MSc Politics of Asia

The module presents a critical overview of core concepts and debates in comparative politics as well as an introduction into the comparative method. Drawing on comparative politics debate developed in the West, the module primarily focuses on non-Western regions of the world.

This module is designed to provide a general introduction to problems, approaches and debates in social science methodologies (broadly understood). The aim is to make MSc students familiar with prominent methodological angles and language(s), to provide both a solid grounding in the key issues and a critical understanding of them.

This dissertation enables the students to work on a research topic in relation to their chosen major. They will learn how to approach the topic they have chosen from an academic angle, under the supervision of a member of staff. The dissertation is normally written over the summer period and submitted in September.

This module introduces students to ethnographic studies in and of a particular region in South Asia, its resident populations, and/or its diasporas, viewed through a variety of interconnected topics that have been important in the anthropological literature. Students will have the opportunity to explore classic and contemporary anthropological themes, such as social organization, political economy, religion, gender and sexuality, race/ethnicity, caste and class personhood, the body, consumption, labour and livelihoods, violence and justice, and the environment, as they take shape in particular locales. The module also encourages students to consider how anthropological and historical understandings help us to recognize the fundamentally interconnected and global nature of any nation, subregion, or region, whose boundaries are often designated or shift as a result of colonial, post-colonial, and neo-colonial social processes and power relations.

The module is designed to offer a critical overview of East Asian cinema, and its interregional flows from the beginning to the present day. It will be looking at how actors and directors travel across the region.

The aim of this course is to give a broad analytical and chronological outline of the macro political economic development of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh from Independence to the current period. The course contains a broad mix of macro economic theory, and empirical and historical analysis.

This course provides an introduction to the post-1950 evolution of the main economies of the Asia-Pacific region (comprising Northeast and Southeast Asia). It looks at macroeconomic issues, with a particular focus on growth, trade and investment flows, and fluctuations in economic indicators since the middle of the 1990s.

This course looks at the interaction between China's economic transformation and world development since the late 1970s until the present time. The emphasis is on critically analyzing and assessing this interaction from alternative historical and theoretical perspectives.

This course looks at the economic development of China since 1949, with  a primary emphasis on the post-1978 era. Its purpose is to apply economic theory to analyze the dynamics of China's economic transformation and assess its developmental performance. Topics covered include: growth and industrialisation, enterprise reform, reforms of the financial system, and the role of the state in economic development

This course will introduce students to the main themes in the economy of Japan. The course provides a historical overview of economic development of Japan, from origins of institutions and industries to contemporary challenges of long stagnation.

This course is intended to provide both an introduction to queer theory, as well as to engage with the question of its relevance in contemporary Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This course will use struggles for sexual self-determination as a prism through which to consider broader questions about the constitution of modernity, the proliferation of identities, rights and claims for justice, the consolidation and deconstruction of postcolonial national identities, the aspirations and anxieties of postcolonial elites, etc. These questions will be studied contextually, with topics in many weeks focusing on a single area case study, or a comparison of two or more country-contexts.

Nationhood and Competing Identities in Modern China

This module will explore different facets of communities in South Asian history, religious and others: what constitutes them, how they positioned themselves in the framework of the larger societies, and how they were represented and interpreted in premodern sources and modern historiography. Examining case studies from the long period beginning with Mahmud of Ghazni down to the twentieth century, the module is organised thematically.

This module aims to introduce students to the many ways in which law, religion and the state interact in the subcontinent. We seek to do so by using, as far as possible, authors from the region, and focus on issues that continue to hold contemporary relevance.

This compulsory core module for the MSc programme on Political Thought focuses on approaches to the study of political theory in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The module is relevant for students in regionally defined MSc programmes in the Politics department, and to those enrolled in area studies degrees based in other departments. It is distinct from other modules in the area studies degrees since our study is not confined to a single geographical region; rather, the focus is on the study of concepts and political thought. The module seeks to introduce the main approaches and themes in the emerging sub-field of comparative political theory and to elaborate conceptual approaches to the comparison of political thinking across regions and traditions that the module develops.

This module is for students with no prior knowledge of quantitative methods used in social research. Students will learn basic quantitative techniques used in social research and conduct the corresponding analyses using the R statistical package, as well as recognise applications of basic quantitative methods in social science journal articles. The topics covered will be: descriptive statistics; graphs; hypothesis testing for sample means and proportions; two-way and three-way tables; simple linear regression; multiple linear regression; and binary logistic regression.

