CALL FOR PAPERS

6^th International Conference

Intra-Asian Connections: Interactions, flows, landscapes

22-24 October 2014 – Asian Dynamics Initiative – University of Copenhagen

Much scholarship on and in Asia is compartmentalized in subcontinents (South, East, Southeast, Central Asia) and – within these larger regions – in individual country studies (e.g. China, Japan, India, Indonesia). This is understandable, given the investment it takes for non-Asians to learn languages and build effective research networks. But ‘Asia’ as we know it today is the result of myriad, multidirectional flows: economic, political, military, cultural, religious. In spite of ‘hard’, modern borders, such flows still define much of Asia. We only have to think about Chinese manufactured goods, Japanese investments, Korean soap operas, Nepalese Gurkhas, various diasporas with their feet in ‘host’ and ‘home’ countries, or transnational ethnic and religious movements to bring these to mind. Even today, Asian landscapes, ethnoscapes and ideoscapes are continuously remade, and centres and peripheries rearranged, through processes of capitalist expansion, globalization and regional integration, and the flow and circulation of people, ideas and objects. Obviously, this is not a one-directional process and attention should be given to the agency of actors in various localities to engage with transnational connections.

In this conference, we invite panels and participants to explore interactions and flows within Asia. We emphasize intra-Asian connections in order to highlight the historical contingency of modern borders and hence of area studies themselves. Without abandoning the attention to detailed empirical (ethnographic and historical) research focusing on single regions, we encourage topical papers that situate localized phenomena in intra-Asian flows or that focus on cross-border interactions, spanning various disciplines and historical eras. Through comparative and cross-border perspectives we seek out opportunities to rethink the ‘maps in our minds’; to theorize alternative temporalities, spatialities and modernities that emerge when Asia is not simply cast in opposition to the West; and to seek alternative epistemological grounding in conceptualizations of interactions, flows, and more dynamic landscapes.

We invite abstracts reflecting the conference theme, but especially welcome perspectives relating to one of the following panels envisaged for the conference (click on title for panel description):

1. Travel along the Silk Roads
2. Maritime Territorial Disputes: China and its Neighbours
3. Governing Landscapes across Asia
4. Centering Southeast Asia from the outside in
5. Popular Cultures in and of and out of Asia
6. Intra-Asia connection in a Changing Arctic
7. Asian Concepts of Development
8. Civil Society in Asia reconsidered: Rights, Governmentality and Inclusion of the Disadvantaged
9. States of Lack and Dynamics of Emptiness and Fullness in China and Asia
10. Economic Integration in Asia

Abstracts (no more than 250 words), title, name, affiliation and intended panel (if applicable) should be submitted to Marie Yoshida [log in to unmask].

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 20 May 2014

Notification of acceptance: 30 June 2014

Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Professor Prasenjit Duara, National University of Singapore
• Professor Shalini Randeria, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva
• Professor Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam 
• Professor Adam T. Smith, Cornell University

Please visit the conference website for more information and the full call for abstracts

http://asiandynamics.ku.dk/english/intra_asian_connections/