Events

The 'Regional Security Issues Forum' of the Australian Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) was held in Melbourne last Thursday/Friday (4-5 September), and included a breakfast lecture from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Stephen Smith MP [photo, right]. The Co-Chairs of the Australian Committee are Professor Des Ball (SDSC) and Professor Tony Milner [photo, left] of the Faculty of Asian Studies. The Forum was held in the Sidney Myer Asia Centre at the University of Melbourne, and was hosted by Asialink. It is the first time CSCAP has held a meeting outside Canberra: and the Forum brought together ANU academics and Commonwealth Government specialists (from DFAT, the Department of Defence and the Australian Federal Police) with leading representatives of the Victorian business and academic community. All of the Melbourne-based universities were represented at the Forum. The Commonwealth officials included Ambassador Bill Paterson, whose appointment as the new Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism was announced at the meeting by the Minister.



The Minister's speech stressed ASEAN and especially Indonesia, and pointed out that the Prime Minister's Asia Pacific Community initiative had "started a conversation with our friends and neighbours". Mr. Smith said that "shaping our evolving regional architecture in ways that suit the diverse nation states of our region is a challenging task, but it's a task which the Government believes Australia must be engaged in". He suggested that the Prime Minister's proposal might lead to a "new piece of architecture" or change might "evolve and emerge from and through the existing architecture". One of the sessions of the Forum itself examined regional architectures - noting the degree of fluidity and contest, and seeking the underlying reasons for the architectural "messiness". Other panels examined the security aspects of foreign (in particular, Chinese) ownership in our resources sector, the prospects for controlling nuclear proliferation (including discussion of the government's new initiative), the crisis in Pakistan (and its implications for the war in Afghanistan) and current progress in the struggle against terrorism. A special session was devoted to Indonesia - examining current ethnic, religious and regionalist issues from a security viewpoint. The results of a new survey of Indonesian and Australian opinion - carried out by Roy Morgan Research specifically for the CSCAP Forum - were also presented.

The poll suggests wide divergence in security perceptions. Seventy-nine percent of Indonesians questioned saw the United States as the country most likely to create difficulty for their country (compared with 23% of Australians). The country causing Australians most anxiety was Indonesia (53%) - although only 29% of Indonesians considered Australia in this way. The security development most Indonesians feared was "the break-up of their country" (66%); and only 6% of Australians expressed that fear. What Australians most feared was climate change (58%). The area in which there is convergence is terrorism: 51% Indonesian, 50% Australians.

The survey suggested a significant difference in views between younger (under 35) and older Australians: younger Australians are much less likely to be anxious about Indonesia than older ones, and much more likely to be concerned about the United States.

Survey results: http://occident.anu.edu.au/AUS_CSCAP.ppt (PowerPoint format)

Students from ANU's new Pacific Studies program were inspired to attend the 10th Festival of Pacific Arts in Pago Pago, American Samoa. The convergence at the Festival of 22 Pacific nations and territories provided a spectacular array of cultural expression, allowing students to learn about Pacific peoples, places, histories, geographies and cultures through direct experience and interaction.

Having been introduced to the contemporary Pacific through ANU's inaugural undergraduate Pacific Studies course, students were able to contextualise and thus better understand what they saw and heard in Pago Pago. However, this learning experience worked both ways: students' experiences at the Festival breathed life into what must always be second-hand accounts of the reality of Pacific lives as provided in Canberra. As a result of the resounding success of the trip to Pago Pago, in 2012 the Pacific Studies Program will offer a field-work course based on the 11th Festival of Pacific Arts, to be held in the Solomon Islands.

A seminar will be held this Thursday 28 August, 1-2pm, to present what students learnt from the Festival and to discuss the following four issues, which stood out as central to the students’ experience:

How does one study the Pacific?

Who is the Pacific? How should we define this region – and is Australia in or out?

* The hierarchy of interactions between Melanesia and Polynesia, and the influences of Christianity and colonialism on these complex relationships.

*How could, and why should, people fight to preserve indigenous epistemologies and tradition in the context of globalisation and modernity?

All members of the ANU community are invited to attend what promises to be an entertaining and intellectually stimulating seminar. For further details please contact Ruth Barraclough (x53438) or Scott Pacey (scott.pacey@anu.edu.au).

Students from Mark Gibeau's Surasura Japanese class swept away the competition in the ACT speech contest.

The annual competition was held at the University of Canberra on August 23rd and saw over fifty speeches presented in high school, open beginner, open and background speaker divisions. Bethany Clark, Madeleine Firth and Chris Higgins from the Japan Centre beat out a field of nearly thirty contestants in the open division to take First, Second and Third prizes respectively while Karlis Tebescis took First prize in the background speaker division.

A panel of Japanese language teachers and representatives from the Japan Foundation and the Japanese Embassy rated speakers on the basis of the content of their speeches, presentation and language ability.

As a part of the Japan Foundation’s 39th National Japanese Language Speech Contest the two first place winners will go on to the national competition to be held in Sydney in October. We wish them the best of luck and our congratulations go out to all of the ANU students who participated in the contest.

