IKMAS Seminar Series No.3/2017
Title: ‘Nation and Nation Building’
Date: 15 March 2017
Time: 2.30pm – 4.30pm
Venue: Bilik Seminar IKMAS
Speaker: Dr. Heng Siam-Heng (Visiting Professor at Chiang Mai University, Thailand)
Abstract
Human beings have a sense of shared identity when they work and live in a community. National identity refers to such shared identity of people living in a common territory called the nation-state, and nation refers to the community of people. ‘Nation’ as used today refers to a modern nation, a concept that has evolved in European history. The concept of a nation as the predecessor of a modern nation was in use in Europe at least as early as in the 16th century. It refers to the cultural and political elites and not to the rest of the population. The distinction was social and political rather than ethnic and linguistic. The 19th and 20th century witness the emergence of two influential concepts of ‘nation’; one is based on citizenship and the other is based on race, culture, language, religion and common history. Their corresponding ideologies are civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. Globalization has some features very different from the last two centuries. The new historical context suggests that it may be fruitful to explore possible new meanings of the ‘nation’. This seminar aims to view the nation in the historical context of globalization, to reflect on the past, and to suggest perspectives to analyse “the nation” and to propose approaches to guide our thinking in looking forward.
About the speaker
Dr Michael Heng has held academic appointments in Australia, the Netherlands and at 6 universities in Asia. He spends most of his working life doing teaching and research at universities. In between, he has worked as a software engineer at a transnational company, a research scientist at the Dutch research agency TNO, and an associate editor of a business weekly magazine. He has published five books. His teaching and research interests are in business strategy, electronic business, supply chain, globalisation, Asian modernisation, and Nation Building. He was a former Adjunct Professor at IKMAS for two years and currently is a Visiting Professor at Chiang Mai University, Thailand