Speaker: Emily T. Yeh is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract: Although infrastructure is conventionally thought of in reference to human-designed systems such as railroads, pipelines, tunnels, and ports, landscapes, and nature itself are also increasingly being understood as infrastructure through terms such as “natural infrastructure” and “green infrastructure,” which tend to focus on the concept of ecosystem services. Taking an infrastructural lens onto natural infrastructure projects in the context of Xi Jinping’s call for ecological civilization, this paper argues that new calculative tools obscure the profoundly political nature of ecological red lines and ecological functional zones, which effectively enframe China’s national territory as an object of optimization. The paper then explores a specific aspect of the project of ecological civilization: campaigns to dismantle and destroy infrastructure deemed to be in violation of environmental regulations. I theorize this as a form of “destructive production” of natural infrastructure and provide two case studies of the dismantling of scenic areas not long after their reconstruction following the Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan.

Bio: Emily T. Yeh is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. She is the author of Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development, and co-editor of Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, and Rural Politics in Contemporary China.

Faculty host: John (Jack) Zinda, Developmental Sociology

Co-sponsored by Cornell Department of Global Development

and The Polson Institute for Global Development

Rescheduled from April, Dr. Daisy Wang will present this year's annual Stoikov Lecture, "Who is Lai Fong? New Perspectives on 19th-Century Photography in China" as a free webinar.

Daisy Wang is deputy director of the Hong Kong Palace Museum, which will open its doors in 2022. She was previously the Robert N. Shapiro Curator of Chinese and East Asian Art at the Peabody Essex Museum and the Chinese art specialist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (formerly Freer and Sackler). She cocurated the groundbreaking exhibition Empresses of China’s Forbidden City, a collaboration between the Peabody Essex, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum in Washington, DC, and Beijing’s Palace Museum.

Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography at the Johnson; Stacey Lambrow, curator of the Loewentheil Photography of China Collection; and Yuhua Ding, PhD 2020, former curatorial assistant for Asian art at the Johnson, will share selected research findings from their recent exhibition, Lai Fong (ca. 1839–1890): Photographer of China.

This lecture is supported by the Stoikov Asian Art Lecture Fund at the Johnson, which was funded by a generous gift from Judith Stoikov, Class of 1963.

Free registration is required to attend this virtual event via Zoom.

The food industry has a long history of driving and shaping low wage labor migration regimes, and around the world agriculture is often a site for large undocumented workforces, exploitative visa arrangements, and a disproportionate share of human trafficking as compared with other industries. Agricultural labor migration schemes have long permitted overcrowded housing and dangerous working conditions, allowing employer retaliation to trigger deportation of workers who speak up about dangerous conditions. Workers and allies in Asia have turned to labor organizing, trade policy, and the United Nations to address these concerns.

Presenter: Beth Lyon, Clinical Professor and Founder, Farmworker’s Legal Assistance Clinic at Cornell Law School

Register: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oHFvyPPjQFWzCAfW6CwEpw

Part of the series "Migrations: A Global, Interdisciplinary, Multi-Species Examination"

Bios:
Austin M. Aldag (M.R.P. '18) is currently a Ph.D. student within the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. His research agenda focuses broadly on local governance, the delivery of public services, federalism, and inter-governmental relations, all within the United States. Aldag has published in various academic journals, including, but not limited to, The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory; Public Administration Review; Public Management Review; and Publius: The Journal of Federalism.

Yuanshuo Xu (M.R.P. '13, Ph.D. '19) is an assistant professor at Zhejiang University, China, where he studies economic development, state decentralization, and specializes in spatial analysis of the U.S. and China. His work has been published in academic publications like The Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, and Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society. He served as a post-doctoral associate within City and Regional Planning, where he obtained both his M.R.P. and Ph.D. He has a B.S. from the China University of Mining and Technology.

Mark Davidson is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University. His current research investigates trends in municipal governance, and he has an international reputation for his research on gentrification and critical urban theory. He holds a B.A. (Hons) and Ph.D. in Geography from King's College London.

Abstract:
Local government fiscal stress can be understood through various lenses. A popular, but misconceived lens in the US and western Europe is austerity urbanism, when the data shows pragmatic municipal responses. A popular lens in China is the growth machine, when asymmetric state rescaling is more accurate. Aldag and Xu will present a set of papers, conducted as part of Professor Warner's Local Government Restructuring Lab. These papers use broad national data and sophisticated modeling techniques to look at the diversity of responses across the U.S. and China and the role of higher levels of government in a multi-scalar governance system. Understanding divergent paths are important as planners attempt to put local government responses to fiscal stress in context. Implications for the coming COVID-19 recession will be discussed.

If you would like to attend this lecture, please email the department (crpinfo@cornell.edu) to receive Zoom information.

Chinese migrants and travelers have been traveling to the countries of the Southern Oceans (the "Nanyang", in Chinese) for at least two millennia, and probably longer. We have only scattered records of their passing for the first thousand years of these voyages, but then the documents start to get better, and we can outline the passage of enormous numbers of people, migrating to new lives in the "South Seas". This talk will trace those histories, looking at the warp and weft of Chinese migrations over two thousand years.

Presenter: Eric Tagliacozzo, John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University

Register: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_P0QsYVT3RS2-4xxeNH9txA

Part of the series "Migrations: A Global, Interdisciplinary, Multi-Species Examination"

Ithaca Premiere> 2019 > China/Italy > Directed by Rita Andreetti
With Hu Jie
The observer of this documentary's title is China's Hu Jie, maker of films, woodcuts and paintings who courageously documents the years of the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution. None of his films have been shown in his homeland. "Featuring lush photography and revealing interviews, Rita Andreetti's sensitive portrait of the artist... explores Hu Jie's commitment, tenacity and bravery, as well as the toll that his work has taken on his personal life." (Icarus Films) Subtitled. More at icarusfilms.com/df-obser Please note: we encourage those with a CU NetID to view this film by visiting CUÕs Streaming Services at newcatalog.library.cornell.edu/databases/subject/Streaming%20Video. Once there, look for this film in the Docuseek2 Collection. Those without a CU NetID should send a reservation for a screening link.
1 hr 18 min.

We will start taking reservations one week in advance of a film's first playdate. Requests received before that time will not be processed.

Ithaca Premiere

2019 > South Korea > Directed by Bora Kim
With Ji-hu Park, Sae-byuk Kim, Seung-yeon Lee
Fourteen-year-old Eun-hee moves through life like a hummingbird searching for a taste of sweetness wherever she may find it. Ignored by her parents and abused by her brother, she finds her escape by roaming the neighborhood with her best friend, going on adventures, exploring young love and experiencing everything that comes with growing up in a country on the brink of enormous change. Subtitled. More at kinolorber.com/film/house-of-hummingbird
2 hrs 18 min

We will start taking reservations one week in advance of a film's first playdate. Requests received before that time will not be processed.