Movements In Asia Research Articles

Moving Forward With Pride: LGBTQ+ Health and Contemporary Rights Movements in Asia.

As Pride marches are celebrated globally in June, stigma and discriminatory laws against LGBTQ+ individuals remain prevalent in over a third of countries, potentially worsening health disparities among this population. Despite these challenges, notable progress has been made in Asia. Several countries have seen court rulings favoring LGBTQ+ rights, while the National Medical Commission of India has committed to ending conversion therapy, a harmful healthcare practice. As Asian nations advance and draw inspiration from their neighbors' successes, health practitioners, researchers, organizations, and institutions in the region can advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, offer targeted health services, and promote inclusive healthcare practices.

Echo of the Arab Spring in Asia: A Quantitative Analysis

There is no doubt that the Arab Spring triggered a global wave of social and political destabilization which significantly exceeded the scale of the Arab Spring itself and affected all the world-system zones, including Asian countries.2 The analysis suggests that in the Asian region there were two waves of destabilization caused by the Arab Spring. The first started in 2011 and included a series of mostly peaceful protests, which had some features similar to the Middle Eastern revolutions in their organizational forms and communication methods. The second wave, in turn, took place in 2012–2014, when protest movements in Asia began to follow their own path, adding local discontent to their agenda. It was also connected with a sharp increase in terrorist activity in the Middle East, due to the weakening of several authoritarian governments and the emergence of consolidated terrorist organizations. Some Islamist groups in some Muslim-majority Asian countries, in their turn, pledged allegiance to these organizations (first of all, to ISIS/Daesh). Terrorist activity spread from the Arab world to Asia through various channels: the internationalization of jihadist ideas by militarized groups; ISIS propaganda on the Internet; refugees and jihadists returning to the region from the battlefields of the Arab World.

An overview of productivity management in Ghana

Improving productivity at the individual, enterprise, and national levels is the surest and quickest way to create wealth and enhance the competitiveness and agility of indigenous enterprises. This paper evaluates the extent to which productivity management has made positive impacts on the growth of economies and poverty alleviation. It also identifies stakeholders' roles and strategies in productivity movements in Asia, Europe, Botswana, and Ghana. Results of the study show that Ghana has relatively lower productivity indices than Asian countries. This accounts for one of the factors responsible for the slow growth rate of the Ghanaian economy and the uncompetitive nature of its indigenous enterprises. Recommendations are made to improve productivity levels in Ghana to catalyze the country's efforts towards the attainment of middle-income economy by 2015.

KONTRIBUSI TEOLOGI PEMBEBASAN BAGI FEMINISME DI ASIA: SEBUAH KAJIAN KRITIS

Experiences of oppression, marginalization, and subordination have become a number of particular contexts that gave birth to critical reflections in a number of theologies such as liberation theology and feminist theology. The liberation theology project that was systematically promoted in Latin America in the mid-20th century began with the spread of colonialism, the political-economic hegemony of both national and transnational businessmen, and the massive use of a militaristic approach to various criticisms and resistance of oppressed people. Likewise, Asian feminist theology originates from criticism and resistance to patriarchal domination in the structure of religious, political, economic, cultural, and social life. Of course, these two theologies operate in the same context, namely the experience of oppression and marginalization of a group of people. This article was written using qualitative research methods with a focus on literature studies in the form of books and scientific journal articles according to the themes reviewed. The result of this study shows that liberation theology has contributed to feminist theology and the feminist movement in Asia. By being inspired by the approaches, methods and social analysis developed by liberation theology, the feminist movement in Asia dared to launch a progressive critique of the patriarchal and feudalistic face of the Church. Not only criticizing, feminism in Asia has reached a common movement, namely the establishment of a communion to oppose oppressive structures in shared life.

Leaps in the womb of Asia: Transformative intercultural discipleship in a sacred space

The 21st century is marked by the explosive growth of Christianity in the Global South. While discipleship is identified as the key to success in the missional movement in the western church, it has been inherently embodied in the indigenous church movement in Asia in the endeavor of evangelism and mission. In addition to the traditional gospel proclamation through church planting strategies, spiritual companionship, a ministry of accompanying someone in a sacred space through deep listening and discernment, has been gradually recognized as an effective one-on-one discipleship in recent years among groups who are receptive to the untamed movement of the Spirit. Using the metaphor of a pregnant mother carrying a baby and experiencing leaps in the womb (Lk 1:41), this article traces the engagement of intercultural discipleship through listening to the sacred stories of several mission leaders in Asia. Following the transformative narratives of their divine encounters, it discerns three key movements of the Spirit, metaphorically speaking, the “leaps” in the womb: listening with trust; turning with symbols; and kicking with expectation. Drawing from the works of anthropologists, theologians, and missiologists, it interacts the contemporary Asian experience with ancient Confucian texts and the Christian Scriptures, nuancing the traditional understanding of intercultural discipleship and evangelism. It aims to show that prophetic spiritual companionship is an integral part of discipleship and evangelism, therefore indispensable to the indigenous church mission movement. It is hoped that it also provides an impetus and resources for teaching and practice of the global church in its endeavor to revitalize faith in a post-Christendom and post-secular world.

