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

In this event, historical sociologist Yueran Zhang will be joined in conversation by Joel Andreas and Rebecca Karl to discuss his dissertation and ongoing book project *, tentatively titled "Whither Socialism? Workers' Democracy and the Class Politics of China's Post-Mao Transition to Capitalism". Zhang's manuscript provides a distinct class-based explanation of China's transition from socialism to capitalism. Its overarching argument is that the way in which urban industrial workers – ideologically and rhetorically celebrated as the "leading class" of Chinese socialism – interacted with the Party-state in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s was a crucial causal ingredient in the making of China's transition to capitalism. Tracing a series of political contestations centered on the issue of workplace democracy, Zhang argues that the patterns and modes of interaction between workers and the Party-state during China's "long 1980s" shaped and derailed the Party leaders' efforts to pursue incipient marketization within the parameters of socialism, thereby making a full-blown transition to capitalism appear appealing to the ruling elite as the 1980s came to an end.

Yueran Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and the College at the University of Chicago. His research interests include political economy, class analysis, theories of democracy and the state, and comparative studies of socialism(s), capitalism(s) and transitions in between. His previous research has been published in journals such as Theory and Society, Social Forces and New Labor Forum, as well as in the edited volume Proletarian China.

Discussants:

Joel Andreas (Johns Hopkins University)

Rebecca Karl (New York University)

Moderation:

Daniel Fuchs (Humboldt University of Berlin)

Ralf Ruckus

Please register here: https://hu-berlin.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5cqce-qpjoiGdWWhiK-S1GMoYok0ySojxqg#/registration

* Those who are interested in reading Zhang's work in its dissertation
form can access it here.

State capacity is easily one of the most protean concepts in Chinese environmental governance, embodying a seemingly unequivocal virtue while harboring diverse interpretations. In this presentation, Yifei Li first proposes a typology of environmental state capacity and then draws from his empirical observations of nearly two dozen environmental or climate capacity-building programs from 2012 to 2023 in China. Finally, the presentation concludes with a discussion of the mismatch between the supply of capacity-building offerings and the demand for specific capacities from low-level officials. The supply-demand mismatch has significant implications for environmental governance in China.

Yifei Li is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU Shanghai and Global Network Assistant Professor at NYU. His research concerns various groups of people under China’s brand of state-led environmentalism. He has received research support from the United States National Science Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, Rachel Carson Center, and many other extramural sources. He is the lead author (with Judith Shapiro) of China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet (Polity, 2020). His recent work appears in Current Sociology, Qualitative Sociology, Sociology of Development, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Environmental Sociology, Journal of Environmental Management, and other scholarly outlets. His work has been featured on NPR, in The Economist, Foreign Affairs, Le Monde, and other media.

The event will take place at: Humboldt University Berlin, Institute for Asian and African Studies, room 315, Invalidenstraße 118, Berlin

Online attendance is possible via Zoom.

Registration: https://hu-berlin.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/u5IrdOqhrz4rG9f79OJZtj-ZkZcrSYBSMbCu

What is enabled by reading problems in political economy of early-20th century China through Roberto Schwarz' concept of "misplacement" or "misplaced ideas"? My ongoing work on Wang Yanan, whose writings in the 1930s-1950s were central to a certain (non-Communist) Marxist specification of political economics in China, will engage this question as a theoretical-historical problematic. Wang's imminent critique of "capitalism in China/ Chinese capitalism" proceeded by problematizing the rampant reifications of the categories of capitalism in academic economics and social scientific work in China in the 1930s and 1940s. Reading Wang's critique through and with Schwarz can benefit from theoretical engagements with the latter's concerns over colonized knowledges, production of incommensurate temporalities through narrativity, and the ideological embodiments of capital in the commodity form of labor. As much an historical-theoretical excavation, this essay will also function as a critique of the present.

Rebecca E. Karl teaches history at New York University-NY. Her most recent book is China's Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History (Verso 2020) and she is the author of a number of other books and articles about China's modern and contemporary history. She is a founding co-editor of the positionspolitics.org website, and a member of the Critical China Scholars collective.

The event will take place at: Humboldt University Berlin, Institute for Asian and African Studies, room 315, Invalidenstraße 118, Berlin.

Online attendance is possible via Zoom.

Registration:
hu-berlin.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/u5YscuGtqj0jH9E8MW5A3Twwm0Bd-0TIv7rE

International colloquium for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers

Current Research on Hokkien and Hakka: Close-up views from outside

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Institute of Asian and African Studies (IAAW)

28–29 June, 2024

Description: Hokkien and Hakka language communities are undergoing a strong shift towards Mandarin and other dominant languages. Thus, while they are reported to count some 45 million speakers each, the true number of speakers is presumably (much) lower. Outside Asia, research on these and other regional Sinitic languages is extremely scarce. Consequently, researchers often lack opportunities for academic exchange on ‘their’ language or language community. The goal of this workshop is to bring together junior and early-career researchers working on Hakka or Hokkien and to offer them an opportunity to present their research and engage in discussion with peers and specialists. It thus aims to contribute to the formation of a specialist network within Chinese linguistics and beyond and to stimulate future exchange and cooperation.

Conveners: Juliette Huber and Henning Klöter

Venue: Section of East Asian Studies, Johannisstraße 10, 10117 Berlin, Room 201

To register for the colloquium, please contact Juliette Huber at juliette.huberAThu-berlin.de. Participation through Zoom is possible if you are unable to join the onsite event.

Program

Invited discussants: Prof. Dr. Rint Sybesma (Leiden University, Dr. Jeroen Wiedenhof Leiden University)

Friday, June 28

9:00 | Welcome and introduction 

9:30 | John Oliver Monghit (HU Berlin) 

Philippine Hokkien through Time: A Comparative Exploration of Phonological Reconstructions 

10:45 | Sievert von Stülpnagel (HU Berlin) 

The Neutral Tone in Taiwanese Southern Min 

11:45 | Joren Pronk (Leiden University) 

The Taiwanese Sound System Under Day-to-Day Contact 

14:15 | Round table: Teaching Hokkien: Experiences, potentials, and perspectives 

Liu Chan Yueh (INALCO Paris), Wu Kuan-Wei (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

Saturday, June 29

9:30 | Yves Menheere (Leiden University) 

Taoism and Taiwanese: Some Experiences from the Field 

10:45 | Thomas Fliß (Universität Trier) 

Both Classical and Modern: Rhyming in Taiwanese Southern Min 

11:45 | Henning Klöter & Leif Bartsch (HU Berlin & FU Berlin) 

Early Witnesses of Hakka and Hokkien: Some Recent Discoveries 

14:15 | Zou Chunyan (HU Berlin) 

Language Shift and Maintenance of Hakka: An Ethnographic Study Conducted in a Hakka Town in West Guangdong 

15:15 | Matthijs Verzijden (Leiden University) 

Hakka san1go1 in Northern Taiwan 

16:15 | Juliette Huber (HU Berlin)

Hakka in East and West Timor: An Overview of Differences and their Origins