Globalization, education, and the politics of identity in the Asia-Pacific

Critical Asian Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 179-208

  Lincicome, Mark ^a  

^a Department of Biology   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GLOBALIZATION; IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION;

ASIA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; OCEANIC REGIONS; PACIFIC OCEAN; WORLD;

EID: 20544451771     PISSN: 14672715     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14672710500106242     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. The author wishes to thank the Japan Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the College of the Holy Cross (USA), and the Asia Frontier Research Project at Rikkyo University (Japan) for providing grant support to conduct research in Asia for this essay. He also wishes to acknowledge the incisive comments provided by three anonymous readers of a previous draft. Earlier versions of this essay were presented at Rikkyo University, for the Symposium on Globalism and Education for Sustainable Development in the Asia-Pacific, 1 August 2003, and at Monash University Centre in Prato (Italy), for the Second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, 23 July 2004.
2. Richard Higgott, "The Political Economy of Globalisation in East Asia: The Salience of 'Region Building,'" in Globalisation and the Asia-Pacific: Contested Territories, ed. Kris Olds, Peter Dicken, Philip F. Kelly, Lily Kong, and Henry Wai-chung Yeung (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 92.
3. See Arif Dirlik, "Introducing the Pacific," in What Is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea, ed. Arif Dirlik (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 5.
4. This term, borrowed from Higgott, is discussed later in this essay.
5. Samuel S. Kim, "East Asia and Globalization: Challenges and Responses," in East Asia and Globalization, ed. Samuel S. Kim (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 10.
6. Prasenjit Duara, "The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism," in Nations under Siege: Globalization and Nationalism in Asia, ed. Roy Starrs (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 71-72.
7. I b i d.
8. Ibid., 75-76.
9. This was the slogan of the AAA Movement: a propaganda campaign that Japan launched in the Dutch East Indies in April 1942, shortly after its military forces secured control of the archipelago.
10. Tomoko Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919-45 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 231-34.
11. Higgott, "The Political Economy of Globalisation," 93.
12. Yumei Zhang, Pacific Asia: The Politics of Development (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 139-40. Memories of the war and the Japanese occupation forces in East and Southeast Asia continue to evolve in response to domestic politics: they vary not only between countries, but also between ethnic groups within a single society.
13. See Wang Gungwu, "Memories of War: World War II in Asia," in War and Memory in Malaysia and Singapore, ed. P. Lim Pui Huen and Diana Wong (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000);
14. and Ricardo T. Jose, "War and Violence, History and Memory," in "We Asians": Between Past and Future, ed. Kwok Kian-Woon, Indira Arumugam, Karen Chia, and Lee Chee Keng (Singapore: National Heritage Society, 2000).
15. Jusuf Wanandi, "ASEAN's Past and the Challenges Ahead: Aspects of Politics and Security," in Reinventing ASEAN, ed. Simon S. C. Tay, Jesus P. Estanisla, and Hadi Soesastro (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2001), 25.
16. Yamakage Susumu, "A Changing ASEAN and the Implications for Japan," in Gaiko Forum 4, no. 1 (spring 2004): 37.
17. Zhang, Pacific Asia, 138-43. This began in 1992 when the six original member states set up the Asean Free Trade Area (AFTA), and gained further momentum following the 1997 Asian financial crisis through the so-called "Asean+3± formula, which brought the Asean member states (now numbering ten) together with China, Japan, and South Korea.
18. See also Higgott, "The Political Economy of Globalisation," 104.
19. Robert W. Cox, 'A Perspective on Globalization," in Globalization: Critical Reflections, ed. James H. Mittelman (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1996), 21-24.
20. Zhang, Pacific Asia, 144.
21. Alexander Woodside, "The Asia-Pacific Idea as a Mobilization Myth," in Dirlik, What Is in a Rim? 20.
22. The Asean way, among other things, "(1) emphasizes the norm of non-interference in other states' affairs; (2) prefers consensus and non-binding plans to treaties and legalistic rules; and (3) relies on national institutions and actions, rather than creating a strong central bureaucracy." See Simon S.C. Tay and Jesus Estanislao, "The Relevance of ASEAN: Crisis and Change," in Tay et al., eds., Reinventing ASEAN, 9.
23. Ibid., 20.
