Conflict in China

Indiana University presents a colloquium on China.

(Light refreshments will be served. You are also welcome to bring your own lunch.)

In recent years the IU Bloomington campus has become home to a growing group of scholars pursuing research on various dimensions of conflict and state strategies for managing conflict in China. What, if any, are the synergistic possibilities of this unique coalescence? Is it a harbinger of a new Indiana "school" of Chinese conflict studies? Does interdisciplinarity (including political science, history, sociology, and law), methodological diversity (including archival, ethnographic, interview, and survey research techniques), topical diversity (including urban labor, rural disputes, ethnic and minority relations, and criminal justice), and temporal diversity (including mid-Qing, Republican, Mao-era, and contemporary China) facilitate or stymie such institutional "branding"? Before considering the possibilities posed by this unique confluence of scholarship, each panelist will introduce her or his conflict-related research.

Gardner Bovingdon is an assistant professor in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies.  He has done fieldwork in Xinjiang and Taiwan and writes on nationalism, historiography, and the politics of multi-national states. He is currently completing a book on politics in modern Xinjiang.

Virginia Harper Ho is a visiting assistant professor in the  IU Maurer School of Law.  Her prior work has examined legal channels for mediating labor conflict in China.  Her current project explores the effect of recent regulatory changes in Chinese labor law on corporate practice and labor conflict in Guangdong province.

Ho-fung Hung is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. His research seeks to break down the pre-modern/modern divide and exposits the long-term pattern of Chinese development. One of his projects examines how Confucianist state-making shapes the repertories and ideologies of popular protest from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Another project addresses the impact of the contemporary resurgence of China on global capitalism.

Ethan Michelson is an associate professor in the Departments of Sociology and East Asian Languages and Cultures. His surveys of conflict and legal utilization in Beijing and rural China (in 2001 and 2002 respectively) were the first of their kind to be carried out in China. He is planning to follow up his original 2002 survey of rural conflict in six provinces with a new survey designed to assess the impact of the ongoing "harmonious society" policies.

For more information about any upcoming event, please contact:

East Asian Studies Center
Indiana University
Memorial Hall West 207
1021 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-7005
(812) 855-3765
easc@indiana.edu