolonial Studies, 6:159-74.
• Lewis, Steven.W., (2005), "Political and Economic Implications of New Public Spaces in China's Global Cities," in Fulong Wu, ed., Globalization and the Chinese City, London: Routledge-Curzon.
• Visser, Robin, (2004), "Spaces of Disappearance: Aesthetic Responses to Contemporary Beijing City Planning," Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 13, No. 39, (May), pp. 277-310.
• Zerubavel, Yael, (2004), "The Politics of Remembrance and the Consumption of Space: Masada in Israeli Memory," in Daniel J. Walkowitz and Lisa Maya Knauer, eds., Memory, and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 233-252.

Required Readings:

• Ogutcu, Mehmet, (1999), "China's Energy Future and Global Implications," in Werner Draguhn, Robert Ash, eds., China's Economic Security, Papers presented at a Private Policy Workshop organized by the EU-China Academic Network; Surrey, UK: Curzon, pp. 84-141.
• Ganguly, Sumit, (2004), "India and China: Border Issues, Domestic Integration, and International Security," in Francine R. Frankel and Harry Harding, eds., The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, pp. 103-133.
• Louie, Andrea, (2004), "Introduction: On Boundary Crossings," and "The Descendants of the Dragon Gather: The Youth Festival as Encounter between the Chinese and Chinese-American Other," in Chineseness Across Borders: Renegotiating Chinese Identities in China and the United States, Durham, NC: Duke University Press (pp. 1-38, 161-188).
• Fan, Cindy, and Youqin Huang, (1998), "Waves of Rural Brides: Female Marriage Migration in China, " Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88, no. 2, pp. 227-252.
  
  

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  Copyright 2007, Steven W. Lewis.
  This page last updated January 8, 2007 by Steven W. Lewis (swlewis@rice.edu)