CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS: DAY 1, St. John's College

Session 1: Asian Canadian Studies I (945am-1030am)
Title: Asian Canadian Art and Media Representation/s
Discussant: Prof. Chris Lee, UBC English

The Hui Brothers and the 1970s Young Hongkonger Man:
Re-thinking the Astronaut in Context of 1970s Heterosexual Masculine Desire
Justin Tse, Geography, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a research agenda that connects the transnational astronaut of the 1980s and 1990s with young Hongkonger men in the 1970s. Indeed, the Hong Kong astronauts in the 1980s and 1990s were the young Hongkonger men in the 1970s. This paper thus attempts to understand the astronaut by understanding the dominant discourse of what it meant to be a young Hongkonger man in 1970s Hong Kong. It taps into this discourse through the medium of film, specifically the films of Michael and Sam Hui in the 1970s (Games Gamblers Play, The Last Message, The Private Eyes, and The Contract). Michael and Sam Hui's films between 1974-1978 represented a shift in the Golden Harvest Company's film-making industry from an emphasis on the kung-fu movies of Bruce Lee to the comic realism of the Hui Brothers. These films expresseD heterosexual masculine desires that need to be understood within the 1970s Hong Kong historical framework. This paper argues from the Hui Brothers' 1970s films that this heterosexually masculine desire had three components. The first component was that these desires were framed in a generational framework: young men's father figures (be it their blood relatives, older brothers, or bosses) were hierarchically superior to the young men because they pulled their economic strings. The second component deals with how these masculinities were then practical as young men tried to work their way out of the generational framework to establish their own economic status: young men became masters of improvisation in everyday situations, particularly by forming male partnerships known in Cantonese as pak dong to attempt to becom heads of their own families. The third component shows that these practical masculinities ultimately worked toward these young men establishing playboy masculinities: young Hongkonger men wanted to become heads of their own families so that they could live secret lives of playboy luxury. The paper thus concludes by suggesting that the astronauts of the 1980s and 1990s must be understood in the context of generational, pragmatic, and playboy masculinities that young men found Themselves engaged with in the 1970s.

KEYWORDS: masculinity, comedy, Hong Kong, astronaut,
pragmatic, playboy.

The Research and Creation of a Graphic Novel:
Comic Art Narrating Migration Experiences
Joanne Joe Yan Hui, Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, Concordia University

ABSTRACT
With the recent commitment of small presses to produce high quality comic books, the comic form is in the midst of an exciting transformation from comic books as popular culture to comic books conceptualized as art and literature. Imparted in this reinvention are fresh approaches to narrative autobiographic practices. The juggling of text and image in comic art is particularly effective in telling life stories of individuals subjected to social and political traumas. The graphic novel as a memoir lends effectively nuanced approaches for showing and telling traumatic experiences that in many instances can be too direct to express in text alone. My project investigates concepts of identity in comic art, taking it into a new arena of scholarship that looks at works of graphic arts addressing culturally-specific and historical conditions of migration.
More routinely, we find objects of cross-fertilization in film, literature, design, and art, owing to an increase of China’s trading capacity, an increase of immigration of Asians into the West, and an increase of professionals working overseas. We are currently witness to an extensive cross-fertilization between Asian mangua and manhua and Western comic culture. Graphic novelists, such as Gene Luen Yang American Born Chinese (2006), Derek Kirk Kim, Same Difference and other stories (2003), and Adrian Tomine, Summer Blonde (2003), deal with issues of race and identity through stories that are short exposures of ordinary people’s lives.

My paper focuses on authorship and narrative strategies of comic artists in both North America and China and explores how these two streams of creative production have shared key historic moments of influence. A selection of 100 graphic images, including editorial and propaganda cartoons, comic strips, graphic novels, and art media, will constitute the main unit of analysis.

The selected works will represent a range of different authorial approaches to the representation of the Chinese subject. The outcome of my research will be in the form of a comprehensive critical essay and a graphic novel. In the Pacific Worlds in Motion conference I would like to present the current stages of my research and creation. The specific corpus to be included in my paper will include close cultural readings of relevant sampling of the ‘Chinese subject’ within graphic arts since the first instances of Chinese immigration, in 1850, to the present day situation of Chinese Canadian artists concerned with issues of identity. At the same time I weigh in the artistic production of Chinese Canadian visual artists as figures who offer redemption and new visions to a history of racial discrimination and subsequent internalized feelings of racial melancholia.
My paper will address the questions: how has the representation of Chinese and Chinese-Canadians in visual culture evolved from the first instances of Canadian immigration to the present? And how have the issues of immigration and cultural integration been addressed over this time within visual culture?

