Former NIAS Associate Student Henrik Kloppenborg Møller is presently writing his MA thesis at the Centre for International Relations and Development Studies (CIDOB) in Barcelona, where he has interviewed the Director, Professor Sean Golden about the state of Asian studies in Spain

FINAL PART (previous entries below)

Networking on Asian research

I ask Sean if something like a “Mediterranean profile” exists with regards to Asian studies and research and also what the status and future is for European networks seen from the Spanish perspective?

He says that compared to the Nordic countries, which have a relatively long tradition of Asian research, Asian programmes are relatively new in Barcelona and Spain as well as in most other Mediterranean countries. He states it this way that, Spain is just beginning, Portugal and Greece are at a more initial stage, while Italy has a longer tradition for Asian studies at the Universities in Naples, Rome and Venice. Still, CIDOB and UAB are developing their programmes and are participating in various Meditteranean, European and Asian networks.

One example of Meditteranean cooperation is MedAsia, which was founded in 2006. It is a network for Mediterranean research units joined by CasaAsia in Barcelona, Réseau-Asie-CNRS (France), Instituto Italiano per l´Africa e l´Oriente (Italy), Instituto de Estudos Estratégicos e Internacionais (Portugal) and the University of Athens (Greece). With regard to European networks, both CIDOB, CasaAsia and the Centre for East Asian Studies are members of the Europe China Academic Network (ECAN), a European Commission initiative, in which NIAS also participates and which works with the promotion of policy relevant EU-China knowledge and research. CIDOB and UAB are also part of the Asia-Europe Foundation and collaborate with, among others, NIAS Senior Researcher Timo Kivimäki in studies of regional security in Asia. NIAS and CIDOB are also both joining in the ASEM Educational hub. Another example of the growing relations between NIAS and Barcelona’s Asia research institutions is that NIAS Senior Researcher Cecilia Milwertz has been invited to UAB to give a talk on Chinese gender issues in October 2007. The Nordic and Mediterranean countries need each other, Sean says. Joining European networks and exchanging knowledge is surely the way forward - and it is certainly also a way of getting funding. With regards to networks with Asian institutions, a range of exchange programmes for students in Chinese and Japanese language exist. In China, exchange programs have been established with universities in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, and a number of Chinese students come to Barcelona to study. While some of them join the Chinese studies programme, others join European studies. Thus, exchanges and networking on Asian studies and research are carried out between 1) Spain and Mediterranean countries, 2) Spain and European countries and 3) Spain and Asian countries.

Sean assesses that the main challenge for Spain to is recruit new specialists – especially Ph.D.’s. In Spain, he estimates, there are only around 200 people with a degree in Asian studies, which makes the issue of recruiting new people crucial, but also challenging. Unlike in Denmark, for instance, Ph.D.’s in Spain only get their tuition fees paid by the government, while they are responsible for further funding themselves. Some scholarships exist, covering Asian research topics, but they are few and not very high. At Institut Barcelona, D’Estudis Internationals, IBEI, next door to CIDOB, some students and researchers carry out research on Asia, while also some MA students at UAB work with Joaqin Bertrand on field research on Asia.

Most of the work to establish strong degrees and research on Asia remains to be done in the future, Sean concludes. Perhaps an increased European cooperation, in which both Spanish institutions and Nordic institutions such as NIAS take part, will contribute to this work.

For my own part, I will take the opportunity to thank Sean and CIDOB’s staff for welcoming me at CIDOB, and I look forward to learning more about the different work being done on Asia, both here and in other institutions in Barcelona.

http://www.cidob.org/ - CIDOB’s homepage.

www.uab.es – Autonomous University of Barcelona’s homepage.

PART I

I have been in Barcelona for three months now. Apart from acclimatizing, tasting local delicacies and generally sucking in the city’s atmosphere along with strong coffee, I am writing my MA thesis at the Centre for International Relations and Development Studies, CIDOB. The centre is based in a reformed 1587 Augustinian building in the central migrant and workers’ neighbourhood Raval - just 200 meters off the renowned walkway La Rambla - which is rapidly changing its face into to an up-scale creative area with two universities, exhibition halls, galleries, international bookstores, cafés, bars and shops as well as Richard Meyers’ museum of contemporary art, MACBA. What the area lacks in terms of the supreme library facilities at NIAS, it compensates for with a vibrant student life, exciting cultural facilities and what seems to be a successful dialogue between the educational and cultural institutions and the local neighbourhood.

View from the terasse of CIDOB of Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, MACBA

It was Sean Golden, the director of CIDOB’s Asian programme and director of the centre for international and intercultural studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, UAB, where he is also a professor in East Asian studies, who kindly arranged a working place for me at CIDOB. On account of his long-term work as a scholar on China and Asia and primus motor in establishing Asian study and research programmes in Barcelona, Sean seamed to be the right guy to ask about the state of the field of Asian studies and research in Barcelona and Spain, and I decided to interview him for this purpose. He starts sketching out a historical overview and then talks about the status and directions of the different programmes.

Asian studies in Spain
In 1984, there were no Asian programmes in Spain, and Sean, who had a long experience with research in China, approached the government with a request: Since there was already considerable commerce between Spain and Asia, he thought it obvious that they should also initiate academic programmes on Asia in Spain.

