Talks by eva hansson
The military junta in Thailand is busy building a system of "Guided Democracy", which will entren... more The military junta in Thailand is busy building a system of "Guided Democracy", which will entrench the power of the military in years to come. The only hope in reversing this process lies with building a pro-democracy social movement linked to the working class. This is yet to be achieved and unfortunately, the trend towards authoritarianism in Thailand is mirrored by events in other South-East Asian countries.
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(in Swedish) Inledningen av vad som har kallats 'Asiens århundrade' har kantats av massiva protes... more (in Swedish) Inledningen av vad som har kallats 'Asiens århundrade' har kantats av massiva proteströrelser i snart sagt de flesta Öst- Syd- och Sydöstasiatiska länder. Nyhetsflöden har fyllts av bilder från protester i Kina, Burma/Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesien, Kambodja, Taiwan, Indien, Malaysia etc. Vietnam är inte något undantag i detta avseende. Protester i Vietnam har bl a handlat om frågor som berör fördelningen av mark, korruption, arbetsvillkor och löner, miljöförstöring, pensioner och mänskliga rättigheter. Dessa till synes snabbt uppflammande offentliga protester har bemötts på olika sätt av den vietnamesiska parti-staten. Samtidigt har ett flertal organisationer etablerats med offentligt uttalade demokratiseringsmålsättningar, inklusive krav på flerpartisystem och mänskliga rättigheter. Vad vet vi om kopplingarna mellan proteströrelser och dessa nya organisationer? Hur kan den vietnamesiska partistatens förhållningssätt till dessa alltmer uttalade krav på politisk förändring beskrivas? Hur påverkar utländska aktörer, t ex genom olika utvecklingssamarbeten, maktbalansen mellan dessa motstridiga intressen?
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ietnam has seen a dramatic rise in different forms of public protest movements during the last de... more ietnam has seen a dramatic rise in different forms of public protest movements during the last decade, relating to both material and non-material issues. A simultaneous mushrooming of political blogs along with political discussions and criticism in social media has also contributed importantly to the carving out and expansion of political space. The focus of this talk is the recent proliferation, diversification and increased stature of pro-democracy groups and organisations that exist outside the legally protected sphere of ‘formal civil society’. Who are they? How do they perceive of their opportunity structures? In what ways, if at all, do they connect with ‘formal’ civil society organisations? How do they experience party-state responses to their pro-democracy activities? This talk relates to a wider on-going project on “Inequality and political regime change in Southeast Asia” and draws in particular on preliminary findings from fieldwork in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in August 2015, including in-depth interviews with key actors who are organising for democracy in today’s Vietnam.
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Large-scale public protests have increased dramatically in Southeast Asia, even in authoritarian ... more Large-scale public protests have increased dramatically in Southeast Asia, even in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian political contexts where there are severe restrictions on rights of organization, protest and assembly. Public protests with varying motives and strategies have become a common feature in major cities as well as in rural areas. To investors and others, quickly escalating protests, sometimes with violent outcomes, often seem to have come as a surprise. However, popular mobilization leading to public protests is not a recent phenomenon in the region. Structural changes along with past trajectories and patterns of social protests may provide important keys to understanding current developments. This talk draws on recent examples of social protests in Southeast Asia in order to explore possible causes and patterns as well as differences and changes in state responses to social protests.
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Efter årtionden av hög tillväxt växer den ekonomiska ojämlikheten i Vietnam. Tidigare markant oli... more Efter årtionden av hög tillväxt växer den ekonomiska ojämlikheten i Vietnam. Tidigare markant olika livsvillkor mellan stad och landsbygd har nu i hög grad flyttat in i städerna – en utveckling som parti-staten försöker hantera men med uppenbart stora svårigheter. Öppna proteströrelser och demonstrationer har blivit ett att allt vanligare inslag i det politiska landskapet. Det tidiga 2000-talets strejkrörelser, i huvudsak mot arbetsvillkoren i industrizonerna, har inte avtagit utan ackompanjeras nu av en rad proteströrelser som adresserar olika typer av rättighets- och rättvisefrågor. Under hösten förväntas Vietnam anta en ny konstitution – en process som öppnat för högljudda krav från ledande personer inom partiet på betydande politiska reformer. Men vad betyder den senaste utvecklingen för den nuvarande regimens möjligheter att hålla fast vid makten? Vilka är det som protesterar och varför? Hur bemöter parti-staten dessa ”nya” proteströrelser?
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Vietnam’s economic liberalisation and industrialisation has been carried out under an authoritari... more Vietnam’s economic liberalisation and industrialisation has been carried out under an authoritarian party-state. Cheap and disciplined labour made foreign investors flock to the industrial zones which offered an essentially trade union free space for low-cost production. In response to the bad working conditions, human rights abuses and low wages in the zones, strikes escalated and soon embraced demands for political rights. New political parties and independent trade unions were announced in conjunction with the largest strike wave in Vietnamese history, officially challenging the communist party’s monopoly to rule the country. The clampdown that followed only temporarily silenced protesters. In what ways are the current protests different than those before? How is the state responding to protest movements and in what ways are they affecting the political regime?
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Conference Presentations by eva hansson
This century has been widely dubbed “The Asian Century”—an era when an ascendant Asia is to be th... more This century has been widely dubbed “The Asian Century”—an era when an ascendant Asia is to be the fulcrum of global commerce, security dynamics, and more. Yet launching that century has been a seemingly endless round of public protest: in China, Burma, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Vietnam and more. The eyes of the world have indeed been on this region, but not for the reasons so widely predicted. Yet that recurrent trope of rebellious publics brings to the fore larger questions, about where these protests came from and what legacies they leave. Mass street protests and social media storms seize headlines, but underlying these cataclysmic moments are larger changes in public, political space: who claims, expands, defines that space, and how. How, too, do prior moments of protests themselves alter the landscape for future mobilizations: which actors are newly constituted, which discourses gain traction, what strategies emerge? These movements within and across countries in Asia pose and embody both institutional and normative challenges, engaging and transforming varying authorities, ideas, and practices, as on a multi-level topographical map of political space.
In this paper, we first sketch the conceptual ground for exploring political space and mobilization. Considering often-overlapping formal (or institutional) as well as informal (or extra-institutional) modes of participation, we ask how activists choose their venue, what political space is public versus essentially private, and how actors are constituted or (dis)empowered through political participation. Next, we examine how authority is distributed among not only state but also economic and societal actors and agencies; how new political spaces, discourses, and norms emerge; and who polices political space—since it is not just the state that does so. Throughout, we ground this theoretical exposition in examples drawn from across Asia.
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Asia’s political landscape is in flux. Conventional, institutional taxonomies are limiting: class... more Asia’s political landscape is in flux. Conventional, institutional taxonomies are limiting: classifying regimes along an authoritarian–democratic continuum suggests a static, homogenous categorization that aligns imperfectly with the experience of most citizens. Policy access, civil liberties, and political empowerment are less broadly disseminated in the illiberal regimes predominant across Asia than in liberal democracies, and unequal even in the latter.
Authoritarianism cannot preclude political participation, but it may push engagement into informal, less visible, more creative, less readily suppressed niches. Even in more liberal polities, the core attributes of ‘democracy’ are unevenly distributed; not all actors have equal chance of being heard or influential. What most characterizes these struggles across regimes is the asymmetry of available resources, options and alliances. Moreover, a dichotomous division of civil society and political society fits poorly at best where new online media, transnational networks, and other dimensions of political space—the discursive and material terrain of politics—transcend or sidestep both territorial and institutional boundaries. Such a division is further complicated by the mix of formal and informal organizations and networks within ‘civil society’, including in authoritarian regimes, and the fact that actors from civil society, and not just the state itself, participate in policing political space.
In the face of these complex dimensions and ongoing transformations, political space bears closer examination. That need is especially keen in authoritarian or hybrid (electoral authoritarian or semi-democratic) contexts, where political space may be obscured, manipulated, or subject to novel or subtle means of construction, policing, and constraint.
This panel aims to deconstruct and disentangle political space across interactive subnational, national and transnational scales; across categories of individuals and groups, including those with greater or lesser access to decision-making power; and across modes and media, from street protests and rallies, to documentaries and blogs, to petitions and press conferences. Our focus in these papers—on China, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Burma—is primarily outside formal, or electoral politics, although a given actor or group may also use available institutional channels for influence.
Among the key questions the papers in this panel explore are: How do activists navigate across scales and institutional forms, to find venues and allies? What actors benefit from new technologies of participation, and in what ways? How do categorical inequalities structure access to voice, given changes in available political space and allies? Who creates, controls, and polices political space—as some of these arenas may be outside the purview of the state itself? And taking the papers as a group, the task for our discussants: given the mutability of political space, how do we best conceptualize patterns of participation and representation across Asian political regimes?
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The current global and national dynamics have prompted the necessity to reconsider theoretical as... more The current global and national dynamics have prompted the necessity to reconsider theoretical assumptions of civil societies and their relations to states in different types of political regimes. Dominating conceptions of civil society originate from theoretical constructions that often emphasize its democratizing role and more or less autonomous relations with the state. However, civil society is rarely homogenous, but instead composed by a diversity of organisations, associations and social movements - often with conflicting interests, varying relations with the state, and democratic outlook. More often than not, boundaries between state and civil society are more porous and diffuse than understood by mainstream theory.
Current civil society development poses challenges that create demands to rethink the concepts of civil society and how they may fit with new situations. This workshop is intended to initiate preliminary steps in this direction. Southeast Asia with its wide variation of political regime types makes it a particularly interesting region for empirical investigations into changing state - civil society dynamics with theoretical implications in the process of rethinking civil society. Moreover, looking at the cases of Indonesia and Sweden will provide new insights in this respect. The former has been known for its vast diversities in terms of ethnicity, religions, culture, and social formations. The latter is experiencing an increasingly plural society since it has been a major destination for migrants and refugees. As cases, these two countries show how the nature of civil society as plural, instead of singular, and dynamic, instead of static, deserve further considerations in the process of rethinking civil society.
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The profound changes of Vietnamese society during the last couple of decades have given rise to n... more The profound changes of Vietnamese society during the last couple of decades have given rise to new interests and groups seeking to advance their concerns in the political sphere. Old modes of political representation and participation are being challenged by the emergence of vocal rights and justice movements. Many of these changes are hidden or obscure, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. This produces particular challenges in explaining them. The presentation will discuss how modes of political representation are changing in Vietnam and what implications may these changes appear to have for the reproduction or change of the political regime?
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Talks by eva hansson
Conference Presentations by eva hansson
In this paper, we first sketch the conceptual ground for exploring political space and mobilization. Considering often-overlapping formal (or institutional) as well as informal (or extra-institutional) modes of participation, we ask how activists choose their venue, what political space is public versus essentially private, and how actors are constituted or (dis)empowered through political participation. Next, we examine how authority is distributed among not only state but also economic and societal actors and agencies; how new political spaces, discourses, and norms emerge; and who polices political space—since it is not just the state that does so. Throughout, we ground this theoretical exposition in examples drawn from across Asia.
Authoritarianism cannot preclude political participation, but it may push engagement into informal, less visible, more creative, less readily suppressed niches. Even in more liberal polities, the core attributes of ‘democracy’ are unevenly distributed; not all actors have equal chance of being heard or influential. What most characterizes these struggles across regimes is the asymmetry of available resources, options and alliances. Moreover, a dichotomous division of civil society and political society fits poorly at best where new online media, transnational networks, and other dimensions of political space—the discursive and material terrain of politics—transcend or sidestep both territorial and institutional boundaries. Such a division is further complicated by the mix of formal and informal organizations and networks within ‘civil society’, including in authoritarian regimes, and the fact that actors from civil society, and not just the state itself, participate in policing political space.