This module provides a philosophical and empirical introduction to contemporary debates regarding the compatibility of Islam and democratic political thought and practice. It also encourages a critical re-examination of these debates through a discussion of Muslim scholarship (and practice) pertaining to the specification and interpretation of religious laws, the role of religious and political opposition, and the status of the individual in political and social life. These aspects are explored conceptually and through case studies from Asia and the Middle East.

This course is designed to provide students with a theoretically informed introduction to key traditional security issues in the international relations and foreign policy of China (People's Republic of China). It seeks to develop an understanding of the key driving forces in China's international relations.

This course is designed to provide students with a broad introduction to the conceptual, historical, and sociological factors that contribute to democracy and authoritarianism in South Asia. While India is the main focus for building in-depth knowledge and within-country comparisons, the course places Indian cases in comparative frames, with other South Asian countries. The course introduces students to recent theoretical work in the field of democratic authoritarianism and South Asian studies. Throughout, the emphasis is placed on analyses of political processes rather than a description of events. At the end of the course, students should have a good understanding of academic work on the South Asia and an ability to write well-structured and well-researched papers on selected subjects in the field.

The purpose of this module is to examine the effects of political factors on economic and social transformation (and vice versa) with reference to the emerging market economies (EMEs). EMEs denote those upper income economies on the cusp of transition to high income status. This module focuses on two main issues. First, how did political factors (i.e. types of regime and the conditions of their formation) facilitate the emergence of the first generation of EMEs during the GATT or pre-globalization era (c. 1950-90)? This section concentrates the varying result of attempts to foster the “capitalist developmental state” in the pursuit of economic take-off. Second, the module will examine how upper middle income economies of today are facing up to the challenges of the globalization era, notably mobile capital (financialization and the emergence of global value chains) and the complex of constraints that constitute the “middle income trap”? Given the vastly changed conditions of the contemporary era, can they learn any relevant political and governance lessons from the experience of the first generation EMEs that have already made the transition to high income status?

This course is designed to provide students with a theoretically informed introduction to key issues in the international political economy and foreign policy of China (People's Republic of China). This course seeks to develop an understanding of the key driving forces in China's international relations.

International Relations of South Asia will give students a broad and comprehensive introduction to this subject. Beginning with conventional IR theory disciplinary frames, it will explore inter-state relations in the South Asian region including the history of conflict between India and Pakistan, the nature of Indian dominance/hegemony over the South Asian region, the place of Afghanistan in conceptualisations of ‘South Asia’, as well as the security perspectives of smaller states in the region including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Other topics in the course will examine non-conventional security issues including questions of economic and environmental security posed by the sharing of international rivers and climate change, as well as the human security issues provoked by ethnic and other forms of conflict in the region.

This course is designed to provide students with a theoretically informed and comparative introduction to key issues in the contemporary international politics of East Asia. East Asia is defined as the states of the Northeast Asia (in particular, China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan), and the two main external actors, the United States and Soviet Union/Russia who played a key role influencing the region’s international relations. East Asia presents fascinating case studies in the study of international relations by bringing together the world’s three largest economies (US, China, Japan), three of the UN Security Council’s permanent members (US, Russia, China) and two divided nations (China/Taiwan and the two Korea).

This course examines the origins, characteristics and dynamics of the political systems of Northeast Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) and how they cope with the dilemmas of economic and social sustainability. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan constitute Asia’s most advanced market democracies. Their histories of very rapid industrialization (c. 1955-90) mean that they were once considered as textbook examples of “development miracles” whose institutions of political and economic governance were widely admired. For the past 30 years, however, they have encountered the serious problems of economic and social sustainability (so-called “high income trap”) that also plague advanced western capitalist democracies, notably, growth slowdown, rising inequality, unaffordable property prices, ageing society and inter-generational divide.

This course examines the origins, characteristics and dynamics of the political systems of Northeast Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) and how they cope with the dilemmas of economic and social sustainability. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan constitute Asia’s most advanced market democracies. Their histories of very rapid industrialization (c. 1955-90) mean that they were once considered as textbook examples of “development miracles” whose institutions of political and economic governance were widely admired. For the past 30 years, however, they have encountered the serious problems of economic and social sustainability (so-called “high income trap”) that also plague advanced western capitalist democracies, notably, growth slowdown, rising inequality, unaffordable property prices, ageing society and inter-generational divide.

