Activist Networks in China
Date: Thursday, 9 November
Venue: AM 103, Alan MacDiarmid Building, Kelburn Campus, Victoria University
Speaker: Dr Stephen Noakes
Abstract
What does China's rise mean for transnational civil society? What happens when global activist networks engage a powerful and norm-resistant new hegemon? The Advocacy Trap combines detailed ethnographic research with cross-case comparisons to identify key factors underpinning variation in the results and processes of advocacy on a range of issues affecting both China and the world, including global warming, intellectual property rights, HIV/AIDS treatment, the use of capital punishment, suppression of the Falun Gong religious movement, and Tibetan independence. Built on a unique blend of comparative and international theory, it advances the notion of "advocacy drift"-a process whereby the objectives and principled beliefs of activists are transformed through interaction with the Chinese state. The book offers a timely reassessment of transnational civil society, including its power to persuade and to leverage the policies of national governments.
About the speaker
Dr Stephen Noakes is Lecturer of Chinese Politics at the University of Auckland, jointly appointed to Politics and International Relations and Asian Studies. His research has appeared in journals such as Pacific Affairs, China Quarterly, Journal of Chinese Political Science, Problems of Postcommunism, Political Science Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is the author of The Advocacy Trap: Transnational Activism and State Power in a Rising China (forthcoming Manchester University Press, 2017), a regular commentator on China's role in international affairs, and a frequent advisor to the aid community on governance issues in the PRC. Prior to joining the University of Auckland, he was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, and a Visiting Research Scholar at Fudan University’s School of International Relations and Public Affairs in Shanghai, China.
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Lai Ching Tan
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