Free Public Lecture by Reo Matsuzaki / Co-sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and Department of Political Science
Monday, November 10
12:15 to 1:30PM
Oak Hall Room 438
State Building: A Problem of Political Authority
The Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and the Department of Political Science co-sponsor this free and public presentation, as a timely effort to continue to make sense of the clearly troubling and troubled situation in Syria and the decade-plus debacle in Iraq.
According to Professor Matsuzaki, “… [A] critical impediment to state-building is paradoxically our very knowledge of what a successful state looks like. When ‘modern’ state institutions are imposed upon ‘traditional’ polities, they not only fail to function as intended but, moreover, stand in the way of the modernization of authority relations.”
Reo Matsuzaki is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College. His research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics and history of East Asia, with a focus on colonialism and its legacies. His book project, Imposing Institutions: Colonial Taiwan, Philippines and the Paradox of State-building, explores the normative dimension of state-building. Prior to his appointment at Trinity, Matsuzaki was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where he managed a project examining the issue of governance in China.
For more information, contact: Ms. Fe Delos-Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu