The theme of this conference\, “PRC Enviro nmental Tradeoffs: Modern China’s Environment\, Science\, and Landscapes”\, aims to create synergy among Pacific Northwest scholars engaged in environ mental studies of China\, to explore the relationship between China’s polic ies/politics\, history\, and physical environment\, and to investigate issu es of different effects (social-ecological) at different scales. Three pane ls will address issues ranging from the effect of environmental impact asse ssments and NGOs to CAFO policies\, earthquake reconstruction to fire\, flo ods and flood control\, and the socio-ecological implications of medicinals production to developments in socio-ecological resiliency\, ecosystem vuln erability & disasters.
The conference is open to the public and stude nts.
Coffee/Tea & Snacks ( 8:30am-9:00am)
Opening Comments (8:50-9:00am)
Governance\, Policy\, and Politics Panel (9:00am-11:45am)<
br />Timothy Cheek (UBC) (Chair/Discussant)
Paul Thiers (WSU Vancouver
)\, Assessing Policies to Promote Biogas Energy on Concentrated Animal Feed
ing Operations: Lessons from the Clean Development Mechanism in China
Robert Hanlon (TRU)\, China's Climate Agenda and the Asian Infrastructure I
nvestment Bank
Guo Li (UBC)\, Greening the Dragon: International Envir
onmental NGOs in China's Environmental Policy Making.
Pitman Potter (U
BC)\, Coordinating Human Rights and Trade Policy in China: The Case of Envi
ronmental Protection.
Lunch at KPU Richmond (3rd Floor) (11:45am-12:30pm)
Disasters\, Ecosystems and Urbanity Pan
el (12:30pm-2:45pm)
John Friedman (UBC) (Chair/Discussant)
Ye Zhiguo (SPU)\, Cities under Siege: Flood in 1931 and the Environmenta
l Challenges of Chinese Urban Modernization
Jack Hayes (KPU/UBC)\, Fir
es in the Country\, Fires at Home: Scaling and Understanding Rural\, Periur
ban and Urban Fire Policies in Modern China
Dan Abramson (UW)\, Post-E
arthquake Reconstruction in Ethnic Qiang Settlements of the Upper Min River
Watershed\, Sichuan
History\, Economy\, and Society Panel (3:00pm-5:30pm)
Tracey Kinney (KPU) (Chair/Discussant)
Ste
van Harrell (UW)\, Intensification\, Vulnerability\, and Disaster in Chines
e History
Denise Glover (UPS)\, Traditional Medicine Production: Small
-scale Benefits\, Large-scale Concerns
Jennifer Tippins (BERK Consulti
ng)\, Considering Scale in Resilience Indicators for Socio-ecological Syste
ms: Lessons from China's linpan Landscape
Workshop Participan ts Dinner at Dynasty (after 5:30pm-7:30pm)
Steve Harrell
Dr. Stevan Harrell is Professor
of Anthropology and Environmental and Forest Sciences\, and Adjunct Profes
sor of Chinese at the University of Washington. Over the last 40+ years\, h
is research in Taiwan and China has covered topics including family and dem
ography\, folk religion\, economic development\, ethnicity and ethnic relat
ions\, rural education\, material culture\, and more recently human-environ
ment interactions. He currently has two edited books in press with the Univ
ersity of Washington Press: Transformations of Chinese Patriarchy\, co-edit
ed with Gonçalo Santos\, and Rural China on the Eve of the Communist Takeov
er: G. William Skinner’s Field Notes from Sichuan\, 1949-1950\, co-edited w
ith William Lavely. He is at work\, sporadically\, on a history book tentat
ively titled An Ecohistory of People’s China.
Pitman Potter
Dr. Pitman B. Potter is Professor of Law at UBC Law Faculty an
d HSBC Chair in Asian Research at UBC’s Institute of Asian Research. His te
aching and research focus on PRC and Taiwan law and policy in the areas of
foreign trade and investment\, dispute resolution\, property law\, contract
s\, business regulation\, and human rights. Dr. Potter has published severa
l books\, including most recently Assessing Treaty Performance in China: Tr
ade and Human Rights (Vancouver: UBC Press\, 2014) and The Legal System of
the People’s Republic of China (Cambridge: Polity Press\, 2013). He has als
o published over 100 articles and essays. In addition to his academic activ
ities\, Dr. Potter is admitted to the practice of law in British Columbia\,
Washington\, and California (inactive)\, and serves as a consultant to the
Canadian national law firm of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. Dr. Potter is eng
aged in international trade arbitration work involving China and is on the
panel of arbitrators for the China International Economic and Trade Arbitra
tion Commission as well as several regional arbitral bodies. He has served
on the Board of Directors of several public institutions\, including the As
ia Pacific Foundation of Canada where he is currently a Senior Fellow. He r
ecently chaired the APFC Taskforce Report\, “Advancing Canada’s Engagement
with Asia on Human Rights: Integrating Business and Human Rights” (2013). D
r. Potter is ordained a Deacon in the Anglican Church of Canada.
Dr. Jack Hayes joined the Asian Studie
s and History faculty at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2013. He is als
o Research Associate at the Center for Chinese Research in UBC’s Institute
of Asian Research. Dr. Jack’s teaching areas at KPU include late imperial a
nd modern Chinese and early modern and modern Japanese history\, as well as
global and Asian environmental history\, Asian religions\, tea society and
culture in Asia\, and Asian film classes. Dr. Jack’s research focuses on e
nvironmental issues\, fire and climate disasters\, ethnic relations\, the i
ntersection of Asian warfare and natural ecosystems\, and sometimes tourism
in western China. He has published a number of articles on Chinese environ
mental history\, most recently on fire ecosystems and Chinese legal history
\, and wetlands and warfare in Chinese history. His first book\, A Change i
n Worlds on the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands (Lexington/Rowman & Littlefield\,
2013) analyzes the social and environmental history of Sino-Tibetan north S
ichuan. Dr. Jack is currently working on articles related to climate change
\, grasslands policy\, and western China and fire in Mediterranean/Med-like
ecosystems and policy frameworks. He is also completing a manuscript on th
e fire environmental history of China from the 1600s to contemporary policy
. Dr. Hayes also serves on the editorial board and as Assistant Editor (rev
iews) for the journal Environmental History and Associate Editor (China) fo
r the journal Pacific Affairs. In addition to his academic activities\, Dr.
Jack has served as a consultant on number of environment and history proje
cts in China and the United States.
Ye Zhiguo
D
r. Zhiguo Ye is currently an assistant professor of history at Seattle Paci
fic University. She received her PhD in history at the University of Minnes
ota in Twin Cities in 2010. Her research interests include the socioeconomi
c and cultural history of modern China\, Chinese urban history\, and enviro
nmental studies. Belonging to the generation who grew up in the reform era
and witnessed China’s most remarkable urban revolution\, she always wants t
o understand China’s model of urbanism and its formation from a historical
perspective. She is currently working on a manuscript based on her disserta
tion entitled “Big Is Modern: The Making of Wuhan as a Mega-City in Early T
wentieth Century China\, 1889-1957.” It examines the city making process of
Wuhan out of three independent cities separated by the Yangzi River and it
s largest tributary. The study aims to historicize the formation of a “big”
vision of urban modernity—gigantic and centralized developed along the fif
ty years of making “Great Wuhan” and how the fascination with “bigness” was
shared by both the Nationalists and Communists and ran across time and ide
ology to even shape urban landscape of China today. Dr. Ye also published a
few articles on related topic in both Chinese and English languages\, incl
uding the most recent ones “Rethinking China’s Model: Contending Perspectiv
es on Chinese Economic Reform and State Governance” published in The Journa
l of International and Global Studies (Volume 5\, April 2014) and “Remappin
g Chinese Cities: From Empire’s Political Centers to the Battle Field of ‘T
rade War’” published in Modern China (March 2016 forthcoming)
Dan Abramson
Dr. Daniel Benjamin Abramson is Associate Profe
ssor of Urban Design and Planning\; Adjunct Associate Professor of Architec
ture and Landscape Architecture\; and member of the Global Studies\, China
Studies and Canadian Studies faculties at the University of Washington\, Se
attle\, USA. His degrees include a BA in History from Harvard University\;
an M.Arch. and M.C.P. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology\; and
a doctorate in Urban Planning from Tsinghua University\, Beijing. (He is th
e first American to receive a Chinese graduate degree in urban planning.) H
e held a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the UBC Centre for Human Settlem
ents in 1998-2000\, and was a founding board member and Secretary of the In
ternational Association for China Planning (IACP) from 2005-2009. His proje
cts in China include community-based urban neighborhood preservation and re
vitalization and research on property rights\, housing and land policies. S
ince 2008\, including six months as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in
2010 and currently as a Visiting Professor at Sichuan University\, he has w
orked on post-earthquake reconstruction projects in ethnic minority village
s of the Upper Min River watershed\, and rural urbanization planning in the
Chengdu Plain/Lower Min River watershed. He has also collaborated with Kob
e University on earthquake recovery planning in Japan\, and with geohazards
scientists and emergency management officials and policy experts to improv
e earthquake and tsunami preparedness and resilience in the Puget Sound and
coastal tribal communities in Washington. He teaches urban and site analys
is design\; cross-cultural and international field studios in urban design
and community planning\; and methods of community engagement.
Denise Glover
Dr. Denise M. Glover teaches anthropology and
Asian Studies at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma\, WA\, where she h
as been since 2008. She earned her PhD in anthropology from the University
of Washington in 2005 (under Steve Harrell). Her research focuses on issues
of ethnic identity and representation\, medicine production\, and environm
ental knowledge in the Rgyalthang area (aka Shangrila) in NW Yunnan Provinc
e\, PRC. She has published various articles and book chapters\, was lead ed
itor for Explorers and Scientists in China’s Borderlands\, 1880-1950 (2011\
, University of Washington Press\; Steve Harrell\, co-editor) and co-editor
(with Sienna Craig) of a special issue of the journal Asian Medicine\, tit
led “Conservation\, Cultivation\, and Commodification of Medicinal Plants i
n the Greater Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau.” Most recently\, she has written a
bout the challenges of cultural relativism with children’s health in the fi
eld (in upcoming publication Doing Fieldwork in China…with Kids! Nordic Ins
titute of Asian Studies). She is a Board member and Treasurer for the Socie
ty of Ethnobiology\, and an editorial board member for the journal Ethnobio
logy Letters. At the University of Puget Sound her classes include Asian Me
dical Systems\; People\, Plants\, and Animals\; Introduction to Anthropolog
y\; Indigenous Peoples\; Linguistic Anthropology\, and Environmental Anthro
pology.
Jennifer Tippins
Jennifer L. Tippins ho
lds Masters degrees in International Studies-China Studies and Urban Planni
ng from the University of Washington. Her MUP thesis addressed “Planning fo
r Resilience: A Proposed Landscape Evaluation for Redevelopment Planning In
the Linpan Landscape”. She is currently an Associate Planner with BERK Con
sulting in Seattle.
Robert Hanlon
Dr. Robert Ha
nlon is a political scientist and consultant whose research explores the li
nks between corporate social responsibility\, sustainable development and h
uman rights in emerging Asian economies. He teaches International Relations
at Thompson Rivers University and is an associate faculty member in the Sc
hool of Humanitarian Studies at Royal Roads University. Prior to joining TR
U in 2013\, Dr. Hanlon served as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Inst
itute of Asian Research\, University of British Columbia\, for three years.
He has taught at theUniversity of British Columbia\, Kwantlen Polytechnic
University\, Simon Fraser University and the Royal Military College of Cana
da. Outside academia\, Dr. Hanlon has worked for the Asian Human Rights Com
mission\, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong\, as well as the Hi
gh Commission of Canada in Australia. He holds a PhD in International Relat
ions and Asian Politics from City University of Hong Kong\, a master’s degr
ee in Peace and Conflict Resolution from the University of Queensland\, as
well as a BA in Political Science and Philosophy from the University of Vic
toria. He has been a visiting scholar at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies
(Oxford)\, the Liu Institute for Global Issues (UBC)\, the Sasin Graduate
Institute of Business Administration (Chulalongkorn)\, and most recently th
e Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo\, Canada
Dr. Paul Thiers received his Ph.D. in Politic
al Science from the University of Oregon in 1999. He is now an Associate Pr
ofessor of Political Science at Washington State University’s Vancouver cam
pus where he teaches comparative and environmental policy and directs the u
ndergraduate and graduate programs in Public Affairs. His research focuses
on connections between globalization and local environmental governance wit
h specific regional emphases on rural China and the US Pacific Northwest. I
n China\, projects have focused on Chinese pesticide policy\, China’s integ
ration into international organic food markets and China’s bioenergy and cl
imate change policy. In the Pacific Northwest\, he is part of the NSF Portl
and-Vancouver ULTRA-EX project\, a multi-institutional and multidisciplinar
y research effort looking at environmental governance across a politically
bifurcated ecological region. The core research question for Dr. Thiers is
how biophysical systems interact with social systems on local\, regional an
d global scales.
Guo Li
Guo Li is a PhD Candida
te in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Colu
mbia. Her research fields are comparative politics and politics theory\, wi
th a focus on public participation in environmental politics in China and C
hina’s civil society development.
Since joining UBC\, Li Guo has part icipated in a range of research programs including Professor Mark Warren’s Deliberative Democracy research\, Canada-China joint program in China’s Cha rity Law Development\, as well as China’s GMO and bio-diversity politics an d policy in Professor Yves Tiberghien’s global governance research projects .