Hybrid protest logics and relational dynamics against institutional decay: networked movements in Asia

ABSTRACT This introductory essay surveys a wave of mass movements in contemporary East and Southeast Asia. We identify three main aspects that drove and sustained this wave of societal pushback amidst institutional decay. We first discuss how democratic backsliding shapes the spread of mass mobilization in polities that are seen as regulated by the interest of power elites and their machinery of coercion and adaptation. We then critically examine the continued relevance of protest leadership by highlighting the relational dynamics between organizing with and without (formal) organizations. We further examine how network and coalition building in political and civil societies shaped the long-term trajectory of movement organizations to facilitate large-scale protests at critical times. This review draws on the contributions to this special issue and the recent literature on democratic backsliding and political activism. It provides a holistic survey of defensive mobilizations and the interactive mechanisms among the masses in the region and beyond.

Review: Reclaiming the Wilderness: Contemporary Dynamics of the Yiguandao, by Sébastien Billioud

In Reclaiming the Wilderness, Sébastien Billioud presents a systematic study of the contemporary development of the Yiguandao religion (一贯道), “the Way of Pervading Unity.” Though the movement claims a long spiritual lineage (daotong 道统) with its origin tracing back all the way to the dawn of Chinese civilization, this redemptive society named Yiguandao was not established until the late nineteenth century. The movement underwent striking development in China between the 1930s and 1940s, but since the end of World War II, Yiguandao practitioners have suffered from harsh persecution both in mainland China and Taiwan. In 1987, however, Yiguandao was officially legalized in Taiwan and entered a period of resurgence and rapid expansion. Today it is “one of the fastest growing religious movements in Asia,” with millions of followers (1–2). As a transnational religious organization, its impact goes beyond Asian and Chinese culture circles.The main body of the work addresses contemporary dynamics of the Yiguandao focusing on four aspects. First, it considers how Yiguandao adepts live their faith and how this relates to the expansionary dynamic of the group. Then, it looks at how charisma operates in the movement and, in particular, how a routinization process consolidates the enduring postmortem charisma of dead patriarchs as well as living specialists. Third, it examines how the promotion of Confucianism helps the movement defuse tensions with the sociocultural environment and the Chinese state authorities, and how that plays a key role in the proselytizing and development of the movement. Finally, it discusses the well-structured expansionary strategies of the group, including the quasi-diplomatic efforts it has taken in cross-strait relations. An epilogue summarizes the major themes of the chapters and adds a brief discussion about the Yiguandao temple (fotang 佛堂) in Paris, which provides a European case for globalization of the movement and a different context for the comparative understanding of its dynamics.Yiguandao carries a strong sense of mission to spread the “Dao of salvation” to all people under heaven. Taking expansionary work into places still ignorant of the Dao is figuratively described as kaihuang (开荒), which literally means “opening the wilderness.” The author’s research largely focuses on the group’s efforts to re-establish itself in mainland China, where Yiguandao originated and where it remains officially banned today. Thus, the book is titled “Reclaiming the Wilderness” (2).Participant observation was the major methodology used in this study, but the author was not a typical participant. When Billioud first visited a Yiguandao temple in Taiwan, he was asked to attend a ritual and moved step-by-step following the instructions of a senior religious specialist. The author did not understand that he was in fact being initiated into Yiguandao until the end of the rite, when he was given an official membership card (25). Although the author insisted on his scholarly identity and the nonvoluntary nature of his initiation, the Yiguandao community seemed to accept him as a “regular” member and he acted accordingly, making himself truly a “participant” in all kinds of rituals and activities (26). Billioud’s fieldwork lasted for about ten years among the “companions of the Way” and in numerous temples (or fotang) in Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Paris. In addition to the author’s comprehensive command of the literature, this excellent book is based on unusually rich firsthand information collected by a member/researcher of the Yiguandao movement.Billioud considers his research a case study illustrating one of the modern fates of Confucianism (2). In his examination of the relationship between Yiguandao and Confucianism, he tends to stress the appropriation of the latter by the former for various purposes, such as defusing tension with the authorities, fostering proselytism, and promoting cross-straits relations. Confucianism appears to be an instrumental element rather than a doctrinal or genetic part inherent to the movement, despite Yiguandao’s claims of being primarily Confucian. This will be an open question for further discussion.I highly recommend this well-researched book to those who are interested in the Yiguandao and Chinese folk religions. Due to the complexity of the syncretistic features of the movement (both in orthodoxy and orthopraxy) and its deep involvement in China’s modern and contemporary history, relevant background knowledge is necessary to better appreciate Reclaiming the Wilderness. For those who are less prepared but interested, they may find it helpful to start with the Introduction and not to skip the lengthy footnotes throughout the book.