KEYWORDS: graphic novels, racial trauma, research and creation, immigration experiences, autobiographic practices and life writing, visual studies, pictorial cartoons, comics, Chinese representation and identity.

Session 2: Asian Canadian Studies II (1045am-1200nn)
Title: Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Asian Canada
Discussant: Prof. Renisa Mawani, UBC Sociology

Sanzida Z Habib, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia
Race, Ethnic Diversity, Culture, and Multiculturalism: A Feminist Antiracist Examination of South Asian Canadian Women’s Utilization of Cancer Screening Services

A number of studies on cancer screening behaviour among women in Canada reveal that South Asian immigrant women are less likely to have either a Mammogram or a Pap- smear. A lot of them tend to focus on these women’s beliefs and knowledge about and attitudes towards breast cancer, breast self-examination, mammogram, and/or cervical cancer and Pap smear, which are believed to originate from their culture, and to prevent them from engaging in cancer detection practices. Thus for improved accessibility, most of these studies recommend culturally sensitive service delivery, or awareness about minority cultures among health professionals. Culturally sensitive or cross-cultural care, informed and shaped by the state multicultural policy, is a popular approach to addressing the needs of ethnic minority peoples, or ‘multicultural others’ and managing ethnic or cultural diversity within the Canadian health care system. Drawing the antiracist critiques of multiculturalism in the area of South Asian women’s use of Pap-smear and Mammogram, this paper will reveal that multicultural discourse has effectively removed the attention away from racism and other systemic barriers in the Canadian society while attributing the problem of inequitable access to the culture of these women. In the multicultural paradigm the structural and material differences or inequities among population are reduced to the issue of ethnic and cultural diversity. Through the discourse of diversity the power differences are neutralized and explained in merely cultural terms whereas culture along with ethnicity and community is constructed as pre-given, static, and independent of the social, historical, economic and structural forces. This paper will also reinforce the importance of antiracist and postcolonial feminist scholarship in understanding South Asian women’s experience of health disparities and underutilization of cancer screening services.

Invoking “Japaneseness”: The Utilization of ethnic resources among new Japanese immigrants in Canada.
Eisuke Shimo, Anthropology, Hokkaido University

ABSTRACT
After the revision of immigration law in 1967, a large number of people from all over Asia, known as “new immigrants,” crossed the Pacific Ocean and came to Canada. Since then, approximately 1,000 Japanese have continued to immigrate to Canada every year. Unlike the “old immigrants” who left Japan for economic reasons before WWII, the new immigrants come for cultural and social reasons, which are usually based on their dissatisfaction with Japanese society. These range from age and sex discrimination to the over-emphasis on academic background to the intense social and cultural pressures to conform to the Japanese status quo. Furthermore, most of these new immigrants possess the same cultural capital as Canadians, as shown by their specialist skills and proficiency in English language and technology. Along these lines, reports in recent years highlight “quality of life,” “self fulfillment” and “taking on new challenges” as reasons for new immigrants choosing to leave Japan. Under such circumstances, being Japanese is not as important as the other aspects in their social lives.

In this light, ethnicity is no longer the primary source of identity for new immigrants. Rather, ethnicity is located outside of them, regarded as an object or commodity that can be used as “resources.” For instance, although ethnic festivals have the function of cultural preservation, they are also sites where immigrants “sell” their culture. Immigrants in the business world treat their ethnic features as valuable resources for entrepreneurship. What is it that prompts ethnicity to be used as resources in this manner? I suggest that one of the factors is Canadian nationalism. Despite the nation’s multicultural policy, a real “Canadian” is expected to have what Mackey (2002) calls “core Western culture.” As a result, the meaning of ethnicity has been interpreted as an attempt to avoid being absorbed into “Canadian culture.” Another related factor is race. In the 1980s, multiculturalism met with criticisms from the white majority who regarded the policy as a reverse discrimination. This backlash was fueled by the competition for limited resources between a segment of Canada’s white population and new immigrants who have been perceived by some as having “invaded” Canadian society. Consequently, there are cases in which Japanese nationals with advanced graduate degrees acquired in Canada cannot get a job directly related to their specialty. This fact suggests that ethnic and racial minorities continue to be subjected to social constraints because of race and that their Asian backgrounds can be a liability. As a result, immigrants have no choice but to utilize their ethnicity as resources. In this presentation, I intend to consider these issues in demonstrating the dynamics of ethnic resource utilization.

