Regionalization in Development

Group discussion and presentation from reading materials

Thirty percent of the grade will be based on classroom participation including class attendance, presentation, and participation in group discussion. Each student is responsible for leading the discussion of one class. All students are expected to write a one-page reaction to one reading for each class.
 
The remaining seventy percent of the grade will come from a final research paper of 20 pages.

Week 1   
Introduction
 
Week 2  
The Making of the “Region”
Keyes, Charles (2011) “‘Development’ of the Mekong Region: Local Knowledge
Confronts Science” in Chayan Vattanaphuti and Amporn Jirattikorn (eds.)  Transcending State Boundaries: Contesting Development, Social Sufferring and Negotiation. Chiang Mai: Mekong Press.
Ngampramuan Soavapa (2008) “Subregional Cooperation in the Greater Mekong
Subregion” in Suchada Thaweesit et al (eds.) Transborder Issues in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. Chiang Mai: Mekong Sub-region Social Research Center, Pp.13-32.
Oehlers, Alfred (2006) “A Critique of ADB Policies towards the Greater Mekong Sub-
     region” Journal of Contemporary Asia 36(4): 464-478.
 
Week 3 
China and Regionalization of GMS
 
Davies, Matt (2010) “The Rise of China: Implications for the Mekong Countries” in
Suiwah Leung et al (eds.) Globalization and Development in the Mekong Economies.  Massachusetts Edward Elgar, Pp. 23-40.
Nyiri, Pal (2006) “The Yellow Man’s Burden : Chinese Migrants on a Civilizing Mission"
    The China Journal 56: 83-106.
Ong, Aihwa (2004) “The Chinese Axis: Zoning Technologies and Variegated Sovereignty”
    Journal of East Asian Studies 4 (1): 69-96.
 
Week 4  
Space of Capital and Politics of Environment in the Region
 
Jessop, Bob (2006) “Spatial Fixes, Temporal Fixes and Spatio-Temporal Fixes” in Noel
    Castree and Derek Gregory (eds.) David Harvey: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blacwell  
    Publishing, Pp. 142-166.
Hartsock, Nancy (2006) “Globalization and Primitive Accumulation: The Contribution of
David Harvey’s Dialectical Marxism” in Noel Castree and Derek Gregory (eds.) David   Harvey: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blacwell Publishing, Pp. 167-190.
Hirsch, Philip (2001) “Globalisation, Regionalisation and Local Voices: the Asian
Development Bank and Re-scaled Politics of Environment in the Mekong Region” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 22(3): 237-251.
 
Week 5
On Poverty, Development and Social Conundrum
 
Rigg, Jonathan (2003) Southeast Asia: The Landscape of Modernization and
    Development. London: Routledge.
-Chapter 1 “Chasing the Wind: Of Miracles and Mirages” (Pp. 3-42)
-Chapter 2 “Thinking Alternatively about Development in Southeast Asia” (Pp. 43-
85)
Glassman, Jim (2006) “Primitive Accumulation, Accumulation by Dispossession,
Accumulation by ‘Extra-economic’ Means’” Progress in Human Geography 30(5): 608-625.
Rigg, Jonathan and ChusakWittayapak (2009) “Spatial Integration and Human
Transformations in the Greater Mekong Subregion” in Yukon Huang and Alesandro Magnoli Bocchi (eds.) Reshaping Economic Geography in East Asia. Washington: The World Bank, Pp. 79-99.
 
Week 6 
Agrarian Transition in GMS
 
Cohen, Paul (2009) “The Post-Opium Scenario and Rubber in Northern Laos: Alternative
Western and Chinese Models of Development” International Journal of Drug Policy 20(5): 424-430. 
Rigg, Jonathan et al (2008) “Reconfiguring Rural Spaces and Remaking Rural Lives in
    Central Thailand” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 93(3): 355-381.
Kerkvlliet, Benedict J. Tria (2006) “Agricultural Land in Vietnam: Markets Tempered by 
     Family, Community and Socialist Practices” Journal of Agrarian Change, 6(3): 285-305.
 
Week 7
Road and Regional Development
 
Jerndal, Randi and Jonathan Rigg (2000) “From Buffer State to Crossroad State: Spaces of Human Activity and Integration in the Lao PDR” in Grant Evans (ed.) Laos: Culture and Society. Chiang Mai. Silkworm Books, Pp. 34-60.
Lyttleton, Chris et al (2004). “Material Development: Commerce and Trade”
    Watermelons, Bars and Trucks: Dangerous Intersections in Northwest Lao PDR.      
    Sydney: Macquarie University, Pp. 34-53.
Lyttleton, Chris et al (2004). “Health and HIV Vulnerability” Watermelons, Bars and
    Trucks: Dangerous Intersections in Northwest Lao PDR. Sydney: Macquarie University,   
    Pp. 67-89.
 
Week 8 
Gender Relations under Modernization
 
Mills, Mary Beth (1997) “Contesting the Margins of Modernity: Women, Migration and     
   Consumption in Thailand” American Ethnologist 24(1): 37–61.
Jacobs, Susie (2008) “Doi Moi and Its Discontents: Gender, Liberalization, and 
   Decollectivisation in Rural Vietnam” Journal of Workplace Rights 13(1): 17–39.
Kusakabe, Kyoko and Zin Mar Oo (2007) “Relational Places of Ethnic Burman Women
   Migrants in the Borderland Town of Tachilek, Myanmar” Singapore Journal of Tropical  
   Geography 28: 300–313.
 