The purpose of this course is to examine the effects of political factors on economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The visual dimension of politics is considered peripheral to study of contemporary political phenomenon. Treating the visual as a site of power and struggle, order and change, this module will examine how politics is in fact visually constructed. The course will consider a variety of visual media (historical and contemporary: paintings, statuary, photographs, films, documentaries, social media) and will draw from wide literature including anthropology, visual studies, and art history to learn how these approaches can help us reframe our study of politics.

This course introduces students to a selection of the literature on island South East Asia in order to familiarize them with the broad contours of political change in the region, academic debates explaining these and ways of thinking about current and future political trends. The course covers maritime South East Asia, including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor, and the Philippines.

This course introduces students to a selection of the literature on mainland South East Asia in order to familiarize them with the broad contours of political change in the region, academic debates explaining these and ways of thinking about current and future political trends. The course covers mainland South East Asia, including Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

This is a unique postgraduate module focusing on Taiwan’s relations with China and its international politics. Against the background of the island’s international relations during the period of the Cold War, lectures will explore Taiwan’s search for international space since the 1970s, as well as the evolution of cross-Strait relations under the administrations of Chen Shui-bian (2000-08), Ma Ying-jeou (2008 to 2016), and the newly-elected DPP president Tsai Ing-wen.

This is a course on culture in contemporary South Asia that highlights the multiple forms, languages, and avenues of cultural production; the relationship between local, national, and transnational/global domains; and the remix and reuse of older repertoires and forms in contemporary situations. During the first half of the term the course will introduce key elements of cultural theory and their application to South Asian contexts and materials and problematise the notion of national culture, while noting the ways in which nation-states in South Asia produce and broadcast particular cultural models. During the second half of the term the course will focus on challenges to and complications of these models through instances of cultural and political activism, changing concepts of 'legitimate language', and non-state media production.

The course provides a survey of Zoroastrian teachings, rituals, observances and contemporary issues with reference to Zoroastrian primary sources, including Avestan and Pahlavi texts in translation, and religious practices. It is taught within a historical framework beginning with the Indo-Iranian religious system and going on to trace the development of the religion in the Iranian empires and after the Islamisation of Iran, and its revival on the Indian subcontinent and the contemporary global diaspora.

This module introduces students to ethnographic studies in and of a particular region in South Asia, its resident populations, and/or its diasporas, viewed through a variety of interconnected topics that have been important in the anthropological literature. Students will have the opportunity to explore classic and contemporary anthropological themes, such as social organization, political economy, religion, gender and sexuality, race/ethnicity, caste and class personhood, the body, consumption, labour and livelihoods, violence and justice, and the environment, as they take shape in particular locales. The module also encourages students to consider how anthropological and historical understandings help us to recognize the fundamentally interconnected and global nature of any nation, subregion, or region, whose boundaries are often designated or shift as a result of colonial, post-colonial, and neo-colonial social processes and power relations.

The module is designed to offer a critical overview of East Asian cinema, and its interregional flows from the beginning to the present day. It will be looking at how actors and directors travel across the region.

The aim of this course is to give a broad analytical and chronological outline of the macro political economic development of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh from Independence to the current period. The course contains a broad mix of macro economic theory, and empirical and historical analysis.

This course provides an introduction to the post-1950 evolution of the main economies of the Asia-Pacific region (comprising Northeast and Southeast Asia). It looks at macroeconomic issues, with a particular focus on growth, trade and investment flows, and fluctuations in economic indicators since the middle of the 1990s.

This course looks at the interaction between China's economic transformation and world development since the late 1970s until the present time. The emphasis is on critically analyzing and assessing this interaction from alternative historical and theoretical perspectives.

This course looks at the economic development of China since 1949, with  a primary emphasis on the post-1978 era. Its purpose is to apply economic theory to analyze the dynamics of China's economic transformation and assess its developmental performance. Topics covered include: growth and industrialisation, enterprise reform, reforms of the financial system, and the role of the state in economic development

This course will introduce students to the main themes in the economy of Japan. The course provides a historical overview of economic development of Japan, from origins of institutions and industries to contemporary challenges of long stagnation.