KEYWORDS: Japanese Canadian, new immigrant, ethnicity, cultural resource, race, nationalism


Sannie Tang, Nursing, University of British Columbia
Critical conceptualization of immigrants as a ‘social group’: Possibilities for challenging social inequities and historical injustice

ABSTRACT
‘Immigrants’ is perhaps one of the most politically charged and contesting identities in contemporary social world. On the one hand, most newcomers to a country are eager to feel accepted as legitimate citizens by becoming ‘one of the mainstream’, thus often resisting the label as an ‘immigrant’ (read ‘outsider’). On the other hand, despite their desire to participate fully in the social and economic life of their new country, many immigrants do not have equal access to the life chances that ‘non-immigrants’ are able to enjoy. Instead, as ‘evidence’ from various statistical and social studies indicate, recent immigrants to Canada are emerging as an underclass who are subject to experiencing the consequence of social and economic inequities including chronic low income, un-employment and under-employment. In other words, the notion of ‘immigrants’ is not merely ‘fictional’ but is real in the sense that the social location as ‘immigrant’ has real implications for the everyday life of people who have come to Canada from somewhere else.

In this paper, I argue that in order to understand how social inequalities are structured for immigrants, it is strategically important not to erase the category of ‘immigrants’ from our actions and dialogue (just as some might argue that the social category of ‘race’ will cease to exist if we stop talking about it), but to use it as a critical entry point for explicating the complex processes that enter immigrants into the relations of social formation in their ‘host country’. To do this, I propose that we conceptualize immigrants as a ‘social group’, the existence and being of which expresses those race/class/gender relations that define the ideological boundary of group identification as well as structure and organize the everyday experiences of people who belong to that group. In order to illustrate the political and analytic currency that this proposed conceptualization has to offer, I will locate my discussion at three particular points. First, I explore how the notion of ‘immigrants as a social group’ helps to disrupt the ideologies of individualism and egalitarianism that shift responsibility from the structure/state onto the individual by blaming immigrants for failing to integrate and succeed in their new country. Second, I discuss the differences between conceptualizing ‘immigrants as a social group’ and ‘immigrants as a cultural group’, and examine how the ‘social group’ concept could avoid some of the pitfalls of culturalism that academic and non-academic discourses around immigrants tend to engender. Last but not least, I discuss what possibilities the notion of ‘immigrants as a social group’ provides for challenging historical injustices against immigrants (and other racialized populations). I conclude by pondering some of the implications of conceptualizing ‘immigrants as a social group’ for immigrant research, theorizing, and activism.

KEYWORDS: Immigrants, inequities, race/class/gender relations

Session 3: Asian Canadian Studies III (200pm-315pm)
Title: Asian Canadian Histories and Placemaking
Discussant: Prof. David Ley, UBC Geography

The Potato Wars: Chinese-Canadian Resistance during the Exclusion Era
Ruth Mandujano López, History, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
Almost immediately after their arrival on the western coast of present-day Canada, during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese-Canadians became targets of racially discriminatory attitudes and policies by Dominion authorities and different sectors of the “white” society. The process reached its climax during the Exclusion Era when the federal government prohibited the arrival of new Chinese immigrants (with very few exceptions) and applied even more restrictions to those already living in the country. Yet, the Chinese-Canadians conceived strategies to survive and actively confronted injustice. This paper intends to recover their voices and actions in their effort to confront discrimination. It focuses on the experiences of potato farmers and peddlers and their particular forms of resistance during the mid-1930s in order to demonstrate that even during the harshest period of legal discrimination, Chinese-Canadians were not mere recipients of legal violence but actually engaged in acts of resistance by pushing the limits of the unfair legal system in which they were living. Additionally, it aims to problematize the simplified notion of separate spheres that has dominated the field, according to which discrimination is seen as a confrontation between two homogeneous contenders: whites versus Chinese.

