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Syllabus contents:
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JSIS A 405/ANTH 449,
Spring 2020 |
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Syllabus
Instructor: Clark Sorensen
Class Meeting Times and
Location:
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This course is designed to give introduce students to social changes that have taken place in the major East Asian countries since 1990s from a comparative perspective, and to provide students with an opportunity to think about the causes and consequences of social change in a set of formerly undeveloped countries. East Asia as defined in this course includes Japan, Korea (north and south), China (including Hong Kong and Macao, but for simplicity’s sake I am mostly excluding minority areas in China such as Tibet, Inner Mongolia, or Xinjiang), and Taiwan. Due to lack of relevant recent publications I will not be treating Vietnnam (whose culture has been heavily influenced by China) the countries of Southeast Asia (Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, etc.) are excluded. Because the countries treated in this course share ecological, cultural, economic, and historical similarities they form a coherent group. Recent changes in China, Vietnam, and (even) North Korea consequent to the end of the Cold War, however, invite us to reevaluate the significance of much of what has happened in these countries over the past fifty years. For this reason, as well as the large amount of information available on the countries treated in this course, it will be impossible to cover all subjects or countries comprehensively. Rather, we will have to make a sampling of countries and issues. This year I have chosen ethnographies that explicitly link China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, rather than those treating individual countries. We will focus on how globalization has changed East Asian notions of nature and sustainability, how social movements among labor and environmentalists arise, how intra-national and transnational migration for purposes of marriage is changing families and society in Korea, Japan, We will begin with Taiwan and China, proceed through Taiwan and Korea, consider again China and Korea, move on to Japan, and end with Hong Kong. Students with interests in Vietnam or North Korea are welcome to write papers relevant to the themes of the course dealing with these countries.
Grading Policy There will be one take-home essay midterm and a take-home final each worth 50 points (for a total of 100 points). The midterm should be uploaded to Canvas by midnight on Wednesday, April 29th (when there will be no class). The final will be administered the same way, and due on Canvas by 4:30 on Wednesday, June 10th. I will not accept late midterms and finals without a doctors' or other appropriate excuse, so plan accordingly (Canvas will be opened a week before the due date to allow student flexibility.) The difference between take-home exams (above) and papers (below) is that I will give you the questions in the exam, and will limited the number of words you write. For papers you will choose your own topic and I will be less strict about length. A four to seven page paper will be due on Monday June 1st uploaded on Canvas by 11:59pm. Unlike the midterm and final I will accept late papers docking your grade by a tenth for every day late for the first three days, after which docking stops. The paper will be equal in value to the midterm and/or final. (The Anthropology Writig Center aids students at any stage in the writing or research process from brainstorming paper ideas to fine tuning of writing. It is located in Denny 423. More information, including how to schedule an appointment can be found at http://staff.washington.edu/anthwrc. JSIS students have access to the Political Science/Law Societies and Justice, JSIS Writing Center. Check www.depts.washington.edu/pswrite. ) In addition, a 1-2 page summary of the week’s readings will be due on Fridays before class. These should be uploaded on Canvas by class time each Friday. You may turn summaries in early if you wish, but I will not accept late summaries from students who were not in class since the point of the summaries is to prepare you to participate in class discussion. You will be required to turn in 6 of 10 possible summaries (i.e. you can skip four). Summaries will be due April 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th, May 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th, and June 5th. Summaries will be evaluated complete/incomplete. Students wishing extra credit may turn in more than six summaries if they wish. Six completes will be neutral so far as your grade is concerned, but fewer than six checks will lower your grade up to three tenths, while extra completes can raise your grade up to three tenths.
Required Readings Books for the course are available at the University Bookstore. Some of the books are available electronically through UW libraries. Some short readings will be available on the course web site under "Readings". Required are:
Three of the books I am using this year are ethnographies based on fieldwork done in the 1990s and the early 2000s (Freeman Faier, Constable). Weller uses long-term fieldwork exposure to reflect on changing government environmental policy in Taiwan and the PRC. Liu combines library research with surveys and interviews to explore the politics of the labor and environmental movements in Taiwan and Korea. There will be a few shorter readings available in the UW library system or on the course website. The course, while mostly anthropological is also broadly social scientific and historical, so you will have to rely primarily on lectuyres for the historical and cultural contextualization that is not in the readings. The course website is: http://faculty.washington.edu/sangok/JSISA405 (Notice that the caps on JSISA are mandatory). You can access this site directly when you are on campus. I will post my PowerPoint lectures and handouts on the course website. The second hour on Friday reserved for discussion, attendance at which is essential for the course. I am still owrking out how this may be done through Zoom. Discussion will be based on the study questios given in the syllabus. It will be assumed that students will have read the week’s assignments by Thursday riday of that week, and short written summaries of the readings (1-2 pages) will be required of students uploaded to Catalyst by class time each Thursday (you have ten opportunities to post these, but you need only complete six). You may find that readings are occasionally repeated. Usually it is because I want you to reread a short section with new questions in mind, so the re-readings are not a mistake.
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Contact the instructor at: sangok@u.washington.edu
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