Week 9
 
Health and Sexuality
Aye Moe Moe Lwin (2007) “Social Network Influences on the Sexual Health of Young
    People from Entertainment Venues in a New Settlement Township, Myanmar” 
    Sexuality in Southeast Asia and China: Emerging Issues. Nakhon Pathom: The
    Southeast Asian Consortium on Gender, Sexuality, and Health, Mahidol University, Pp.   
    33-68.
Littleton, Chris (2007) “Aids and Civil Belonging: Converging Currents in Thailand and 
   Laos” in Maj-Lis Follér and Håkan Thörn (eds.) The Politics of AIDS, Globalization,
   the State  and Civil Society, Palgrave Press, Pp. 255-273.
Lyttleton, Chris (2011) “Cultural Reproduction and ‘Minority’ Sexuality: Intimate
    Changes among Ethnic Akha in the Upper Mekong” Asian Studies Review 35(2): 169-188.
 
Week 10
Ethnicity, State and Market
Keyes, Charles F. (2008) “Ethnicity and the Nation-States of Thailand and Vietnam,” in
    Prasit Leeprecha et al (eds.) Challenging the Limits: Indigenous Peoples of the   
    Mekong Region.  Chiang Mai: Mekong Press, Pp. 13-53.
McElwee, Pamela (2008) “Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam: Are Globalization, Regionalism,
and Nationalism Hurting or Helping Them?” in Prasit Leeprecha et al (eds.) Challenging the Limits: Indigenous Peoples of the Mekong Region. Chiang Mai: Mekong Press, Pp. 55-76.
Li, Jing (2004) “Tourism Enterprise, the State and the Construction of Multiple Dai
   Cultures in Contemporary Xishuang Banna, China”, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism
   Research 9(4): 1-16.
 
Week 11
Ethno-religious Movements Across Border
Berlie, Jean (2000) “Cross-Border Links between Muslims in Yunnan and Northern Thailand: Identity and Economic Networks” in Grant Evans, Christopher Hutton, and Kuah Khun Eng (eds.) Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social & Cultural Change in the Border Regions. Singapore: Institute of Souteast Asian Studies, Pp. 222-235. 
Cohen, Paul (2000) “Lue across Borders: Pilgrimage and the Muang Sing Reliquary in Northern Laos,” in Grant Evans, Christopher Hutton, and Kuah Khun Eng (eds.) Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social & Cultural Change in the Border Regions. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Pp. 145-235.
Kang, Nanshan (2009) “Theravada Buddhism in Sipsong Panna: Past and Contemporary Trends” No. 12 RCSD Working Paper Series Resource Politics and Cultural Transformation in the Mekong Region.
 
Week 12   
Transnational Mobility
High, Holly (2010) “Dreaming beyond Borders: the Thai/Lao Borderlands, and the
Mobility of the Marginal” in Martin Gainsborough (ed.) On the Borders of State Power:  Frontiers in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. Oxon and New York: Routledge, Pp. 75-100. Barney, Keith (2008) “China and the Production of Forestland in Lao PDR: A Political  Ecology of Transnational Enclosure” in Joseph Nevins and Nancy Peluso (eds.) Taking     Southeast Asia to Market; Commodities, Nature and People in the Neoliberal Age.       Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Pp.91-107. Hsiu-Hua Shen (2008) “The Purchase of Transnational Intimacy: Women’s Bodies,
    Transnational Masculine Privileges in Chinese Economic Zones” Asian Studies Review
    32(1): 57-75.
 
Week 13 
Transborder  Trade
Lee Sang Kook (2008) “Blunt Tentacles: Localization of State Agencies in a Border Town
    in the Thai-Burmese Borderland,” in Suchada Thaweesit et al (eds.) Transborder Issues 
    in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. Chiang Mai: Mekong Sub-region Social Research Center, Pp. 375-391.
Kyoko Kusakabe et al. (2008) “Gendered Commodity Chain of Fish Border Trade from
Cambodia to Thailand,” in Suchada Thaweesit et al (eds.) Transborder Issues  in the  Greater Mekong Sub-region. Chiang Mai: Mekong Sub-region Social Research Center, Pp. 479-497.
Chang, Wen-Chin (2009) “Venturing into ‘Barbarous’ Region: Transborder Trade among
Migrant Yunnanese between Thailand and Burma, 1960s-1980s” Journal of Asian Studies 68(1): 543-572.
 
Week 14 
Transnational Media and Identity Production
Wasan Panyagaew (2008) “Moving Dai: the Stories of a Minority Band from the Upper
     Mekong,” in Prasit Leeprecha et al (eds.) Challenging the Limits: Indigenous 
     Peoples of the Mekong Region.  Chiang Mai: Mekong Press, Pp.307-329.
Amporn Jirattikorn (2008) “Pirated Transnational Broadcasting: The Consumption of Thai Soap 
    Operas among Shan Communities in Burma” Sojourn 23(1): 30-62.
Prasit Leeprecha (2008) “The Role of Media Technology in Reproducing Hmong Ethnic
Identity” in McCaskill et al (eds.) Living in a Globalized World: Ethnic Minorities in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Chiang Mai: Mekong Press, Pp.89-113.
 
Week 15    
Civil Society and Social Movement
Hen, Russell Hian-Khng (2004) “Civil Society Effectiveness and the Vietnamese State-
     Despite or Because of the Lack of Autonomy” in Lee Hock Guan (ed.) Civil Society in
     Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Pp. 144-166. 
Pasuk Pongpaichit (2000) “Civilizing the State: Civil Society and Politics in Thailand”
     Watershed 5(2): 1-23.
McCarthy, Stephen (2008). “Overturning the Alms Bowl: the Price of Survival and the  
Consequences for Political Legitimacy in Burma” Australian Journal of International Affairs 62(3): 298-314.