Asian Space Research Articles

Youth politics in urban Asia: an introduction

This introduction explores the changing relationship between ‘youth’ and ‘politics’, and the entanglements between youth politics and urban space in Asia. This is a timely inquiry, given the recent...

The making of Gòng/ Kyō – visual archive and the common in contemporary East Asia

ABSTRACTThis study will take two cases from East Asia to illustrate how visual archive/archiving has become or potentially becomes new space where image, heterogeneous temporalities and ideas of the common may lead to a redefinition or at least reconsideration of the binaries between public and private, between image and visual, between past and future. In contrast to historical archives, such visual archives not only aim for documentation and conservation but also become the sites of creating agencies and provoking critical reflections on the idea of the public. The first case is “Center for Remembering 3.11”1 initiated by Sendai Mediatheque (SMT), where civic participation and the archiving of the post-311 Tohoku Earthquake images of the disaster-ridden region were solicited and made into an online archive. The second case is Multitude.asia, a digital archive initiated by Taiwanese activist and scholar Huang Sun-quan, who works in collaboration with students, artists, and researchers from Mainland China and Taiwan in sorting, interviewing, and editing videos and texts about alternative cultural activities and space in Asia. While discussions on the archive and the public discourse are predominated by theories from Europe and the US, the current study intends to contextualize the concepts of “the public” (gōng/ōyake), “the private” (sī/watakushi), and “the common” (gòng/ kyō) in Chinese and Japanese languages in the discourse of archive in cultural specificity.

Book Review: Lipi Ghosh and Rila Mukherjee (eds), Rethinking Connectivity Region, Place and Space in Asia

Lipi Ghosh and Rila Mukherjee (eds), Rethinking Connectivity Region, Place and Space in Asia, Primus Books, Delhi, 2016, 1183 pp., ₹1450.

Ruptured space and spatial estrangement: (Un)making of public space in Kathmandu

Public space is increasingly recognised to be central to spatial discourse of cities. A city’s urbanism is displayed in public spaces, representing a myriad of complex socio-cultural, economic and democratic practices of everyday life. In cities of the Global South, especially those with nascent democracies, different values attached to a space by various actors – both material and symbolic – frame the contestation, making the physical space a normative instrument for contestation. Tundikhel, once believed to be the largest open space in Asia, is an important part of Kathmandu’s urbanism, which has witnessed two civil wars popularly known as Jana Andolans, and the subsequent political upheavals, to emerge as the symbolic meeting point of the city, democracy, and its people. The paper argues that the confluence of the three modalities of power – institutionalisation, militarisation and informalisation – has underpinned its historical transformation, resulting in what I call ‘urban rupturing’: a process of (un)making of public space, through physical and symbolic fragmentation and spatial estrangement. The paper contends that unlike the common notion that public spaces such as Tundikhel are quintessentially public, hypocrisy is inherent to the ‘publicness’ agenda of the state and the institutional machinery in Kathmandu. It is an urban condition that not only maligns the public space agenda but also creeps into other spheres of urban development.

