Principal speaker
Dr Chris Wirth
Despite increasing social and economic interdependence, relations between Northeast Asian states are often tense and led to the enhancement of military readiness. This contradiction is nowhere more apparent than in the maritime sphere, the space that has become most militarized and politically divisive while at the same time connecting production networks and consumers irrespective of national boundaries.
What Manuel Castells conceptualized as the tension between the space of flows and the space of places is manifest in the competing paradigms of the freedom of the seas versus the enclosure of the ocean. The imperative of accelerating flows of goods, people and information has sharpened this contradiction with the deep sea simultaneously being idealized as a ‘void’, an empty surface to be annihilated to save time while at the same time serving as container of ‘abundant’ natural resources whose development requires territorialization.
The study first shows how the contradiction of these two uses led to constructions of maritime space that exclude what Philip Steinberg termed ocean stewardship. Next, the analysis of official ocean policies and discourses in China, Japan and South Korea reveals how the Northeast Asian seas have become spaces for the production of danger. The study concludes that the production of danger, intentionally or not, serves to bolster political legitimation in China, Japan and South Korea, both domestically and in relation to the international society of states.
Christian Wirth is a Research Fellow at the Griffith University Asia Institute. He holds master degrees in law from the University of St. Gallen and international affairs from the Australian National University. After working for the federal government in Switzerland he studied Chinese at Tsinghua University. Chris wrote his PhD thesis on the traditional – non-traditional security nexus in Sino-Japanese relations at Waseda University. He also taught at Sophia University in Tokyo. His research interests include East Asian regionalism, international relations of Northeast Asia and critical security studies.
- Thursday 28 March 2013
- N72, Meeting Room -1.18
- Nathan campus
- 12.30 – 1:50pm
To RSVP, please contact Natasha Vary on (07) 3735 5322 or n.vary@griffith.edu.au by 5.00pm Monday 25 March 2013.
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RSVP on or before Monday 25 March 2013 , by email n.vary@griffith.edu.au , or by phone (07) 3735 5322
Event contact details
- Natasha Vary
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- (07) 3735 5322