The Study on the Vulnerability and Countermeasures of Pakistan’s Nation-state Construction

The independence of Pakistan was an important event of the national independence movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the 20th century. Behind the event was the capacity building led by political parties. With the process of building a modern nation state, Pakistani political party’s ability has suffered a major “capacity decline” in reverse, which leads to the negative characteristics of Pakistan’s national construction such as “fragility” and “failed state”. Focusing on strengthening the construction of nation-state with party capacity building as its core, we will put forward corresponding countermeasures from four aspects of party capacity building.There are expression and integration of interests, formulation of program and policy, political mobilization and participation, political selection and employment, so as to effectively improve the core governance ability of political parties in many modern nation-states in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

FABC (Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences):

One of the central themes discussed both internationally and nationally is about humanity which is identified with human rights. Religiosity is no less talked about it, including the Church of Asia through the Asian Bishops' Conference which in 2020 celebrated its presence for fifty years. Two declarations from the United Nations and the ASEAN declaration provide directions for upholding humanity and the Asian Bishops Conference document provides the basis for humanity to be more honored and respected. To arrive at the aim of discussing the contribution of the Asian Bishops' Conference to respect and honor humanity, the discussion will begin with an overview of humanity from religious and philosophical dimensions. The two United Nations declarations and the ASEAN declaration provide directions for humanity that serve as guidelines for respecting it. The document of the Asian Bishops' Conference, while respecting the declarations issued by various agencies, illuminates the implications for respecting and respecting humanity. This study uses many sources of documents and humanitarian movements in Asia and Indonesia as well and this paper concludes with a conclusion that gives the reason for Asia being the highest violator of humanity in the world.

Women's Rights and Global Socialism: Gendering Socialist Internationalism during the Cold War

AbstractThis Special Issue explores the complicated relationship between women's rights and global socialism during the Cold War. This Introduction describes how the articles deal with this relationship in three, partly overlapping, periods. The first set of articles looks at how the ethos of the Popular Front resonated among women's movements in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, and examines the connections between interwar anti-fascist and anti-imperialist feminisms and those that re-emerged after World War II. The second set of articles focuses on the role and development of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) and its model of internationalism in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China in the early Cold War. The final articles centre on the challenges faced by the WIDF from the 1960s, exploring issues such as the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa, the Portuguese wars of decolonization, and the United Nations Decade for Women (1976–1985). Together with this process of decolonization, this Special Issue also examines how the consequences of postsocialism, in particular for women's rights (the loss of social rights, material security, and substantial challenges to reproductive freedoms), have triggered renewed debates about the history and legacies of communist women's liberation movements in the former socialist world.

Environmental Movements in Asia

The central inquiry of this chapter is the relationship between political liberalization and the rise and development of environmental movement. The selection of the eight cases (China, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam) is guided by both the call for broad coverage of Asia and the logic of comparative politics so that this research will be able to generate a level of theoretical discussion, in addition to empirically mapping out environmental movements in Asia.In addition to outlining the main patterns of the environmental-political dual transformation, this research also discusses possible reasons for the initial synergy between political liberalization and environmental movement to fade away and the challenges of environmental protection for both young democracies and authoritarian regimes.