Model for Planning an Athletic Facility

The Hong Kong International School (HKIS) is a private coeducational day school that serves students (Grades PK-12) who seek an American-style college preparatory education in a Christian setting. Located on the south side of Hong Kong Island on two separate campuses, approximately 5 km apart, the school is divided into four divisions: Lower Primary, Upper Primary, Middle School, and High School.The school is a member of the East Asia Regional Council of Schools and fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The school serves 2,595 students, who come from business, government, and professional families. Of those enrolled in HKIS, 56% are from the United States, 8% are from Canada, and 6% are from Hong Kong, with the remaining 30% coming from approximately 30 other nations.HKIS recruits faculty locally and internationally, with 72% holding advanced degrees and serving an average tenure of 8 years. The faculty-student ratio is 1:9.In addition to the academic program, the school also targets growth in six domains, known as Student Learning Results: Academic Excellence, Spirituality, Character Development, Self-Motivated Learning, Contributing to Society, and Chinese Culture. The school offers a strong and vibrant cocurricular program with high student participation.This facility plan outlines the work and considerations involved in planning to repurpose a school sports facility, in this case two squash courts.Access to Suitable FacilitiesAccess to suitable facilities and open space in Asia can be a major challenge. Maximizing the use of facilities is the key to meeting the needs of the various programs within the school. Though HKIS is one of the lucky schools in Hong Kong, by international standards the physical space the school has to work with may be considered small. To maximize the footprint and offer as much educational, social, and athletic facility space as possible, the school was constructed on multiple levels and has a number of multipurpose facilities.In an attempt to maximize the potential for future users and minimize the impact on current users, for this project we followed a plan, review, and do approach. This plan involved the following steps: collect information and data about the current use and users, talk to staff, consult with those that manage the Master Facility Plan (MFP), identify and communicate with the stakeholders most likely to be affected, identify an alternate venue for any displaced users, and work with the main stakeholders to develop plans and reach an agreement around the planned renovations before submitting an application for the approval of capital works.The key stakeholders we identified for this project included director of facilities, high school athletic director, high school clubs and activities coordinator, middle school physical education chair, high school physical education chair, activities coordinator, middle school principal, high school principal, and the three staff members who were using the facility.Planning AssumptionsWe undertook the project in the summer of 2012, although the initial work began late in 2010. The demise of squash at HKIS began a few years earlier when the varsity squash team was withdrawn from the local schools competition because of a lack of student interest. The remaining students formed a social club as part of the High School Clubs and Activities Department. The interest in the club program also dwindled over the next 2 years and the club folded, leaving the two courts idle.The first step was to assess the use of the facility through the collection of data contained in the online booking system. The system can generate detailed reports for each facility, including hours of use per day and percentage of use for the various user groups. The reports confirmed that few to no bookings were occurring each week, but we also investigated faculty and student use that may have been occurring without a reservation. …

Professor Jang-Ming Lee: how far will the robotic-assisted surgery go?

Graduated from Medical School, and acquiring his PhD degree in the Medical Research Institute in National Taiwan University, Prof. Lee ( Figure 1 ) is now the chief and professor of surgery in the Thoracic Surgical Division of Surgical Department in National Taiwan University Hospital. He is one of the important pioneers in the development of minimal invasive surgery in thoracic space in Asia. He possesses comprehensive understanding of both surgery development and medical environment of Taiwan. He is deeply devoted in development and education of minimally invasive thoracic surgery especially in the complex procedures including minimally invasive esophagectomy, robotic surgery or peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM). He also actively participates in the editorial or review board in many distinguished international medical journals and has published more than 100 scientific papers. Elected as secretary in general of the thoracic society in 2013, he voices for the society to the government sector, policy makers, the patients and other healthcare stakeholders and leads the education of study for surgery in Taiwan. Due to his achievement in surgical spaces and thoracic education, he is now frequently invited for the lectures to share and to shape the future of the thoracic surgical field.

Assemblages of Quality Early Childhood Education and Care in the Cross-Taiwan Strait Geopolitical Space in Asia

This article draws from Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) social ontology philosophical approach to explore how neoliberal imaginaries are promoted within the Cross-Taiwan Strait region in Asia. Highlighting voucher policies from Hong Kong and Taiwan as examples, the analyses and discussions in this article seek to identify lines of flight as well as to understand reforms as the processes of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization” through which entangled (im)possibilities for the assemblages of quality early childhood education and care are crafted.

Lost in Translation? A Case Study of Macao in Fabricating a European Education Space in Asia

The creation of a European education space has been extensively discussed in Europe. Many scholars are concerned about the way in which the emergence of ‘global governmentality’, such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has produced a ‘soft governance’ in which massive numerical data are used to standardise a European education space. Some challenge whether this global development, namely the PISA data, could serve as the ‘gold standard’ in producing the global ‘script’ for national contexts. Asian countries participating in PISA, while engaging in this ‘process of Europeanisation’, have become fanatics in the area of benchmarking and international comparisons without realising the underlying agenda. They consume and are being consumed by the Europeanisation process, and the effects of this ‘global development’ led by International Organisations (IOs) are irreversible. This article is written from an Asian perspective, and is about Macao, a former European colony, and aims to interrogate and to reflect on PISA's impacts on the territory and to reveal what part the OECD has taken to shape and re-order Macao's educational landscape. The European education space was never created during colonial years before 1999. Macao's engagement in the European agenda only commenced when she joined PISA in 2003. The article queries: (1) are we aware of the ‘fabrication’ of a European education space in Macao?; and (2) how do we translate such ‘fabrication’ to our local system?

