Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

This lecture is the fourth of a total of seven lectures in the BCCN Lecture Series, Winter Term 2021/22

With the growing urgency of China’s environmental crisis, a plethora of non-state actors has entered China’s green sphere that now comprises environmental organizations, experts, lawyers, green journalists, and local communities fighting for a healthy living environment. In Western societies, it is the linkages and diffusion processes between these groups that drive social movements. In China, environmental contention has largely been regarded as localized and parochial with local communities isolated from each other and external assistance. 

Drawing on field research and a comparative case study approach, this lecture investigates resistance against waste incinerators, a main cause of environmental conflict in China. The lecture shows that a network of contention has emerged that links up local communities across the country with supra-local actors in the issue field. These linkages and diffusion processes have fostered a national protest wave, enhance the success of individual campaigns and have strengthened a globally-embedded advocacy network for more sustainable waste policies. Nonetheless, the prospects for a full-grown social movement remain limited within the restrictive political framework. The lecture also tackles the difficulties of using an ethnographic approach to studying contention in China.

Maria Bondes is a Guest Lecturer at the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research centers on state-society relations, contentious politics and environmental governance in China with a focus on environmental contention.

This lecture is the third of a total of seven lectures in the BCCN Lecture Series, Winter Term 2021/22

From the five feminist activists being detained by authorities on the eve of International Women’s Day to numerous women speaking out about sexual assault against powerful men under the #MeToo banner, in the past few years, a series of high-profile events introduced a new generation of Chinese feminists to the global arena. How to make sense of this new wave of Chinese feminism? Conceptually, this talk maps out the overall landscape of Chinese women’s agitations and contextualizes it in the country’s long-standing class inequality and its deepening crisis of social reproduction. Methodologically, the talk reflects on the advantages and challenges of doing research that connects gender to political economy, two analytical approaches that are oftentimes insulated from each other.

Yige Dong is an assistant professor in sociology and global gender & sexuality studies at the State University of New York, Buffalo. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests include political economy, labor, gender, contentious politics, and comparative-historical methods. Dong’s research on Chinese labor politics and feminist movements has appeared in International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Critical Asian Studies, Modern China, among others. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the politics of care work during the rise and fall of industrial socialism in China.

This lecture is the second of a total of seven lectures in the BCCN Lecture Series, Winter Term 2021/22.

How should scholars study contentious politics in illiberal regimes, where risks are high for both the researcher and the subjects? This lecture will cover how ethnographic approaches can be used to study contention across various settings.  It contends that research questions starting with “the what and the how” are just as important as the “why.”  It will give students a theoretical and practical view of how to study contention across the different types of non-Western states.  

Diana Fu is associate professor of political science at The University of Toronto, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Wilson Center, and the National-Committee on US-China Relations.  Her  research examines civil society, popular contention, state control, and authoritarian citizenship in China. She is author of the award-winning book Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

This lecture is the first of a total of seven lectures in the BCCN Lecture Series, Winter Term 2021/22

The talk is concerned with the role of social media in Chinese protest events. It introduces the concept of “semi-virtual protests”, protests that take place simultaneously in the physical world and on the Internet. In conventional street protests, the main protest activities consist of mobilisation and physical activities such as striking, rioting and demonstrating. In semi-virtual protests, these activities are merely the first stage of an event that continues to unfold online. Protesters use images and narratives produced during the street protest to create social media posts, which they ask other users to share widely. Their aim is to attract the attention of higher-level governments who, the protesters hope, will intervene on their behalf. With physical protests in China being subjected to severe restrictions, the online component of a protest event has arguably become more important than the physical action that underlies it. After introducing the concept of semi-virtual protests, the talk will first feature a visual analysis of recent protest events recorded on Chinese social media. Using all posts from more than 100.000 social media accounts that have posted about at least one protest event, the talk will then identify the main actors in semi-virtual protests.

Christian Göbel is professor of modern China studies at the University of Vienna and the principal investigator of the ERC-funded project “The microfoundations of authoritarian responsiveness: E-Participation, Social Unrest and Public Policy in China”.

Dear Colleagues and Students,

You are warmly invited to attend an upcoming livestreamed event on 6 October (details in the attached).

Prof. Ownby, who runs the excellent “Reading the China Dream” website, will talk about “The Changing Intellectual Landscape in China.” Professor Xiang Biao and Ian Johnson will offer their comments on the talk. All three scholars are leading international experts on contemporary Chinese social, political and religious thought and this promises to be a very thought-provoking event.

For more details please click on the poster below: