The Facebook Page of the Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS), Thammasat University, has announced that on Wednesday, 2 December 2020, from 9am to 10am Bangkok time, there will be a virtual conference on The Courteous Powers: Japan and Southeast Asia in Indo-Pacific Era.
The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books on different aspects of the interaction between Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN community.
TU students are cordially invited to register for the event at this Zoom link. For any further questions, please write to seminar@asia.tu.ac.th
Students interested in political science, history, ASEAN studies, Japanese diplomacy, and related subjects should find it useful.
The speakers will include Professor John D. Ciorciari, Director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center and the International Policy Center, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, the United States of America
The TU Library owns a book written by Professor Ciorciari, The limits of alignment: Southeast Asia and the great powers since 1975.
It is about foreign relations of 20th century Southeast Asia, national security, and other pertinent themes. The book is shelved in the General Stacks of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.
Among other research by Professor Ciorciari on ASEAN topics is a presentation from 2010 on Institutionalizing Human Rights in. Southeast Asia.
It begins:
In 2007, the heads of the ten states comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed the organization‟s first-ever Charter. After years of internal discord and external pressure, leaders ultimately agreed to include an article directing their subordinates to create a new body for the “promotion and protection of human rights” in the region. That led to the 2010 establishment of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). These developments were noteworthy for an association that has generally sought to steer clear of touchy issues related to fundamental freedoms and democracy. Nevertheless, it has been condemned as toothless by some human rights advocates and analysts and garnered faint or cautious praise from others, who see it as a minor step forward at best.1 This paper examines how and why Southeast Asian leaders have decided to embed human rights in ASEAN‟s structure through the creation of the AICHR. The argument advanced here is that the Commission represents an effort to “institutionalize” human rights in two different senses of the word. To some degree, the AICHR helps institutionalize human rights in the sense of confining them to a controlled environment. Its design deliberately gives Southeast Asian governments a high degree of political control over the management of a sensitive issue, helping to shield them from critiques. From another vantage point, however, the AICHR reflects a push toward institutionalizing human rights in the sense of solidifying norms and the regimes responsible for their enforcement. The Janus-faced new entity captures the normative and political tensions that pervade ASEAN‟s struggle over how to handle human rights. In this paper, I briefly discuss the emergence of human rights in ASEAN diplomatic discourse and practice, highlighting some key normative and conceptual struggles surrounding the Association’s engagement in human rights. I then discuss how the Commission came to be, examine the basic institutional features of the AICHR, and analyze how those features constrain its functional capacity. Finally, I explore possible mechanisms for change if the AICHR is to develop a more meaningful role going forward…
Among other participants at the event will be Associate Professor Kitti Prasirtsuk, Ph.D., Vice Rector of International Relations, Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University; Dr. Saikaew Tipakorn of the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University; and Assistant Professor Chaiwatt Mansrisuk, Ph.D., Faculty of Political Science, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University.
The virtual seminar will be moderated by Associate Professor Sitthiphon Kruarattikan, Director of Institute of East Asian Studies, Thammasat University.
The TU Library owns some writings of Ajarn Sitthiphon, including a chapter on Studies of Chinese politics and foreign relations in Thailand: three generations of Thai scholarship in the volume Researching China in Southeast Asia edited by Ngeow Chow-Bing, published last year.
It is shelved in the General Stacks of the Pridi Banomyong Library.
About the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan
The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, where Professor Ciorciari is based, is a public policy school at the University of Michigan. Founded in 1914 to offer training in municipal administration, in 1999 the school was named after former President Gerald Ford, who graduated from the University of Michigan.
The Ford School offers research in public policy.
Those students interested in the subjects involved may also wish to know about a parallel virtual seminar event, The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era.
It will be held on Tuesday, 8 December 2020, presented by Stanford University in Stanford, California, USA.
Because of the different time zones, the seminar begins at 7am Bangkok time.
Speakers will include Professor Ciorciari as well as a different panel of researchers, including Dr. Emma Chanlett-Avery, Specialist in Asian Affairs, the Congressional Research Service, who has worked at the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group in Bangkok; Dr. Donald K. Emmerson, Director, the Southeast Asia Program, Stanford University; and Dr. Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Director, the Japan Program, Stanford University.
The TU Library owns four books written and edited by Professor Emmerson.
Students may register for this Zoom Webinar at this link.
For any questions, please write to llee888@stanford.edu
This Webinar is cosponsored by the Japan Program and the Southeast Asia Program of Stanford University. As its webpage explains,
When Yoshihide Suga recently took over as prime minister of Japan, he tellingly focused his first trip abroad on Southeast Asia. The region has long been crucial to Japan’s foreign policy, and Japan has long been a key external partner to ASEAN and its constitutive states and societies. Japan’s engagement in Southeast Asia has become even more important in the era of the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” as the region confronts new economic, political and security challenges against the backdrop of waxing Sino-American rivalry and now a global pandemic. This webinar will examine Japan’s role in Southeast Asia in the recent past and the going forward. Drawing on the findings of a collaborative research project involving scholars from Southeast Asia, Japan, and North America – to be published as an edited volume from the University of Michigan Press – the panel will discuss Japan’s engagement in key areas such as infrastructure investment, maritime security assistance, and multilateral diplomacy, as well as Southeast Asian responses to its initiatives. They will also discuss the important roles played by non-state actors in mediating Japanese ties to Southeast Asia, and review key elements of continuity and change likely to extend into the Suga administration and beyond.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)