Heritage Movements in Asia: Cultural Heritage Activism, Politics and Identity By Ali Mozaffari and Tod Jones. New York and London: Berghahn Books, 2020. 216 pages, $135.00

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Developing Information Technology in OpenCourseWare: From Movements to Opportunities in Asia

This paper aims to summarize and analyze the Developing Information Technology in Open CourseWare (OCW) movements and new opportunities in Asia in the context of supporting the education process in higher education that is in accordance with the recent demands for graduate competency supported by IT innovation. The review method is carried out in 3 stages: searching and downloading articles, filtering and sorting, and final screening. The results of this review show that the OCW movement in Asia is growing rapidly, among others, due to IT innovation, stakeholder commitment, public awareness, and the need for quality teaching materials. In the era of web 5.0 technology, lecturers must have the competencies to develop electronic activities through the Web that make students truly active so that online learning actually takes place rather than the electronic reading process. The impact of IT innovation has brought drastic changes in the field of education in the learning process has become an effective driving tool for improving learning outcomes and achieving educational goals, one of the most recent innovations is OCW. OCW movement in Asia has progressed rapidly and significantly, although they experience transformations in accordance with technological developments and needs in the field.

The International Open Access Movement and Its Status in Pakistan

The objective of this study is to analyze the present status of the open access movement in Pakistan, identify challenges, and make recommendations for the effective use of this publishing model. The article looks primarily at the open access movement in Asia, with special reference to Pakistan, India, and China. Findings show that, since the emergence of the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2001, the open access movement has developed rapidly at the international level. From the Pakistani perspective, gold open access, in which articles or monographs are freely available in their original form on publishers' websites, developed quickly. However, green open access, which relies on authors to self-archive their articles in institutional or subject repositories, has been relatively slow to develop. A lack of support from educational institutions, libraries, library associations, and funding bodies may explain the slow growth of green open access in Pakistan. The author recommends that Pakistani universities, research institutions, and funding agencies develop open access policies, set up institutional repositories, and encourage publishing in open access journals and self-archiving in institutional repositories.

De-harmonization of regime–youth relationship in China’s Macao SAR

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand the regime–youth relationship in Macao. It will use the framework by Weiss and Aspinall (2012) to explain the rise of Macao youth activism and the de-harmonization of their relationship with the authorities.Design/methodology/approachAccording to Weiss and Aspinall, the emergence of youth movements in Asia after the Second World War was based on four factors: the development higher education systems, youth’s collective identities, youth’s trust in the ruling regime and transnational flows of activist ideas and inspirations. This paper analyzes the rise of Macao youth through the four dimensions by Weiss and Aspinall.FindingsThe rise of Macao youth movement is attributable to the development of tertiary education, youth’s collective identities, lowered trust in the regime and international inspiration. Better-educated Macao youth have been increasing their demands for political participation while their distrust in the MSAR government pushes their mobilization. The rise of youth movements around the world after the millennium inspires Macao youth activists’ political mobilization. Interestingly, Macao’s youth movement has been gradually integrated into the opposition forces instead of campaigning by youth organizations. In response to youth activism, the MSAR government, however, could not alleviate the youth’s hostility against the authorities, but its repressive approach intensified the regime-youth tension.Originality/valueThe paper includes interviews with leaders of young activists for their understanding of youth movement in Macao. It can serve the purpose for comparative study of youth movement among Asian societies.

War, Imperialism, and colonies: a view of the US press

Questions about the perspectives of the European empires colonial system after the Great War, forms and ways of its transition to postcolonial age, relativity of the colonial powers experience to the US foreign policy, were very popular and quite debating for the American public opinion during and after the end of the World War I. colonial system research cannot be complete without studying the press of the powers that signed the Versailles Treaty. In order to give a detailed analysis of international relationships in terms of the global transformations from the American point of view relevant newspaper articles published after the Great War should be analyzed. The results have shown changes in priority in schemes of colonial system transformation as it was viewed in American public discourse during 1919-1922. Woodrow Wilson plan for the colonial powers dismantle was gradually replaced by the less radical plans, which presupposed the use of the colonial experience in the US foreign policy. Materials of the American press for the 1919-1922 reveals that there was a search of the most effective and optimum strategy of the relations with the European empires as well as with its dependent territories. Analysis of American press reveals its steady interest in negative and positive experience of colonial empires in search of the lessons of history. In 1919-1922 most prominent journalists were focused on Europe, which was represented as the cornerstone for the US foreign policy by the White House, the US State Department and the media. And we can clearly see another factor affecting approaches to the colonial issue in American press. It was the Soviet Russia attention and support to the national liberation movements in Asia and Africa. The Red Menace had become one of the factors that forced American media to redefine the colonial issue in light of the new world order which had been created after the end of the Great War on the base of the Versailles Treaty.