KEYWORDS: Chinese-Canadian communities, Resistance, Vancouver Chinese


A new kind of refugee: Hong Kong to Canada in 1962
Laura Madokoro, History, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
Fifteen years after the repeal of exclusionary anti-Oriental legislation, the Canadian government took the next step in the evolution of its migration policy and admitted one hundred Chinese refugees from the territory of Hong Kong. While small in terms of numerical impact, the special admission of the Chinese families in 1962 marked the first time that Canada offered asylum to refugees from Asia and it came at a time when Canada was seriously redefining itself and its position in the international scene. The admission of these refugees, therefore, represents a significant marker in Canada’s shift from a largely Euro-centric migrant nation to a more global and Pacific-oriented one. This paper seeks to investigate the import of the 1962 Chinese refugees against the historical backdrop of anti-Asian immigration legislation in Canada and the later, extraordinary efforts to provide asylum to Indochinese refugees following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Unfortunately, this task is complicated by the dearth of evidence available to scholars and the widespread disinterest in this particular refugee movement. Archival materials documenting government policy during this period remain closed and the movement is most often treated as a footnote in general histories of Canadian migration policy. Nevertheless, this paper will attempt to piece together the impact of the 1962 asylum offer based on the limited evidence currently available. In so doing, this paper will consider the meaning behind the lack of substantive attention to this group to date and argue that new and important research avenues are possible if migration scholars follow the Canadian government’s lead and shift their traditional focus from west to east. By seriously considering the role that Pacific migration movements played in state-building activities in Canada, scholars can provide a rich analysis of how immigration has shaped the country both domestically and in terms of the roles it plays on the world stage.

KEYWORDS: refugee, Hong Kong, Asia

Layering Upon Cultural Landscapes:
Continuity as a Design Vision for Vancouver’s Chinatown
Yin-Lun Chan, Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
Mobility changes and communication technology advances have impacted migration patterns in unprecedented ways. Over the course of the twentieth century, successive waves of international migration and the popularization of tourism have inscribed cultural imprints on metropolitan landscapes. As places evolve over different sets of historic circumstances, many historic ethnic neighbourhoods within Western metropolises have evolved from the fulfilment of everyday functions into marketed tourist destinations. Vancouver’s Chinatown is one telling example of how ethnic relations have evolved over time and captured in the traces of urban form. Originally developed as an ethnic enclave in a society of wide racism, the neighbourhood has now come to represent the celebration of Vancouver’s multicultural fabric. The current problem now lies in that what appears to be a firmly rooted and culturally unique place that has developed through a lived, organic process of migration settlement over the past century has been capitalized and represented through a superficial image in touristic place-marketing. The 1971 Provincial heritage designation of Chinatown, to some, has turned it into a “Musem-without-walls”. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the skyrocketing property values of Vancouver and hegemonic notions of “livability” are encroching upon the Chinatown fabric with a dominant podium-point tower typology. Development pressure and the influx of a different demographic threatens to erase the area’s historic fabric and social structure.

With changing market forces, settlement and consumer trends, the historic Chinatown needs to redefine itself in the context of Vancouver’s Downtown and Downtown Eastside developments. The urban design challenge for Chinatown now becomes one of how to preserve existing layers of history but allowing Chinatown to evolve and sustain a vibrant community. I argue that preservation of culturally and historically significant landscape is crucial for communities to develop a strong sense of place, identity, and belonging. The question of what is to be kept, what is of high cultural value, and what can be disregarded and built-upon becomes of primary importance. And in what forms, and in what character shall the additional contemporary layer take? Through design, the representation of the “contemporary” has to become intentional and self-conscious. Design as a research approach is integral to the understanding of urban form, in that it explicitly critiques the existing realm and actively envisions an alternative scenario. It is future-directed and makes constructive propositions for change. Through the lens of critical regionalism, the current project attempts to capture Chinatown’s essence of place through experience, narratives, and the structure of signs, and finally proposes an urban design vision that will layer upon the historic thickness of the site. By doing so, I wish to develop a site-specific vocabulary, and more generally, a design methodology that would direct the design of cultural landscapes. The design addresses authenticity as an attitude in process and identity of place as the driving generator of function and form. The objective of the final design is to create an open space that is strongly embedded in site activities, reinforces the identity of place, and firmly rooted within local and larger geographic context.

KEYWORDS: Chinatown, cultural landscape, design, preservation, urbanism