Center for Asian Studies wins three-year grant from Henry Luce Foundation to conduct trans-Pacific studies in âlively research fieldâ (article by Clint Talbot)
As the United States steps back from international development, China is launching huge infrastructure projects as a way to broaden its global influence. For scholars at the ČÊĂń±Š”ä, this trend raises new questions they aim to address with support from theÌę.
The ČÊĂń±Š”ä Center for Asian Studies has won a three-year Asia Responsive Grant from the Luce Foundation for a project called âChina Made: Asian Infrastructures and the âChina Modelâ of Development.â
Ìęsupport collaborative research to improve understanding between the United States and the Asia-Pacific region. During the China Made project, the Center for Asian Studies will collaborate with the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong.Ìę
Studying the effect of new roads, airports and pipelines might seem narrow, but the issue has broad implications: In 2013, China launched theÌę, in which it has spent about $150 billion annually in 68 countries along the Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road. This effort is part of Chinaâs goal of becoming aÌę.
Chinaâs initiative raises questions in fields beyond political science, notes Tim Oakes, the centerâs director. Oakes says thereâs rising interest in infrastructure across the social sciences and even in the humanities.
âAnd that might seem kind of odd. Why would somebody in an anthropology department care about a pipeline or a road? But, in fact, itâs become a very lively research field.âÌęAt the same time, Oakes says, thereâs a research gap: âThereâs so much interest in this, and yet very few people who are writing about this are writing about China, and China is in many respects the worldâs paradigmatic infrastructure state.â
China invests seven times what the United States invests in infrastructure, as measured by proportion of gross domestic product. âChinaâs entire foreign policy in many respects is all about building infrastructure in other countries.â
The United States has often tied its international-development expenditures to the promotion of human rights, democracy, âthe kinds of values the United States likes to project abroad.â
âChina likes to present itself as an alternative model in which it is saying, âWe donât need to get into ideology. We donât need to get into the internal affairs of (other) states. We are simply there to help build things, and thatâs a win-win for everybody.ââ
Oakes and his collaborators, including Emily Yeh of Geography, will focus on infrastructure development both in China and in other countries.
He emphasized that the research goal is not solely geopolitical. âWe really need to look at the infrastructures themselves. We really need to draw from whatâs been going on in infrastructure studies.â
Such qualitative research is labor intensive, requiring time on the ground, language skills, cultural knowledge. âYou canât just look at spreadsheets. You canât just go in and see a dam or building and say, âThis is whatâs happening.ââ
The goal is to study the effects of the new infrastructure in the social and cultural contexts in which theyâve been built, or, according to Oakes, to look at: âWhat kinds of political effects do they have, intended and unintended?â
Such questions arise as some academic world views are shifting, Oakes said.
âIn terms of social theory, weâre in kind of a post-human or post-humanist moment in which the material world that we live in is viewed as an increasingly important part of how we analyze the social.â
Part of the change in perspective reflects an understanding that climate change is a part of the world we live in now, âand that any study of social processes needs to account for the dynamic environment we live in and how that has effects on how society is constituted and organized and how it changes.â
He added, âPeople who just thought of themselves as social scientists are increasingly interested in thinking about the broader environmental world or the non-human world that impacts human society.â
Infrastructure undergirds that ânon-human world.â
The China Made project aims to shift the academic focus from broader geopolitical and international relations perspectives to a âfiner grained analysisâ of the infrastructures themselves and the on-the-ground social and cultural dimensions of their construction, Oakes states.
China Made will include new postdoctoral and graduate research positions, the development of online scholarly resources for project participants and the academic community, and three academic conferencesâtwo of which will be hosted by the Center for Asian Studies.
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