24. Anders Unlin, "Globalization, Democratization and Civil Society in Southeast Asia: Observations from Malaysia and Thailand," in Globalization and Democratization in Asia: The Construction of Identity, ed. Caterina Kinnvall and Kristina Jonsson (New York: Routledge, 2002), 162.
25. Shamsul A.B., "Globalization and Democratic Developments in Southeast Asia," in ibid., 198-99.
26. Unlin, "Globalization," 149.
27. Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin, "New Perspectives on Transnational Activism," in Transnational Activism in Asia, ed. Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin (New York: Routledge, 2004), 7-8.
28. Jean Grugel, "State Power and Transnational Activism," in ibid., 33-39.
29. Kim, "East Asia and Globalization," 25.
30. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983, 1991).
31. See also: E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
32. Anthony Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991).
33. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1983), 57.
34. Ibid., 34.
35. Ibid., 119.
36. Ka-ho Mok and Anthony Welch, "Globalization, Structural Adjustment and Education Reform," in Globalization and Educational Restructuring in the Asia Pacific Region, ed. Ka-ho Mok and Anthony Welch (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 7-8.
37. Zhang, Pacific Asia, 146-47;
38. C.J.W.-L. Wee, "From Universal to Local Culture: The State, Ethnic Identity, and Capitalism in Singapore," in Local Cultures and the "New Asia": The State, Culture, and Capitalism in Southeast Asia, ed. C.J.W.-L. Wee (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002), 138-42;
39. Chua Beng Huat, "Living with Capitalism in Asia, Uncomfortably," in "We Asians": Between Past and Future, 141-45;
40. David Birch, Tony Schirato, and Sanjay Srivastave, Asia: Cultural Politics in the Global Age (Crows Nest, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 2001), 14-24.
41. Birch, Schirato, and Srivastava believe there were racist overtones in this abrupt denunciation of Asian values, which they attribute to Western critics following the 1997 Asian financial crisis. See Birch, Schirato, and Srivast, Asia: Cultural Politics in the Global Age, viii.
42. Chua, "Living with Capitalism," 146.
43. Ivan P. Hall, Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998).
44. Robert L. Cutts, An Empire of Schools: Japan's Universities and the Molding of a National Power Elite (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
45. Brian J. McVeigh, Japanese Higher Education as Myth (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2002), 47.
46. Mark Lincicome, "Nationalism, Internationalization, and the Dilemma of Educational Reform in Japan," Comparative Education Review 37, no. 2 (May 1993): 123-27.
47. Lynne Parmenter, "Internationalization in Japanese Education: Current Issues and Future Prospects," in Globalization and Education: Integration and Contestation across Cultures, ed. Nelly P. Stromquist and Karen Monkman (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 251.
48. Robert W. Aspinall, Teachers' Unions and the Politics of Education in Japan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 124-27.
49. See the following examples: "Kokusai rikai kyöiku" mondai kaiketsu shirizu 4: Gakushū o meguru mondai ni dō kotaeru ka, ed. Maki Masami, Itō Kazuhiko, and Takeda Shinichi (Tokyo: Tōyōkan Shuppansha, 1997;
50. Sōgōteki na gakushu" no jissen: Kokusai rikai kyōiku no kangaekata, susumekata, ed. Saitō Gunbei (Tokyo: Kyōiku Kaihatsu Kenkyūjo, 1997);
51. Tada Takashi, Gakkō ni okeru kokusai rikai kyōiku: Gurōbaru maindo o sodateru (Tokyo: Tōyōkan Shuppansha, 1997);
52. Chiiki ni nezashita kokusai rikai kyoiku jissen jirei shū, ed. Zenkoku kaigai shijō kyoiku, kokusai rikai kyōiku kenkyū kyōgikai (Tokyo: Daiichi Hōki Shuppan Kabushiki Gaisha, 1993);
53. Ningen o kangaeru atarashii shakaika no jugyō 5: "Kokusaika, jōhōka shakai de no ikikata" o manabu, ed. Ōyamada Jo, Watabe Yaeko, Kobayashi Kenji, and Komatsuzawa Masato (Tokyo: Tōyōkan Shuppansha, 1994);
54. Shin gakkō kyōiku zenshū 6: Kokusaika to gakko kyoiku, ed. Okuda Shinjō and Nagaoka Jun (Tokyo: Gyōsei, 1995).
55. Lincicome, "Nationalism," 127.
56. Japanese Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture: New Directions in School Education: Fostering Strength for Life (Ministry of Education, 1994), 20.
57. Ibid., 40.
58. URL: http://www.janic.org/en/en-index.html.
59. Gavan McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), 177.
60. Dirlik, "Introducing the Pacific," 7-8.
61. Paul Keating, Engagement: Australia Faces the Asia-Pacific (Sydney: Macmillan, 2000), 19.
62. David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850-1939 (Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1999), 4.
63. Brian Galligan, Winsome Roberts, and Gabriella Trifiletti, Australians and Globalisation: The Experience of Two Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 2.
64. URL: http://whitlam.alp.org.au/bio.html.