In the face of these complex dimensions and ongoing transformations, political space bears closer examination. That need is especially keen in authoritarian or hybrid (electoral authoritarian or semi-democratic) contexts, where political space may be obscured, manipulated, or subject to novel or subtle means of construction, policing, and constraint.
This panel aims to deconstruct and disentangle political space across interactive subnational, national and transnational scales; across categories of individuals and groups, including those with greater or lesser access to decision-making power; and across modes and media, from street protests and rallies, to documentaries and blogs, to petitions and press conferences. Our focus in these papers—on China, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Burma—is primarily outside formal, or electoral politics, although a given actor or group may also use available institutional channels for influence.
Among the key questions the papers in this panel explore are: How do activists navigate across scales and institutional forms, to find venues and allies? What actors benefit from new technologies of participation, and in what ways? How do categorical inequalities structure access to voice, given changes in available political space and allies? Who creates, controls, and polices political space—as some of these arenas may be outside the purview of the state itself? And taking the papers as a group, the task for our discussants: given the mutability of political space, how do we best conceptualize patterns of participation and representation across Asian political regimes?
Current civil society development poses challenges that create demands to rethink the concepts of civil society and how they may fit with new situations. This workshop is intended to initiate preliminary steps in this direction. Southeast Asia with its wide variation of political regime types makes it a particularly interesting region for empirical investigations into changing state - civil society dynamics with theoretical implications in the process of rethinking civil society. Moreover, looking at the cases of Indonesia and Sweden will provide new insights in this respect. The former has been known for its vast diversities in terms of ethnicity, religions, culture, and social formations. The latter is experiencing an increasingly plural society since it has been a major destination for migrants and refugees. As cases, these two countries show how the nature of civil society as plural, instead of singular, and dynamic, instead of static, deserve further considerations in the process of rethinking civil society.
In this paper, we first sketch the conceptual ground for exploring political space and mobilization. Considering often-overlapping formal (or institutional) as well as informal (or extra-institutional) modes of participation, we ask how activists choose their venue, what political space is public versus essentially private, and how actors are constituted or (dis)empowered through political participation. Next, we examine how authority is distributed among not only state but also economic and societal actors and agencies; how new political spaces, discourses, and norms emerge; and who polices political space—since it is not just the state that does so. Throughout, we ground this theoretical exposition in examples drawn from across Asia.
Authoritarianism cannot preclude political participation, but it may push engagement into informal, less visible, more creative, less readily suppressed niches. Even in more liberal polities, the core attributes of ‘democracy’ are unevenly distributed; not all actors have equal chance of being heard or influential. What most characterizes these struggles across regimes is the asymmetry of available resources, options and alliances. Moreover, a dichotomous division of civil society and political society fits poorly at best where new online media, transnational networks, and other dimensions of political space—the discursive and material terrain of politics—transcend or sidestep both territorial and institutional boundaries. Such a division is further complicated by the mix of formal and informal organizations and networks within ‘civil society’, including in authoritarian regimes, and the fact that actors from civil society, and not just the state itself, participate in policing political space.
In the face of these complex dimensions and ongoing transformations, political space bears closer examination. That need is especially keen in authoritarian or hybrid (electoral authoritarian or semi-democratic) contexts, where political space may be obscured, manipulated, or subject to novel or subtle means of construction, policing, and constraint.
This panel aims to deconstruct and disentangle political space across interactive subnational, national and transnational scales; across categories of individuals and groups, including those with greater or lesser access to decision-making power; and across modes and media, from street protests and rallies, to documentaries and blogs, to petitions and press conferences. Our focus in these papers—on China, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Burma—is primarily outside formal, or electoral politics, although a given actor or group may also use available institutional channels for influence.