Introduction: Reading East Asia's space security dilemmas

Introduction: Reading East Asia's space security dilemmas

Case series of feasibility considerations that impact operational delivery strategy in the highly competitive rheumatoid arthritis space in Asia

Case series of feasibility considerations that impact operational delivery strategy in the highly competitive rheumatoid arthritis space in Asia Karen Wai,1 Lisa Marie Saldanha,1 Elvira Zenaida Lansang,1 Saumya Nayak,1 Anish Sule,2 Ken J Lee31Feasibility and Site Identification Asia, Quintiles East Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; 2Feasibility and Site Identification India, Quintiles India, Mumbai, India; 3Site Services Asia, Quintiles East Asia Pte Ltd, SingaporeAbstract: The rheumatoid arthritis (RA) clinical trial space is very competitive, and recruiting and retaining subjects is of critical importance. Feasibility studies are a central component of ensuring successful recruitment and retention. A feasibility study is an assessment of the practicality of a proposed study protocol, with the goal of understanding challenges and providing risk mitigation strategies leading to better subject enrolment and study start-up should the assessment be favorable. This paper presents findings from a retrospective case series of RA feasibilities, describing important parameters to consider in the highly competitive RA space in Asia. Key parameters identified and discussed are how decisions on clinical development strategy necessitate changes in the clinical operational delivery strategy, with focus on changes in inclusion and exclusion criteria and patient contribution load; how small the patient population becomes when the clinical trial needs to target the patient population that is refractory to standard therapy; regulatory timelines; and the competitive clinical trial landscape. Feasibility assessments are a snapshot in time exercise. Multiple parameters change over time, and, particularly in a space that has become competitive for subjects, one cannot rely on one static feasibility assessment to predict trial performance accurately. Continuous feasibility assessment will also provide insight into the resourcing needs on the part of the sponsor, contract research organization, and investigative site.Keywords: site selection, country selection, clinical operations, risk management, recruitment rates

Asia's space race: national motivations, regional rivalries, and international risks

Asia's space race: national motivations, regional rivalries, and international risks

Politics and Identity: Negotiating Power and Space in Asia

Politics and Identity: Negotiating Power and Space in Asia

Asia's space race

Asia's space race

Handbook of Asian education: A cultural perspective

One can only guess why the editor and his seven co-editors decided to call this thick and heavy volume a ‘‘handbook’’. Moreover, from the point of view of its content this ‘‘handbook’’ contradicts all standard dictionary definitions of such a format. This is not a comprehensive overview of the main information concerning education in the geographical space of Asia; it is actually a collection of mostly analytical texts, which of course do provide a great deal of historical, social and cultural information. However, most of the chapters in the book primarily emphasise insights into different subject matters. Nonetheless, one must acknowledge that so far, despite the large number of publications on one or the other aspect of education in Asia, or on education in particular Asian countries, such ambitious attempts to offer a relatively comprehensive account of education in Asia in a clearly defined framework have been rather rare, if they existed at all. Therefore, this does provide some justification for categorising this volume as a ‘‘handbook’’. Considering the diversity of the continent (excluding its Russian part), the editors obviously decided that a cultural perspective can provide a unified framework for presenting education in view of recent global changes that have elevated Asia’s importance for the world and in the world. Many potential readers who disagree with, or at least feel uncomfortable with, Samuel Huntington’s The clash of civilizations will find the segmentation of Asia into five main ‘‘civilizations’’ somewhat contentious. However, even such readers will have to admit that the main editor’s aim to ‘‘maximize the comprehensiveness of the representation of the diversity in Asian education systems’’ (p. ix) substantiates such a division of the continent. Sinic, Japanese, Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu education are thus presented in separate parts of the book in a number of chapters each. Another editorial methodological aspect touches on problems of a view that could be directed, culturally speaking, from outside or inside. This problem was addressed by