Timothy Cheek
Dr. Timothy Cheek (齐慕实) is Prof
essor and Louis Cha Chair in Chinese Research at the Institute of Asian Res
earch and Department of History\, UBC. His research\, teaching and translat
ing focus on the recent history of China\, especially the role of Chinese i
ntellectuals in the twentieth century and the history of the Chinese Commun
ist Party. Currently pursuing three projects: Contemporary Thought and Soci
ety in China: The ideas\, debates\, writings\, and roles of intellectuals i
n contemporary China with a focus on "certified knowledge" and institutions
of intellectual life. Most of my graduate supervision focuses on this topi
c. My recent papers and articles have been in this area. Mao Zedong: Transl
ating and editing Mao texts with Stuart Schram for vol. VIII of Mao Zedong’
s Road to Power\, being the complete works of Mao in English for 1942-1945\
; also edited A Critical Introduction to Mao (2010). Thinking about Chinese
Thinking (反思中国思想) An interdisciplinary project to coordinate the disciplin
es of history\, social psychology\, and political theory in the study of Si
nophone discourse about public issues and ideologies\, such as liberalism.
Recent publications include: The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History (Ca
mbridge: Cambridge University Press\, 2015)\, Mao’s Road to Power: Revoluti
onary Writings\, 1912-1949\, Vol. VIII\, co-editor with Stuart R. Schram (L
ondon: Routledge\, 2015)\, and “Chinese Socialism as Vernacular Cosmopolita
nism\,” Frontiers of History in China\, vol. 9:1 (March\, 2014)\, 2-28.
John Friedmann
Dr. John Friedmann is Professor Eme
ritus in the School of Public Affairs at UCLA and Honorary Professor in the
School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC. He was founding professo
r of Program for Urban Planning in the Graduate School of Architecture and
Planning at UCLA\, and at various times between 1969 and 1996 served as its
head for a total of 14 years. In 1988\, he received the American Collegiat
e Schools of Planning Distinguished Planning Educator Award. International
recognition for his achievements includes Honorary Doctorates from the Cath
olic University of Chile and the Technical University of Dortmund\, Germany
. His publication record includes 15 individually authored books\, 11 co-ed
ited books\, and more than 150 chapters\, articles\, and reviews. Prior to
coming to SCARP\, Friedmann was a Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Arc
hitecture\, Building and Planning of the University of Melbourne (1998-2001
). His current research is on urbanization processes with special reference
to China. His most recent books include Empowerment: A Theory of Alternati
ve Development (1993)\, Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil
Society (with Mike Douglass) (1996)\, The Prospect of Cities (2002)\, Chin
a’s Urban Transition (2005)\, and Insurgencies: Essays in Planning Theory (
2011).
Tracey Kinney
Dr. Tracey J. Kinney gradu
ated with a Ph.D. in Nineteenth Century German History from the University
of British Columbia in 1997. Her research focused on the Young German movem
ent\, looking in particular at the intersection of literature\, censorship\
, and political development during the Vormärz era. Her dissertation is ent
itled\, “Challenging the Myth of ‘Young Germany’: Conflict & Consensus in t
he Works of Karl Gutzkow\, Heinrich Laube\, Theodor Mundt\, and Ludolf Wien
barg”. Her sub-fields included the social & cultural history of the 20th Ce
ntury United States and modern Chinese peasant movements. In recent years T
racey's teaching interests have expanded into such topics as the role of te
xtile production in global history and\, most recently\, food in global his
tory. She will begin her second consecutive term as Chair of the History De
partment and her first term as Coordinator of the Asian Studies Program in
Fall 2015.
She is the author of Conflict & Cooperation: Documents on Modern Global History (OUP)\, 4th Edition\, forthcoming 2017\, and co-autho r of The Twentieth-Century World: An International History\, with William K eylor & Jerry Bannister (OUP)\, 2nd Canadian Edition.
Sponsor
: Centre for Chinese Research\, Institute of Asian Research\, Kwan
tlen Polytechnic University Faculty of Arts
By: S. Ha
rrell (UW)\, J. Hayes (KPU/UBC)\, T. Cheek (UBC)\, J. Friedmann (UBC)\, T.
Kinney (KPU)\, P. Potter (UBC)\, R. Hanlon (TRU)\, P. Thier (UW Vanc)\, D.
Abramson (UW)\, Z.G. Ye (SPU)\, D. Glover (UPS)\, J. Tippins (BERK Conslt)\
, G. Li (UBC)
Type: Conference