Asian Borders Globalized: Towards the Institutionalization of an Emerging Field

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Within the European and North American contexts, border studies has over the last decade developed into a genuine interdisciplinary endeavor with sound autonomous institutional foundations, while remaining a field that encourages a catholic understanding of borders and how they function within the modern global political system. While empirical examples have been drawn from across the globe, however, theory continues to be developed within the western world and then applied beyond its borders. This panel is part of a wider project that aims to establish border studies in Asia as a recognized field within its own right, one that will prove to be both conceptually fertile and a dynamic ingredient in the development of a genuinely global border studies.

The four presenters on the panel shall present short introductions regarding the state of knowledge on borders in Asia within their respective areas of geographic expertise. Our distinguished discussant shall then explicitly bring each of these different examples of Asian borders into dialogue with Europe and North America, while the second hour of the session shall be devoted to a roundtable incorporating audience participation on the feasibility and desirability of an Asian-derived border studies field and how best it should be established. In particular, the manner in which many of the cross- and trans-border issues that will be discussed in the session pivot around China’s growing political and economic clout shall be drawn upon in relation to changes in border functions in both the European and American contexts.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Akihiro Iwashita, Hokkaido University

Chair

• Edward Kieran Boyle, Kyushu University

Individual Presentations

• Territorial Disputes and Domestic Politics in Northeast Asia - Alexander Bukh, Victoria University of Wellington

• Russia's Cross-Border Cooperation with Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and North Korea: China as a Third Force - Serghei Golunov, Kyushu University

• ASEAN Centrality and the Rise of China: A Study of the South China Sea Disputes, the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank - Christopher Len, National University of Singapore

• India’s Look East Policy, Myanmar and Southwest China: The Stilwell Road and Development of the Sub-Region - Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, Indian Institute of Technology

Discussant

• Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, University of Victoria