65. Peter Chalk, Australian Foreign and Defense Policy in the Wake of the 1999/2000 East Timor Intervention (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 2001), 10-15;
66. David Martin Jones, "Regional Illusion and Its Aftermath," in Policy (New South Wales: Centre for Independent Studies, spring 2003).
67. At least one critic accuses Keating and the Labor Party of pursuing precisely the opposite goal. Hage charges that their pro-Asia discourse and their ideology of multiculturalism "should be seen primarily as a White nationalist strategy directed towards Asia," the aim of which is to allow the Australian nation to "assume a non-Eurocentric posture and identity, and to imagine itself as an independent international subject in Asia rather than in Europe." See Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Annandale, N.S.W.: Pluto Press, 1998), 142, 145.
68. Keating, Engagement, 21.
69. "Top Ten Languages - Year 12 - 1991-2000 (Candidates for Year 12 Tertiary Entrance Subjects)," compiled by Outcomes and National Reporting Section, Budget and Coordination Branch, Schools Division. In 2000, Japanese was the most commonly taught foreign language, Chinese was third, and Indonesian fifth.
70. Interview with Kathe Kirby, deputy director and director of education, Asialink, 29 April 2002. Two of the organization's websites can be found at: (1) www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au; and (2) www.curriculum.edu.au/ accessasia.
71. Asia Education Foundation, Studies of Asia: A Statement for Australian Schools, 2d ed. (Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation, 2000), 6.
72. It is important to remember that each of these race-based groups was also internally divided along ethnic and cultural lines.
73. Molly N.N. Lee, Educational Change in Malaysia, Monograph Series No. 3 (Penang, Malaysia: School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2002), 5-6.
74. Ibid., 8.
75. Interview with Molly N.N. Lee, 25 February 2002.
76. Interview with five officials of the Curriculum Development Committee, Malaysian Ministry of Education, 27 February 2002.
77. "Malaysia Country Report: Moral Education Program - The Malaysian Experience," paper presented by officials of the Malaysian Ministry of Education at the Regional Seminar on Values Education in Asean, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), 11-14 July 1994, 20-21.
78. Meredith L. Weiss, "Transnational Activism by Malaysians," in Piper and Uhlin, Transnational Activism in Asia, 130-131, 142.
79. Meredith L. Weiss, "Contesting Race and Nation: Malay Dominance and Multi-racial Coalitions in Malaysia," in Starrs, Nations under Siege, 225-27.
80. T. Rajamoorthy, "Globalization and Citizenship in Malaysia," in Globalization and Citizenship in the Asia-Pacific, ed. Alastair Davidson and Kathleen Weekley (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 91-94. The author cites three reasons for this skepticism: (1) the ideal of globalization presupposes a genuine cosmopolitanism, which is still lacking in this case; (2) globalization has displayed a worldwide tendency to accentuate existing fault lines within society; (3) it is doubtful that high economic growth rates supporting the middle class can be sustained, which might precipitate a political reaction to current liberalization policies.
81. Kwok Kian-Woon, "Singapore 2000: A Review," in Singapore 2001 (Singapore: Ministry of Information and the Arts, 2001), 13.
82. Wang Su Chen, "Which English for Our Schools? Some Thoughts," in Challenges Facing the Singapore Education System Today, ed. Jason Tan, S. Gopinathan, and Ho Wah Kam (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2001), 257.
83. Saravanan Gopinathan, "Globalization, the State and Education in Singapore," in ibid, 11-12.
84. Ibid., 7.
85. During the 1980s and 1990s, the government attempted to address growing disparities in educational attainment between the majority Chinese and the Malay and Indian minorities by providing support to various ethnically based groups. Some critics have charged, however, that these affirmative action policies are incompatible with the government's espoused multiracial ideals. See Jason Tan, "Reflections on Singapore's Education Policies in an Age of Globalization," in Mok and Welch, Globalization and Educational Restructuring in the Asia Pacific Region, 42-44.
86. Wang, "Which English for Our Schools?" 257.
87. Wee, "From Universal to Local Culture," 148.
88. Singapore 2001, 227.
89. Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education, Singapore, Civics and Moral Education, Pupil's Book 2B Normal (Singapore: SNP Education, 2000), 47.
90. Arif Dirlik, "Globalism and the Politics of Place," in Olds et al., Globalisation and the Asia-Pacific: Contested Territories.
91. Ibid., 52;
92. Chua, "Living with Capitalism," 151.
93. Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 2002), 13-44.
94. Zhang, Pacific Asia, 147;
95. Chua, "Living with Capitalism," 145-48.