Asian urbanisms and the privatization of cities

The majority of Asia’s cities are being constructed from private funding and by private labor. This has always been the case for so-called informal settlements. Recently, however, the newly acquired socioeconomic status, aspirations, and cultural horizons of the emergent professional and business middle classes in Asia have captured both popular imagination and critical academic attention. These classes are building their own urban spaces, with or without state intervention or support. To what extent can these trends be understood by drawing upon the existing Anglophone literature, which conventionally considers the global cities of Western Europe and North America as the leading edge of urban change and theorization? What can diverse empirical cases in Asia tell us about the global privatization of urban space? Arising from a workshop on the privatization of urban space in Asia, this Viewpoint article addresses four issues that arise from comparison of several Asian cases. More specifically, this work challenges Western-centered assumptions about the spatiotemporal origins of urban change; positions Asia at the leading edge of certain urban trends that may also be discerned elsewhere; questions the prior ‘public-ness’ implied by the term ‘privatization;’ and unravels the dystopianism of Anglophone academic treatment of privately owned, constructed, or regulated spaces.

The Politics of Civic Space in Asia: Building Urban Communities – Edited by Amrita Daniere and Mike Douglass

The Politics of Civic Space in Asia: Building Urban Communities – Edited by Amrita Daniere and Mike Douglass

Review: The Politics of Civic Space in Asia: Building Urban Communities, by Amrita Daniere and Mike Douglass. London: Routledge. 2008. 239 pages. $160.00 (hardback)

Review: The Politics of Civic Space in Asia: Building Urban Communities, by Amrita Daniere and Mike Douglass. London: Routledge. 2008. 239 pages. $160.00 (hardback)

Spaces of Modernity: Religion and the Urban in Asia and Africa

AbstractThis article introduces a symposium on religion and the formation of modern urban space in Asia and Africa. Both the spread of new religious movements and the articulations between religion, globalization and neoliberalism have prompted new analyses of the shifting geographic and social boundaries between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ institutions, practices and discourses, and about the meaning of ‘religion’ itself. We reinscribe work on urban religion within a discussion of ‘modernity’ by dealing with the socio‐spatial mediation of religion and its role in redefining public spaces, practices, norms and discourses in contemporary cities. Individual articles map the spaces engendered by religious imaginaries and the forms of mobility and networks that religion relies on and constitutes, and they identify and analyze the roles played by mass media in religious practice and institution building, as well as the embodied nature of urban religious experience. They demonstrate how urban studies can be ‘pluralized’ and ‘vernacularized’ through analyses of how the urban realm is constituted in part through religious practice and meaning. Our attention to the articulation of religion with cities in Asia and Africa will also help to foster a new theoretical vocabulary within religious studies that is attentive to the historical, cultural and spatial contingencies of religion as a category of analysis.RésuméCet article présente un symposium sur la religion et la formation de l’espace urbain moderne en Asie et en Afrique. La propagation de mouvements religieux nouveaux, ainsi que les articulations entre religion, mondialisation et néolibéralisme, ont suscité des analyses originales sur le décalage des frontières géographiques et sociales entre les institutions, pratiques et discours “religieux” et “laïcs”, et sur la signification de la religion elle‐même. Nous réinscrivons les travaux sur la religion urbaine dans une discussion sur la “modernité” en abordant la médiation socio‐spatiale de la religion et son rôle dans la redéfinition des pratiques, normes, discours et espaces publics dans les villes contemporaines. Les différents articles recensent les espaces générés par les imaginaires religieux, ainsi que les formes de mobilité et de réseaux que la religion élabore et sur lesquelles elle s’appuie ; de plus, ils identifient et analysent les rôles des médias dans la pratique religieuse et la construction de l’institution, et s’intéressent à la matérialité de l’expérience religieuse urbaine. Ils montrent comment les études urbaines peuvent être “pluralisées” et “vernacularisées” par le biais d’analyses sur la façon dont l’univers urbain se constitue en partie par la pratique et la signification de la religion. De plus, notre intérêt pour l’articulation de la religion avec les villes d’Asie et d’Afrique contribue à alimenter un nouveau lexique théorique pour les études religieuses, qui veille aux contingences historiques, culturelles et spatiales de la religion en tant que catégorie analysée.