This course is intended to provide both an introduction to queer theory, as well as to engage with the question of its relevance in contemporary Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This course will use struggles for sexual self-determination as a prism through which to consider broader questions about the constitution of modernity, the proliferation of identities, rights and claims for justice, the consolidation and deconstruction of postcolonial national identities, the aspirations and anxieties of postcolonial elites, etc. These questions will be studied contextually, with topics in many weeks focusing on a single area case study, or a comparison of two or more country-contexts.

Nationhood and Competing Identities in Modern China

This module will explore different facets of communities in South Asian history, religious and others: what constitutes them, how they positioned themselves in the framework of the larger societies, and how they were represented and interpreted in premodern sources and modern historiography. Examining case studies from the long period beginning with Mahmud of Ghazni down to the twentieth century, the module is organised thematically.

This module aims to introduce students to the many ways in which law, religion and the state interact in the subcontinent. We seek to do so by using, as far as possible, authors from the region, and focus on issues that continue to hold contemporary relevance.

This compulsory core module for the MSc programme on Political Thought focuses on approaches to the study of political theory in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The module is relevant for students in regionally defined MSc programmes in the Politics department, and to those enrolled in area studies degrees based in other departments. It is distinct from other modules in the area studies degrees since our study is not confined to a single geographical region; rather, the focus is on the study of concepts and political thought. The module seeks to introduce the main approaches and themes in the emerging sub-field of comparative political theory and to elaborate conceptual approaches to the comparison of political thinking across regions and traditions that the module develops.

This module is for students with no prior knowledge of quantitative methods used in social research. Students will learn basic quantitative techniques used in social research and conduct the corresponding analyses using the R statistical package, as well as recognise applications of basic quantitative methods in social science journal articles. The topics covered will be: descriptive statistics; graphs; hypothesis testing for sample means and proportions; two-way and three-way tables; simple linear regression; multiple linear regression; and binary logistic regression.

This module provides a philosophical and empirical introduction to contemporary debates regarding the compatibility of Islam and democratic political thought and practice. It also encourages a critical re-examination of these debates through a discussion of Muslim scholarship (and practice) pertaining to the specification and interpretation of religious laws, the role of religious and political opposition, and the status of the individual in political and social life. These aspects are explored conceptually and through case studies from Asia and the Middle East.

This course is designed to provide students with a theoretically informed introduction to key traditional security issues in the international relations and foreign policy of China (People's Republic of China). It seeks to develop an understanding of the key driving forces in China's international relations.

This course is designed to provide students with a broad introduction to the conceptual, historical, and sociological factors that contribute to democracy and authoritarianism in South Asia. While India is the main focus for building in-depth knowledge and within-country comparisons, the course places Indian cases in comparative frames, with other South Asian countries. The course introduces students to recent theoretical work in the field of democratic authoritarianism and South Asian studies. Throughout, the emphasis is placed on analyses of political processes rather than a description of events. At the end of the course, students should have a good understanding of academic work on the South Asia and an ability to write well-structured and well-researched papers on selected subjects in the field.

The purpose of this module is to examine the effects of political factors on economic and social transformation (and vice versa) with reference to the emerging market economies (EMEs). EMEs denote those upper income economies on the cusp of transition to high income status. This module focuses on two main issues. First, how did political factors (i.e. types of regime and the conditions of their formation) facilitate the emergence of the first generation of EMEs during the GATT or pre-globalization era (c. 1950-90)? This section concentrates the varying result of attempts to foster the “capitalist developmental state” in the pursuit of economic take-off. Second, the module will examine how upper middle income economies of today are facing up to the challenges of the globalization era, notably mobile capital (financialization and the emergence of global value chains) and the complex of constraints that constitute the “middle income trap”? Given the vastly changed conditions of the contemporary era, can they learn any relevant political and governance lessons from the experience of the first generation EMEs that have already made the transition to high income status?

This course is designed to provide students with a theoretically informed introduction to key issues in the international political economy and foreign policy of China (People's Republic of China). This course seeks to develop an understanding of the key driving forces in China's international relations.

