Bordering China: Modernity and Sustainability

Institute of East Asia Studies at UC Berkeley hosts a conference talking about China's sustainability.

Conference: Bordering China: Modernity and Sustainability, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California Berkeley, August 4-5, 2012.

For much of the 20th century China defined its quest for modernity in terms of the industrialization and urbanization of its economy and landscape.

This conference - held in conjunction with the Berkeley Summer Research Institute - addresses issues of sustainability: social equity, the power politics of resource allocations, the humanistic constructions of people and nature, and the contestations over ecological imperialism, both historic and present day.

The conference, which features the work of recent PhDs and doctoral candidates, is chaired by You-tien Hsing, Ts'ui-jung Liu, Robert Weller, and Wen-hsin Yeh. Peter C. Perdue and Ruth Rogaski will provide keynote addresses.  Scholars from Academia Sinica will present a panel on emerging research at that institution as well.

Keynote Address, introduced by Robert Weller:
4:00-6:00 pm: Peter C. Perdue

Saturday, August 4:
Bordering China: Modernity and Sustainability Conference, Day 2
9:00 am: Welcome Remarks

Panel 1: Production, Planning, and the Economics of China’s Sustainability, Robert Weller, Chair
9:15-11:30 am:
• Po‐yi Hung “Modernity in Ambiguity: Tea Production and the Transformation of Frontier Landscape in Southwest China”
• Alainna Thomas “Planning Practices in China: Professional Networks, Organizations and Savvy”
• Andrew Hao “The Temporalities of Corporate Sustainability Initiatives”

Panel 2: Borderlands and the Environment in the Qing Dynasty, You-tien Hsing, Chair
2:00-4:15 pm:
• Peter Lavelle “Frontiers and Resources in Nineteenth?Century Chinese Statecraft”
• Benjamin Levey “Secret Agent Burud: Native Informants and Imperial Knowledge in the Sino-Russian Borderlands, 1760-1775”
• Jonathan Schlesinger “The Qing Invention of Nature”

Keynote Address 2, introduced by Wen-hsin Yeh:
4:30-6:30 pm: Ruth Rogaski