Tokioka Room (Moore 319)
November 30th, 1999
3:00 pm
On October 1, 2009, the People’s Republic of China will celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its founding. This roundtable brings together three scholars from different disciplines who will each discuss their perspectives on the state of affairs in the PRC at this juncture in history. Where has the PRC been? Where is it going? Dr. Christopher A. McNally will address these questions from the perspective of political economy; Dr. Seio Nakajima will discuss the role of film and media in the past 60 years, as well as contemporary filmic re-narrations of this history; and Dr. Hong Jiang will speak to issues of the environment, ethnic minorities, and cultural change.
Christopher A. McNally is a political economist studying the interests, institutions, and ideas underlying formations of capitalism, and a Fellow at the East-West Center. At present, his research focuses on contemporary varieties of capitalism, in particular the nature and logic of China’s capitalist transition. Dr. McNally has held fellowships conducting fieldwork and research at the Asia Research Centre in West Australia, the Institute of Asia Pacific Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington in Seattle. He has edited three volumes, including most recently an examination of China’s political economy: China’s Emergent Political Economy—Capitalism in the Dragon’s Lair (Routledge, 2008). He has also authored over a dozen academic articles in journals such as The China Quarterly, Asian Perspective, and Comparative Social Research, as well as numerous policy analyses and editorials.
Hong Jiang is an associate professor of Geography at UHM and affiliated researcher at the East-West Center. Her research focuses on cultural geography of the environment in China. She has done extensive research in Inner Mongolia, where she explored issues of land use and ecological changes from cultural and political perspectives. Currently her work involves discursive analyses of China’s environmental policies, perceptions of the environment, and attitudes toward nature. She received her Ph.D. from Clark University (MA), and has published extensively on China’s environment.
Seio Nakajima is assistant professor of Sociology at UHM. His main research interests lie in the organizational analysis of Chinese film industry as well as ethnography of Chinese film audiences and consumption. His research has appeared in From Underground to Independent, ed. Paul G. Pickowicz and Yingjin Zhang (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Reclaiming Chinese Society, ed. You-tien Hsing and Ching Kwan Lee (Routledge, 2009), and The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement, ed. Chris Berry, Lu Xinyu, and Lisa Rofel (forthcoming).
All listed events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Daniel Tschudi, 956-8891, e-mail: dtschudi@hawaii.edu