Politics in East Asia

The lectures deal with various conceptualizations of East Asia in history and in recent politics, concentrating, however, on the traditional triangle of Korea, Japan, and Chinese polities. Parts of the lectures analyze the region with traditional theoretical tools of international politics, but the perspective is widened to economic cooperation, demographic changes, and rhetorical politicking, which are useful perspectives for understanding the region as it is nowadays. The course was first set up in 2009, but renovated almost completely in 2012; only two lectures on demography from the first edition have survived, as demographic changes are rather slow.

The course has been organized and most lectures have been given in studio on 19-20 December 2012 by Pekka KORHONEN, professor of world politics at the University of Jyväskylä. He has received help from his friends, who gave lectures related to the subject in Jyväskylä in front of a live audience on 17 August 2012 during an Asian Studies Day organized by the national Doctoral Program of Contemporary Asian Studies. These friends are professor of sociology TAROHMARU Hiroshi at Kyoto University, professor of political science Joseph CHENG at City University of Hong Kong, and associate professor of international politics LUO Tianhong at Renmin University of China.

These lectures have been arranged by the University of Jyväskylä for the Finnish University Network for East Asian Studies, and together with reading material - presented elsewhere - form a course of 5 cr.