Cultures of Occupation in Twentieth-century Asia

Project Information

COTCA

Grant agreement ID: 682081

DOI

10.3030/682081

Project closed

EC signature date 20 June 2016

Start date 1 July 2016

End date 30 June 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 885 268,00

EU contribution

€ 1 885 268,00

Coordinated by

THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - COTCA (Cultures of Occupation in Twentieth-century Asia)

Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2022-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

How has foreign occupation shaped culture? What has been the lasting cultural legacy of foreign occupation in those societies where it represented the usual state of affairs for much of the modern era? These are key questions which, in light of ongoing cases of occupation around the world, remain crucial in the 21st century. Cultures of Occupation in Twentieth-century Asia (COTCA) has addressed these questions by analysing how occupation (be it under colonial, wartime or Cold War powers) gave rise to unique visual, auditory and spatial regimes in East and Southeast Asia. The core objective was to produce a paradigm shift in the study of occupation. It adopted a transnational, intertextual and comparative approach to the study of cultural expression produced under occupation across the 20th century. It also broke new methodological ground by drawing on and contributing to recent developments in visual, auditory and spatial history as a means of highlighting intersections and cultural convergences across different types of occupation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In Stream 1, the PI worked on a case study on the visual history of Japanese-occupied China and the work of PhD1 on memoryscapes and monuments in US-ruled Philippines. The PI produced 3 peer review articles from his case study (i. 'Journal of Chinese History', ii. 'History of Photography' iii. 'Cultural and Social History'). In addition, data for this case study was uploaded to the COTCA Digital Archive (www.cotca.org). Moreover, the PI published a book based on this study: 'Iconographies of Occupation' (2021). He was invited by Stanford to jointly develop the ’Lin Baisheng Photograph collection’ database in late 2019. In addition, he jointly organised the ‘Cultural and Intellectual Histories of Japanese-occupied China’ workshop in 2019. This resulted in a special issue for the ‘European Journal of East Asian Studies’ in 2020. PhD1 published some of her work in the ‘Journal of American Studies’ in 2020. She graduated on 3 August 2022. In addition, Stream 1 resulted in the publication of ‘Visual Histories of Occupation’ in 2021. This was based on the ‘Visual Histories of Occupation’ workshop held in Nottingham in 2017.

Stream 2 – ‘Sounds of Occupation’ – was led by Postdoc1 and involved PhD2. Postdoc1 undertook language training at Madison-Wisconsin to prepare him for fieldwork in the Philippines, which he undertook in 2018, when he was affiliated with Ateneo de Manila University. The results of Postdoc1’s research were published in a series of 3 articles (i. ‘Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education’, ii. ‘Southeast Asia Research’ and, iii ‘Sound Studies’). He also organised the ‘Resonating Occupations’ Workshop. In addition, he was the lead editor on the volume ‘Sonic Histories of Occupation’ (Bloomsbury 2022). PhD2 successfully completed her PhD her thesis in 2022 under this Stream.

Stream 3 was led by Postdoc2, who also undertook a case study based on the Malayan Emergency. He undertook field research for this in 2018 and 2019, resulting in a series of 3 articles (in i. ‘Enterprise and Society’, ii. 'Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History', and iii. ‘Journal of Historical Geography’). He also built the Malayan Emergency Digital Mapping Case Study on the COTCA Digital Archive. PhD3, working on ‘spaces of consumption in Hong Kong’ in Stream 3, has published some of her findings in ‘Urban History’ (2022).

In September 2019, the PI recruited Postdoc3, whose work could link various streams. She started on her own case study, ‘Bodies of Occupation’. Postdoc3 undertook a period of research in Cambodia in January 2020. As a result of that fieldwork, she produced a number of articles and chapters, such as her papers in ‘Southeast Asia Research’ (2021) and ‘International Criminal Law Review’ (2022). She was also responsible for the 'Spatial Politics of Identity in Cambodia' case study on the Digital Archive, which went live in 2022.

COTCA Project resulted in 2 international conferences, 2 seminar series, 4 international workshops and 2 on-line databases. In terms of publications, outputs include 4 books, 2 PhD theses and 16 peer-reviewed chapters/journal articles (with more output 'forthcoming'). In June 2022, the PI recorded a video presentation in which he reflected on the major achievements of the COTCA Project: https://mediaspace.nottingham.ac.uk/media/t/1_j3a6exz8.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

COTCA has played an important role in expanding debates about the nature of ‘occupation’ and in challenging some of the methodological and conceptual boundaries that have often been set up to distinguish ‘occupation’ from other forms of foreign rule (e.g. colonialism). Such achievements are the result of the extensively comparative angle that COTCA had adopted. Many of these resulting ideas are articulated most clearly in the Introductions to each of the 3 edited volumes that were published under the project with Bloomsbury Academic: ‘Visual Histories of Occupation’ (2021); ‘Sonic Histories of Occupation’ (2022); and ‘Spatial Histories of Occupation (2022). It has since influenced the work of external groups (such as the ‘Occupation Studies Network’ at Maastricht University, on which the PI serves as a member of the Advisory Board) and has reinvigorated the very notion of a field of enquiry which might be called ‘Occupation Studies’. The multidisciplinary approach adopted by COTCA has helped to move the field well beyond the realm of the social sciences and international law, and into new areas of enquiry, such as environmental humanities, new materialisms, post-humanities, historical geography and sound studies.

There have also been important methodological and conceptual advances in each in each of the 3 streams. In Stream 1, for example, the PI’s work has shown how visual sources highlight all kinds of nuanced cultural expression that earlier studies on, for example, literature or cinema under occupation, have overlooked. Such ideas w articulated in the PI's concept of the 'occupied gaze' (developed in his book ‘Iconographies of Occupation’).

Stream 2 developed methods around the use of a sonic perspective to understand the cultural effects of foreign occupation. A good example here is PhD2’s notion of ‘treasonous repertoires’ (articulated in her recently completed PhD), in which she combined musicological and historical approaches to uncover the ways in which music and sound could be used both as a tool of control. Stream 2’s achievements have been noted by major figures in the field. In his testimonial for the volume ‘Sonic Histories of Occupation’, Professor Viet Erlmann noted that ‘from now on [i.e. after the publication of this book], histories of the trauma, dispossession and destruction wrought by colonial and imperialist rule that do not consider sound will be considered insufficient’.

In Stream 3, Postdoc2’s study of the Malayan Emergency (displayed on the www.cotca.org Digital Archive as well as in his article in ‘Journal of Historical Geography’) helped to move that field beyond the histories of colonial violence that have shaped so much of extant literature. In addition, the approaches in this stream adopted by Postdoc2 and Postdoc3 have emphasised the importance of the ways in which different spatial geographies emerged, were adapted and were transformed in the occupation context, and how occupation and colonial rule were shaped, and gave shape to, new typologies of space.

COTCA Workshop Poster 2018

COTCA Workshop 2019 London Poster

COTCA-ARI E mark Seminar Poster 2017

COTCA-ARI Manikham Seminar Poster

COTCA Conference 2021 Poster

Sonic Histories of Occupation - cover

Iconographies of Occupation - cover

COTCA Bodies of Occupation seminar series poster 2021

Visual Histories of Occupation - cover

COTCA Conference 1 Poster

Spatial Histories of Occupation - cover

COTCA-VHH Joint webinar October 2021