New Area Studies within New Global Polarisations?
Type
Round TableSchedule
Session 4Tue 16:30-18:00 REC A2.12
Conveners
- Claudia Derichs Humboldt University
- Wolfram Schaffar University of Passau
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Add to CalendarParticipants
- Christoph Antweiler Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies
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Marco Zappa Ca' Foscari University of Venice
A product of Cold War-era confrontation, Area Studies need now to face new global political and economic arrangements. Particularly after the end of the Cold War, Area Studies have contributed to deparochializing US- and Euro-centric visions of the world in the social sciences and humanities disciplines and reorienting them toward a more inclusive approach to non-Western epistemologies and practices. Given their openness and intrinsic diversity, Area Studies escape any attempt of systemization, but in recent years have helped to advance studies on transregional and transborder connectedness, and sustainability. In this regard, Area Studies can actively contribute to the complexity of human systems. Such complexity requires us to overcome state-centered perspectives (i.e., standard languages, stereotypical country brands, etc.). Language and emotional competence enable to dig deeper into the significance of people-to-people and people-to-environment exchanges, their networks, and the nodes where these interactions happen.
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Naruemon Thabchumpon Chulalongkorn University
Over the recent few years, the world has witnessed the rise of youth politics through digital platform across Asia, especially, in Hong Kong (2019-2020), Taiwan (2020), Thailand (2020) and Myanmar (2021). The most apparent in the youth-led political movements are the combi¬nation of street protests with hashtag activisms online. This phenomenon raises an important question about youth politics in the age of digitalization and its contextualization that shapes a particular feature in modes of communication and activities through digital media. Social media is now serve as a channel of communication and a weapon of information to promote the fundamental changes in domestic politics in the digital age.
This paper aims to examine youth politics in the digital age. It argues that the important things of young politics in Asia is not on the street protests within each country, but rather an online network among the youth across the region. To do mapping youth politics in the digital age, this research attempts to advance existing discussion with insight into the cases of Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea through the digital protests of the youth in these countries. Using the 2023 election in Thailand and the …….in South Korea, the study examines youth political move¬ments in such countries as an international online network. It aims to ask the questions on the incorporation under the modes of digital communication into political movements of the youth and the responses of the state to the youth’s political movement online.
Throughout the study, this paper argues that the influences of digital technologies on commu¬nication in contemporary Asia has been increasingly expand in several platforms, the domestic and regional politics of student activism needs to be discussed to draw an exclusive attention to democratic movements in the research sites. Compelling evidence of young protesters and electoral campaigners in Thai and South Korean politics provides implications in explaining what politics means for the youth both online and offline and it can be seen as an essential role in understanding youth politics in the age of digitalization in this region.
Keywords: Milk Tea Alliance, Youth Politics, Digital Protests and Campaigns, Thai Politics, South Korean Politics.
- Vincent Houben Humboldt Universität Berlin
Abstract
The debates on New Area Studies have made an important contribution to critically questioning (classical) area studies and pointing out their coloniality and their intertwining with geopolitical strategies of the Cold War. These debates have thus made it possible to integrate transdisciplinary, post- and de-colonial approaches into a new paradigm of New Areas Studies using a critical approach.
As much as the “classical” project of Area Studies is a child of the Cold War, New Areas Studies unfolded under the political and institutional framework after the end of the Cold War and under the conditions of advancing globalization, which had a twofold impact: On the one hand, the geopolitical logic of the bloc confrontation was lifted in favor of a unipolar world order; on the other hand, a global epistemic community could be formed, as ideas and scholars were increasingly free to transcend borders and debates could be conducted in the Global South in addition to the former colonial centers.
These conditions have been reversed in recent years and pose challenging questions for the project of New Area Studies.
The rapid increase in global inequality, the spread of authoritarianism, the existential crises facing humanity such as climate change, pandemics, financial and economic crises and new interstate wars have led to a renewed global polarization. Buzzwords used to outline the current situation are the end of globalization, deglobalization processes and a new bloc confrontation between the so-called Western liberal world (led by the USA) and an emerging anti-Western bloc (led by China). In this confrontation, governments in Southeast Asia - but also scientists - are increasingly expected if not pressured to position themselves within the new geopolitical logic, and declare their loyalty to either the USA or China. Moreover, under conditions of authoritarianism, academic freedom is increasingly restricted in many Southeast Asian countries. European universities are often becoming a safe haven for critical scholarship. Against this backdrop, in a scientific landscape characterized by increasing authoritarian state intervention and the influence of large corporations, it is increasingly difficult to maintain a global dialogue.
How can New Area Studies react to this situation – given that the conditions of their existence have changed so dramatically or are even lost?
What role can New Area Studies play against the backdrop of a new global polarisation and existential crises?
To address these fundamental questions, we want to bring together scholars who have been working in and about the framework of New Area Studies for an open discussion at a roundtable.