Hero-worship, a great love story and a demon disguised as a golden deer are the common themes appearing through the creative works of a small group of Asian Studies students.

In semester one this year McComas Taylor and Ashvin Parameswaran from the Faculty of Asian Studies led twelve students through a study of the two great Indian epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana – works McComas describes as the foundational world-making texts of South Asia.

The final projects included an original song, a manga comic, a magazine, several visual artworks and a composition by a part-time DJ of modern and contemporary music combined with dialogue from movie soundtracks.

Full story at ANU News

Patrick Mayoh (梅友) an undergraduate student in the China and Korea Centre of the Faculty of Asian Studies has won Third Prize in China's International Han Yu Qiao Chinese proficiency competition.

More than one hundred university students of Chinese from 55 countries competed in China from mid July to 1 August 2008.

Patrick made it to top ten among the 110 contestants.

Patrick has won a prize of a four-week study tour to China with all expenses paid including the international airfare.

Well done, Patrick!

video: http://www.openv.com/play/hdprog_20080717_6387772.html

On 17 July 2008, the Faculty held its graduation at the newly renovated Llewellyn Hall.

In addition to the celebrating new Bachelors, Masters, and Doctors, the event was special for honouring our long-serving Indonesian language colleague Dr George Quinn, who was awarded the VC's Teaching Excellence Award, and recent PhD graduate Dr Pamela Lyon, who won the University's top award for a PhD thesis the JG Crawford Prize.

Congratulations to all graduates and their families.

[Pictured, above left, Dr Pamla Lyon accepting her degree; above right Professor Kent Anderson, Director of the Faculty of Asian Studies; right Dr George Quinn, Head of the Faculty's Southeast Asia Centre]

In its College of Asia & the Pacific and other Colleges the ANU has one of the largest concentrations of expertise on international relations and diplomacy, strategic studies, and comparative politics in the world, and the Department of International Relations is the largest of the ANU's academic units in this area.

In recognition of this expertise, the University, supported by the Federal Government's Department of Education, Science, and Training, has constructed a major new facility to house the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, the Department of International Relations, the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, and the Department of Political and Social Change.

On 6 August the Prime Minister Mr Kevin Rudd opned the new Centre.

Mr Rudd's speech: http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Speech/2008/speech_0399.cfm

ANU scholars from the College of Asia and the Pacific played a key role in the success of an international workshop on “Language Change in Post New Order Indonesia” at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta, between June 9 – 11, 2008.

Among the themes of the workshop were Indonesia’s proposed new law on the regulation of language, the impact of decentralisation on Indonesia’s regional languages, and the renewed role of Chinese as a language of public disourse in Indonesia. Papers were in English and Indonesian, but discussion was conducted wholly in the Indonesian language.

Dr Tim Hassall [pictured, right] presented a paper titled “Functions and status of western synonyms in Indonesian", Mr Amrih Widodo’s paper explored “The language of security" and Dr George Quinn discussed “How Javanese distinctness finds a public place in the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia”. Dr Francisca Handoko (Linguistics Department, RSPAS) analysed “The changing role of Mandarin in the Indonesian educational system, past, present and future: A preliminary study of its role in the international and ‘national plus’ schools in Surabaya”.

Two recent visiting fellows in the Faculty of Asian Studies also contributed to the workshop. Professor Ben Arps (Leiden University) presented a paper titled “From village dialects to Language: The becoming of basa Osing in Banyuwangi” and Professor Mikihiro Moriyama (Nanzan University) spoke on the “Revival of Sundanese?”. Professor Moriyama was also the principal convenor of the workshop.

The proceedings of the workshop are now undergoing revision with a view to publication next year.

Japan is destined to lose 70 percent of its workforce in the next forty years thanks to an aging population and a dwindling birth rate. The ruling party is floating the idea of a drastic increase in the number of migrants...

An ABC Radio Australia interview with Stephanie March (presenter) and Sumie Ishii, Executive Director of the Japanese Organisation for International Cooperation in Family Planning, Tokyo, and Kent Anderson, [pictured left] Director of Faculty of Asian Studies, at the Australian National University.

Text | Audio

The Cultural Politics of Disadvantaged Castes in India

A workshop supported by the Australian Research Council (APFRN South Asia Node), the College of Asia & the Pacific, and the College of Arts & Social Sciences, The Australian National University.

The aim of this workshop is to bring together scholars studying old and new patterns of social, economic and political domination and empowerment in India. The participants will examine how low caste communities, such as ex-untouchable groups (dalits) and other underprivileged sections of society, encounter and experience caste, class and gender prejudice, the discourse and practice of development; law and order, media and education. The workshop aims to provide a platform for multidisciplinary discussion of the relationship between culture, community, livelihood, the nation- state and the struggles of disadvantaged castes in contemporary Indian society.

Date: 26-27 June 2008

Location: McDonald Room, Menzies Library, The Australian National University

Further information: http://occident.anu.edu.au/Cultural_Politics_web.pdf