Sites and rites: sacred space in asia

(2007). Sites and rites: sacred space in asia. Material Religion: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 283-286.

The Politics of Preschool Education Vouchers in Taiwan

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Politics of Preschool Education Vouchers in TaiwanMing‐sho HoMing‐sho Ho Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 50, Number 1February 2006 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/498329 Views: 60Total views on this site Citations: 14Citations are reported from Crossref © 2006 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Yuki Uchida, Tetsuo Ono Generational conflict and education politics: Implications for growth and welfare, Journal of Macroeconomics 69 (Sep 2021): 103315.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmacro.2021.103315Gail Yuen, Mei Seung Lam Mothers' experiences of a voucher scheme within the context of Hong Kong's early education: Issues of affordability and justice, Children and Youth Services Review 82 (Nov 2017): 185–194.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.09.030Eva E. Chen, Hui Li Early Childhood Education in Taiwan, (Jan 2017): 217–232.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1004-4_13Suzannie K. Y. Leung, Eva E. Chen An Examination and Evaluation of Postmillennial Early Childhood Education Policies in Taiwan, (Sep 2016): 245–262.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1528-1_11Ester J. de Jong, Zhuo Li, Aliya M. Zafar, Chiu-Hui (Vivian) Wu Language policy in multilingual contexts: Revisiting Ruiz’s “language-as-resource” orientation, Bilingual Research Journal 39, no.3-43-4 (Nov 2016): 200–212.https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2016.1224988Suzannie K. Y. Leung Evaluating the Free Early Childhood Education Policies in Taiwan with the 3A2S Framework, International Journal of Chinese Education 3, no.22 (Jan 2021): 268–289.https://doi.org/10.1163/22125868-12340040I-Fang Lee Assemblages of Quality Early Childhood Education and Care in the Cross-Taiwan Strait Geopolitical Space in Asia, International Review of Qualitative Research 7, no.11 (May 2014): 80–92.https://doi.org/10.1525/irqr.2014.7.1.80Ka Ho Mok, Kar Ming Yu, Yeun-wen Ku After massification: the quest for entrepreneurial universities and technological advancement in Taiwan, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 35, no.33 (Jun 2013): 264–279.https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2013.786857Belinda J. Hardin, Hsuan-Fang Hung A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Services for Young Children with Disabilities Using the ACEI Global Guidelines Assessment (GGA), Early Childhood Education Journal 39, no.22 (Feb 2011): 103–114.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-011-0448-yMing-sho Ho, Jane Hindley The Humanist Challenge in Taiwan's Education: Liberation, Social Justice and Ecology, Capitalism Nature Socialism 22, no.11 (Mar 2011): 76–94.https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2010.546653William Yat Wai Lo Decentralization of higher education and its implications for educational autonomy in Taiwan, Asia Pacific Journal of Education 30, no.22 (Jun 2010): 127–139.https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791003721572Gail Yuen, Susan Grieshaber Parents' Choice of Early Childhood Education Services in Hong Kong: A Pilot Study about Vouchers, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 10, no.33 (Sep 2009): 263–279.https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2009.10.3.263Hui Li, Jessie Ming Sin Wong, X. Christine Wang Early childhood education voucher in Hong Kong: Perspectives from online communities, International Journal of Early Childhood 40, no.22 (Oct 2008): 49–63.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03165839Ka Ho Mok, William Yat Wai Lo, Ja Oek Gu Reforming school governance in Taiwan and South Korea, International Journal of Educational Management 22, no.66 (Aug 2008): 506–526.https://doi.org/10.1108/09513540810895435