War, Imperialism, and Colonies: a View of the US Press

Questions about the perspectives of the European empires colonial system after the Great War, forms and ways of its transition into postcolonial age, applicability of the colonial powers’ experience to the US foreign policy, were very popular and quite debating for the American public opinion during and after the end of the World War I. Research of colonial system cannot be complete without studying the press of the powers, which signed the Versailles Treaty. In order to give a detailed analysis of international relationships in the context of the global transformations from the American point of view relevant newspaper articles published after the Great War should be analyzed. The results have shown changes of priorities in schemes of colonial system transformation as it was viewed in American public discourse during 1919—1922. Woodrow Wilson’s plan for the colonial powers dismantle was gradually replaced by the less radical plans, which presupposed the use of the colonial experience in the US foreign policy. Materials of the American press for the 1919—1922 reveals that there was a search of the most effective and optimum strategy of the relations not just with the European empires, but also with their dependent territories. Analysis of American press reveals its steady interest in negative and positive experience of colonial empires in search of the “lessons of history”. In 1919—1922 most prominent journalists were focused on Europe, which was represented as the cornerstone for the US foreign policy by the White House, the US State Department, and the media. And we can clearly see another factor affecting approaches to the colonial issue in American press. It was the Soviet Russia’s attention and support to the national liberation movements in Asia and Africa. The “Red Menace” had become one of the factors that forced American media to redefine the colonial issue in light of the new world order which had been created after the end of the Great War on the base of the Versailles Treaty.

Quantifying the impact of low-cost carriers on international air passenger movements to and from major airports in Asia

Asia is the world’s most rapidly growing aviation market, and the region now cradles the largest number of low-cost carriers (LCCs). This paper identifies the causal effect of LCC entry on international air passenger flows to and from 30 major airports in Asia using reservation-based international air passenger traffic data for years 2010 and 2015 (N=123,148). In order to bypass the endogeneity arising from self selection of LCCs’ entry decision as well as confounding by unobservables, the paper utilizes multiple identification strategies, namely, difference-in-differences (DID), propensity score matching coupled with DID, DID with inverse-probability weighted regression adjustment, and a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD) with the maximum flight range of an aircraft typically used by LCCs as the cutoff. The results consistently show that LCC impact on international air passenger traffic is strictly positive, and is decreasing over distance with slight convexity. Another finding is that the impact of LCC entry net of competition effect holding market concentration constant accounts for the major part of the overall impact, i.e. LCC replacing full-service carriers greatly increases international air passenger movements in Asia.

Racism in the Early-20th-Century U.S. and Sun Yatsen’s Outlook on Chinese Culture

Abstract Confronted with the decline of Western hegemony, the post-Great-War American society witnessed a prevailing trend of racism represented by Lothrop Stoddard, who proposed to suppress the nationalist movements in Asia and completely prohibit the immigration of Asians into the United States to maintain white supremacy across the world. His racist discourse also constituted the historical context of Sun Yat-sen’s speech to The Kobe Chamber of Commerce. Unlike previous studies of the speech that focused on Sun’s expression of “Greater Asianism,” this paper examines his critical remarks on Stoddard, intending to explore the intellectual origin of the renewed outlook held by Sun on Chinese culture in his later years, as he intentionally misinterpreted Stoddard’s main idea as cultural revolt, neutralied such notions as biological determination and human inequality, and replaced white supremacy with the ascendancy of Chinese culture by emphasizing its originality, historical unity and moral superiority. On the very basis, Sun presented an alternative mode of modern civilization that diverged from the Euro-centric capitalist modernity. Echoing various anti-capitalist and counter-enlightenment thoughts of this period, Sun’s proposal could be taken as an integral part of the “new cultural conservatism” promoted by Chinese intellectuals in the 1920s.

The Ecumenical Movement in Asia and Emerging Challenges: The Christian Conference of Asia at 60 and Beyond

AbstractAs the Christian Conference of Asia marks the 60th anniversary of its founding in 1957 at an Asian church leaders’ consultation in Prapat, Indonesia, this contribution seeks to analyze the contemporary challenges facing the ecumenical movement in a situation characterized by a lack of coherence and coordination. In a continent where the number of Christians is profoundly small, division makes Christian witness even more difficult and fragmented, and less effective. In such a situation, concerted efforts for dialogue and communication with mutual accountability should be a priority, in order to address the emerging challenges more efficiently. The specific responsibility and role of the ecumenical movement in Asia is to search for the expression of the common faith of the Asian churches through engagement in a pluralistic Asia, and to work for visible unity despite doctrinal differences and confessional barriers. The need to revitalize the ecumenical movement in Asia and regain the ecumenical vision of Asian churches should be a priority for all those who are concerned with the common witness and future of the ecumenical movement in Asia.