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Key Challenges for Asia (UNIB10021)
Undergraduate level 1Points: 12.5Not available in 2020
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About this subject
Please refer to the LMS for up-to-date subject information, including assessment and participation requirements, for subjects being offered in 2020.
Overview
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This first-year breadth subject provides an interdisciplinary approach to key challenges facing Asia and how these are being addressed in India, China and Indonesia: the issue of how to educate the population, the question of how to provide good healthcare, and the challenge of ensuring effective governance. Through close analysis of these issues, the subject offers students a grounding in social and political change in China, India, and Indonesia.
The current challenges facing Asian countries regarding health care, education, and governance are complex, and so too are the varied ways in which India, China and Indonesia are addressing major issues. As a result, it is important to understand key challenges from multiple angles: political, social, economic, cultural and scientific. The subject offers students an opportunity to think about ‘key challenges’ from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, drawing from Geography, Politics, Asian Studies, and Public Health. Students will be introduced to different methodological approaches and research undertaken at different scales: from large data sets to in-depth anthropological case studies.
The subject encourages comparison across India, China and Indonesia. It also promotes analysis of how these countries are increasingly interconnected via flows of people, ideas, and goods - what has been termed ‘relational comparison’.
In addition, the subject considers what it means to be thinking about major social and political issues in Asia from the vantage point of Australia – for example, how could Australia learn from the manner in which major Asian countries are addressing key issues? The subject is designed to encourage students to share their own understanding of Asia and work effectively in a diverse student body.
Intended learning outcomes
On completion of the subject students should have:
- The ability to collate, summarise, and evaluate scholarly work relating to health, education, and governance/law in China, India, and Indonesia.
- The capacity to identify different disciplinary approaches to health, education and legal/governance issues, including work that uses large data sets and in-depth case studies.
- The capacity to illustrate why it is important to be studying Asia in Australia.
- The ability to apply a comparative perspective to the study of health, education, and governance/legal challenges across the three countries, which highlights similarities and differences across China, India, and Indonesia as well as how these countries are connected via flows of people, ideas, and goods.
- The ability to work with students from diverse backgrounds.
Generic skills
Upon successful completion of this subject, students will have skills in:
- Reading, presenting, and synthesising scholarly research
- Conducting library searches for relevant literatures
- Analysing conceptual ideas
- Thinking across different contexts to identify comparative opportunities
- Reflecting on different disciplinary approaches
- Appreciation of the value of different students' perspectives
Last updated: 6 December 2024