Among the key questions the papers in this panel explore are: How do activists navigate across scales and institutional forms, to find venues and allies? What actors benefit from new technologies of participation, and in what ways? How do categorical inequalities structure access to voice, given changes in available political space and allies? Who creates, controls, and polices political space—as some of these arenas may be outside the purview of the state itself? And taking the papers as a group, the task for our discussants: given the mutability of political space, how do we best conceptualize patterns of participation and representation across Asian political regimes?
Current civil society development poses challenges that create demands to rethink the concepts of civil society and how they may fit with new situations. This workshop is intended to initiate preliminary steps in this direction. Southeast Asia with its wide variation of political regime types makes it a particularly interesting region for empirical investigations into changing state - civil society dynamics with theoretical implications in the process of rethinking civil society. Moreover, looking at the cases of Indonesia and Sweden will provide new insights in this respect. The former has been known for its vast diversities in terms of ethnicity, religions, culture, and social formations. The latter is experiencing an increasingly plural society since it has been a major destination for migrants and refugees. As cases, these two countries show how the nature of civil society as plural, instead of singular, and dynamic, instead of static, deserve further considerations in the process of rethinking civil society.
This paper analyse the changing character of protest movements, as well as state responses to them, in Viet Nam. It argues that there has been a development towards more confrontation between protesters and the state. Protests have changed from being largely “reformist” to become more “radical”, and responses by the state from accommodative to more confrontational. Although there are many reasons for this, one important aspect is the collapse of the institutions for political representation within the authoritarian party-state. The paper discuss how the new confrontational approach may have implications for peaceful political regime development/change.
In the fall of 2017, the course will focus on three themes. One thematic will be Realist and Liberal theories of IR and their contemporary critics: e.g., the English School, Constructivism, Post-structuralism, Feminism, Marxism and Critical Theory. A second thematic relates to the field of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), especially how factors at different levels of analysis affect foreign policy and the prospects of theoretical integration. A third thematic will address the issue area of human rights. This will include a discussion of the foundations of and the implementation of human rights at different levels and involving different actors in the international system as well as the various theoretical perspectives that can be applied in an analysis of human rights.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Upon completion of the course the student is expected to be able to:
* account for essential contemporary theoretical perspectives and concepts in the study of international politics, important aspects of the UN system, the EU as a global actor, efforts towards cooperation and development, and contemporary tendencies of change in the international system;
* explain and exemplify theoretical development within the subject of international politics in relation to historical and contemporary examples of international threats of conflicts, cooperation problems and peace efforts"
Förväntade studieresultat
Efter avslutad delkurs förväntas studenten kunna:
1. Redogöra för de mänskliga rättigheterna och huvuddrag i den teoretiska debatten, särskilt centrala problemställningar på fältet såsom debatterna kring relationen mänskliga rättigheters universalitet och relationen mellan globalisering och mänskliga
rättigheter.
2. Tillämpa och kritiskt analysera mänskliga rättigheter utifrån aktuella specifika empiriska fall.
3. Jämföra, kontrastera och kritiskt granska olika sätt att studera mänskliga rättigheter inom samhällsvetenskapen.
4. Författa en framställning kring ett självständigt formulerat forkningsproblem.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After completing the course the student should be able to:
* account for the concept of democracy, the content, scope and causes of democracy in relation to processes of globalization and the representation of ethnicity and gender;
* understand and exemplify different arguments and hypothesis about the content, scope and causes of democracy;
* evaluate, compare and analyse different arguments and hypothesis about the content, scope and causes of democracy.
"
Förväntade studieresultat
Studenten förväntas efter avslutad kurs:
- besitta fördjupade kunskaper om interaktiva metoder, såväl i teori som praktik
- besitta fördjupad förståelse för frågor kring validitet och reliabilitet inom interaktiva metoder
- besitta praktiska färdigheter med avseende på planering, genomförande och analys av samtalsintervjuundersökningar
- besitta viss praktisk färdighet med avseende på planering, genomförande och analys av frågeundersökningar och observationer/fältarbeten
- kunna värdera och granska undersökningar som bygger på interaktiv metod.