Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. xii, 318 pp. (Tables.) US$75.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0- 8166-9768-3; US$25.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-8166-7969-0.
Meredith Weiss and Edward Aspinall, political scientists, have compiled a volume on “student activism” in Northeast (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong) and Southeast (Indonesia, Burma, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines) Asia. In the introduction, the editors, along with Mark Thompson, define student activism as “collective action by university students directed toward…the ruling regime”(2). They argue the ten Asian case studies are held together due to mutual economic dependencies based on production cycles and capital flows. To capture the variations and patterns of this activism, they provide four analytical frameworks (the development of the higher education system, the development of student collective identities and organizations, the development of political regimes, and the diffusion of transnational ideas and practices). Their social science collaborators, then, deploy these frameworks, along with social movement theories and concepts, spanning the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Throughout the case studies, the authors develop Thompson’s “vanguard in a vacuum” thesis, tracing student activism from elite nationalist organizations under colonialism to mass-based leftist and rightist organizations under developmental regimes (authoritarian to liberal), especially in periods when social and political actors (organized labour, peasants, middle-class professionals, political parties, religious organizations) vacated the public sphere. Recognizing student mobilizations as social movements, the authors borrow a variety of concepts (political opportunity structures, collective frames, repertoires of contention, social networks) from social movement theories (resource mobilization, political process, contentious dynamics, framing and social construction), providing an uneven integration of structural and cultural analysis.
Some authors (Steinhoff on Japan, Kongkirati on Thailand, Park on South Korea, Abinales on the Philippines) highlight the zenith of contentious dynamics in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, leaving the reader searching for student practices in the globalization era. Other authors (Aspinall on Indonesia, Min on Burma) focus on constructed identities and discourse analysis during activist periods, leaving the reader searching for institutional and organizational relations that bridge the crests. Not surprisingly, authors who provide a diachronic structural and cultural analysis make for more persuasive cases (Wright on China and Taiwan, Ortmann on Hong Kong, Weiss on Malaysia).
In a concluding review of the case studies, Aspinall and Weiss discover a paradox, namely mass higher education and democratization result in the decline of student activism. With rare exception, they argue that powerful forces (the transformation of the education system, the spread of democracy, and the fading of international models) work against large-scale student mobilizations. While this may reflect current student political practices, it may also stem from the volume’s analytical assumptions.
The “student activism” definition and “vanguard in a vacuum” thesis centre the authors’ and reader’s attention on student mobilizations against state regimes. While this state-centred approach might prove fruitful under colonial and developmental regimes when civil societies were weak, it largely ignores contemporary forms of institutional domination, as civil societies and corporations strengthen under globalization. Here, student activism can shift into cyberactivism or transnational activism, collective practices that transform discourses and identities within Asian societies, beyond the historical repertoires and social spaces under review in this volume.
Despite this drawback, the volume provides a welcomed introduction to Asian student movements and a comparative perspective on European and American student movements. The analytic frameworks alone should enable social science and Asian studies students to develop a comparative agenda, promising new research on student organizations, transnational ideas and practices, and cross-societal alliances that amplify student activism. In the end, the undergraduate will discover a reference-filled resource revealing historical and contemporary facets of Asian student movements.
William A. Hayes
Gonzaga University, Spokane, USA
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