In 1988, then, he and his colleagues started teaching Chinese and Japanese language in Barcelona, and in 1992 a center for East Asian studies was set up in Madrid in order to create an official degree course. In 2000, a degree in International and Intercultural studies was established at UAB. The degree combines economical, political and social issues with Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. Then, in 2001, the first official BA degree in East Asian studies was established in Barcelona and Madrid. Also, in Salamanca, a BA in East Asian studies is now offered, but only covering Japanese language. In 2006, an official MA degree on research in East Asian studies was established at UAB. In 2001, a summer school was established from Barcelona with an Asian seminar, from where papers are published.

In Barcelona, the Annuario Asia Pacifico periodical is published by CIDOB, CasaAsia and Real Instituto Elcano, with the first issue released in 2004. CasaAsia, which was opened in 2002 in Barcelona, is a culture house that organizes conferences, lectures, exhibitions and cultural promotions for the public and the local business circle. It also has a small library with titles on Asia. The Real Instituto Elcano is a Madrid based think tank with an Asia-Pacific programme, which among other activities publishes briefings, reports and working papers. CIDOB further publishes Revista d’afers internationals (review of international affairs) with Asian editions, Enciclopedia del Mediterráneo, as well as a series of working papers and books on Asian issues. The general approach to Asian studies and research in Barcelona, Sean explains, is interdisciplinary with a focus on social sciences.

PART II

CIDOB’s Asia programme
CIDOB was established as a private foundation in 1979. It is sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the regional Catalan government, the local government of Barcelona, as well as by some public donors and banks. It is currently headed by Narcís Serra, former minister of defence in Spain. The foundation’s goal is “to be a framework of reference in the sphere of international, and development studies”. It is a centre for International Studies, a documentation centre and it also hosts the Biblioteca Internacional de Barcelona, BIBA. Main areas of activities include organizing conferences and seminars, as well as publishing yearbooks, journals and books.

Especially CIDOB’s Asia programme, which is co-ordinated by Alex Gonzalez and headed by Sean Golden, should be of interest to NIAS. While networks have already been established between Northern and Southern institutions doing Asia related research, including between NIAS and CIDOB, more academic exchanges, mutual learning, interdisciplinarity and inter-European research programmes covering Asia, seems to be a trend that also attracts funding.

Sean Golden came to CIDOB in 2001 to establish its Asia programme, which currently hosts five research areas:
1) America – Asian relations as well as Spain – Latin America – Asian triangulation, focusing on business, international relations and policy.
2) Asian migrations, Asian communities in Spain and Mediterranean Europe, focusing on the economic actions of Asian communities in Spain.
3) Economic emergence and Civil Society in Asia, focusing on international power politics of Asia.
4) Transition processes, political dialogue and Asian powers in international systems, focusing on international relations and conflict resolution.
5) Central Asia in the 21st Century.

The challenge for CIDOB is to choose research topics that give the institution a unique identity, Sean explains. With the combination of the five research programmes, CIDOB’s Asia programme resonates with other European programmes at the same time as it maintains a singularity making sense in the local Spanish context. Comparing these research areas with the ones covered by NIAS could prove interesting for continuing dialogues, while the differences between the two institutions’ approaches to Asian research, differences perhaps more generally between Mediterranean and Nordic approaches, could also prove a learning experience for NIAS. While CIDOB’s programmes 3), 4) and 5) in some respects overlaps with some of NIAS’s focus areas, the first two programmes seem more cultural specific to Spain.

The Asian migrations programme focuses on Asian migrants to Spain and specifically on the rapidly developing ethnic business communities in Spain. As I am still trying to search out the different institutions and people focusing on issues that might resonate with my own MA project on Chinese migrants’ business at a ‘fake’ market in Shanghai, this programme is especially interesting for me, while it also exposes some urgent local issues in Barcelona.

PART III

The Asian migration programme: Making sense of Chinese tapas and cheap haircuts
The area around Arc de Triomf, where I live, has recently been developing into a type of Chinatown with dense clusters of businesses and shops owned by Chinese family business networks. A long row of shops situated next to each other sell Chinese produced clothes engross at cheap prices, while Chinese hairdressers, restaurants and – equally interesting – Chinese “Spanish style” cafés and restaurants, offering tapas and espressos, are scattered around the area.
It has come to the point where local Catalan business owners are complaining about the take-over of their businesses by Chinese. But at the same time the power of the Chinese business owners has been increasing as they have joined the association for small, and medium sized commerces.
Sean explains that there are three steps for the business owners: First, they arrive, then they accumulate capital and open shops catering mainly to other Asians, and finally they buy local shops.
As we speak, I start to wonder how the workers are recruited and enter the country, how business networks are organized and how the shops are run? Especially, since walking down C/ Trafalgar does not seem all that different from walking in Shanghai’s Xiangyang market: A long row of Chinese owned shops selling the same kinds of cheap clothes for negotiable prices. I do not remember any similar concentration of this type of Chinese businesses in Copenhagen. Also, it occurs to me that I have seen very few studies of, for instance, the business strategies of Chinese migrants in the Nordic countries, (though NIAS Press has just published Mette Thunø’s book Beyond Chinatown: New Chinese Migration and the Global Expansion of China on Chinese past and present migration).
The responsible of CIDOB’s Asia migration programme, Joaquín Beltrán, is based at UAB, and coordinates case studies of the Chinese business in Barcelona funded by CIDOB. With 12% of Barcelona’s population being migrants, many of them illegal and dependent on economic strategies and business networks alternative to those available in the “formal society”, this programme seems highly relevant in the local setting. Joaquín Beltrán works on the theme in collaboration with Amelia Sáiz López at UAB and with researchers in Madrid and the Canary Islands.