Collective Memory, Multidisciplinarity, Public Sociology: China and Japan's Islands of Contention

This talk introduces the audience to a recent book, The China-Japan Border Dispute: Islands of Contention in Multidisciplinary Perspective (2015, edited by Liao, Hara, and Wiegand, in a series on Rethinking Asia and International Relations, Routledge). Eight scholars from history, international relations, law, political science, and sociology analyze the difficult dispute and make some recommended solutions. The focus of the talk is on a particular chapter in the book, an analysis of descriptions of the relevant history of the islands found at the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s and the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s websites and at the People’s Daily and the Asahi Shimbun websites. This research seeks to understand the differences in collective memory formation in these two countries. By emphasizing and resorting to different periods of history, China and Japan stage their respective territorial claims. The research shows that to produce a convincing territorial claim, both China and Japan form collective historical memory about the islands through enhancing rhetorical force, resonance, and range of reference in memory formation as shown at their websites even though they may intend to target different audiences for their respective collective memory projects.

 

Tim Liao is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He served as Head of the Department of Sociology (2004-2009), and was Editor of Sociological Methodology (2009-2015)