International Relations of South Asia will give students a broad and comprehensive introduction to this subject. Beginning with conventional IR theory disciplinary frames, it will explore inter-state relations in the South Asian region including the history of conflict between India and Pakistan, the nature of Indian dominance/hegemony over the South Asian region, the place of Afghanistan in conceptualisations of ‘South Asia’, as well as the security perspectives of smaller states in the region including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Other topics in the course will examine non-conventional security issues including questions of economic and environmental security posed by the sharing of international rivers and climate change, as well as the human security issues provoked by ethnic and other forms of conflict in the region.

This course is designed to provide students with a theoretically informed and comparative introduction to key issues in the contemporary international politics of East Asia. East Asia is defined as the states of the Northeast Asia (in particular, China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan), and the two main external actors, the United States and Soviet Union/Russia who played a key role influencing the region’s international relations. East Asia presents fascinating case studies in the study of international relations by bringing together the world’s three largest economies (US, China, Japan), three of the UN Security Council’s permanent members (US, Russia, China) and two divided nations (China/Taiwan and the two Korea).

This course examines the origins, characteristics and dynamics of the political systems of Northeast Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) and how they cope with the dilemmas of economic and social sustainability. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan constitute Asia’s most advanced market democracies. Their histories of very rapid industrialization (c. 1955-90) mean that they were once considered as textbook examples of “development miracles” whose institutions of political and economic governance were widely admired. For the past 30 years, however, they have encountered the serious problems of economic and social sustainability (so-called “high income trap”) that also plague advanced western capitalist democracies, notably, growth slowdown, rising inequality, unaffordable property prices, ageing society and inter-generational divide.

This course examines the origins, characteristics and dynamics of the political systems of Northeast Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) and how they cope with the dilemmas of economic and social sustainability. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan constitute Asia’s most advanced market democracies. Their histories of very rapid industrialization (c. 1955-90) mean that they were once considered as textbook examples of “development miracles” whose institutions of political and economic governance were widely admired. For the past 30 years, however, they have encountered the serious problems of economic and social sustainability (so-called “high income trap”) that also plague advanced western capitalist democracies, notably, growth slowdown, rising inequality, unaffordable property prices, ageing society and inter-generational divide.

The purpose of this course is to examine the effects of political factors on economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The visual dimension of politics is considered peripheral to study of contemporary political phenomenon. Treating the visual as a site of power and struggle, order and change, this module will examine how politics is in fact visually constructed. The course will consider a variety of visual media (historical and contemporary: paintings, statuary, photographs, films, documentaries, social media) and will draw from wide literature including anthropology, visual studies, and art history to learn how these approaches can help us reframe our study of politics.

This course introduces students to a selection of the literature on island South East Asia in order to familiarize them with the broad contours of political change in the region, academic debates explaining these and ways of thinking about current and future political trends. The course covers maritime South East Asia, including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor, and the Philippines.

This course introduces students to a selection of the literature on mainland South East Asia in order to familiarize them with the broad contours of political change in the region, academic debates explaining these and ways of thinking about current and future political trends. The course covers mainland South East Asia, including Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

This is a unique postgraduate module focusing on Taiwan’s relations with China and its international politics. Against the background of the island’s international relations during the period of the Cold War, lectures will explore Taiwan’s search for international space since the 1970s, as well as the evolution of cross-Strait relations under the administrations of Chen Shui-bian (2000-08), Ma Ying-jeou (2008 to 2016), and the newly-elected DPP president Tsai Ing-wen.

This is a course on culture in contemporary South Asia that highlights the multiple forms, languages, and avenues of cultural production; the relationship between local, national, and transnational/global domains; and the remix and reuse of older repertoires and forms in contemporary situations. During the first half of the term the course will introduce key elements of cultural theory and their application to South Asian contexts and materials and problematise the notion of national culture, while noting the ways in which nation-states in South Asia produce and broadcast particular cultural models. During the second half of the term the course will focus on challenges to and complications of these models through instances of cultural and political activism, changing concepts of 'legitimate language', and non-state media production.

The course provides a survey of Zoroastrian teachings, rituals, observances and contemporary issues with reference to Zoroastrian primary sources, including Avestan and Pahlavi texts in translation, and religious practices. It is taught within a historical framework beginning with the Indo-Iranian religious system and going on to trace the development of the religion in the Iranian empires and after the Islamisation of Iran, and its revival on the Indian subcontinent and the contemporary global diaspora.