“Neoliberal Asia and Its Precarious Others”,
2023 Situations International Conference
October 20-21, Grand Hyatt Jeju, South Korea
The modern history of Asia has been characterized by rapid and even spectacular growth, as societies that were poor and agrarian became prosperous and advanced through the process of state-led development. But the much-vaunted successes of the developmental state have often served to conceal intractable problems and troubling realities. The neoliberal economic model has exacerbated inequalities across the globe, and Asia has not been spared the pernicious dynamic whereby a few have achieved tremendous wealth while many more have fallen out of the middle class and are confronted with an increasingly gloomy and uncertain future. Precarity has driven these issues to the fore, as the loss of faith in the future has come to unsettle and weaken social cohesion in Asia just as it has dissolved it across the West.
This conference examines the experience of precarity in Asia, past and present. Whether it relates to contract laborers working without benefits, migrants seeking low-wage jobs, the physically handicapped cut off from steady employment, the neuro-diverse negotiating the rules of corporate culture, or gays and lesbians carving out a niche in a traditional society, Situations welcomes papers from a wide variety of perspectives taking on these and other issues related to the worsening instability of social structures and the spread of uncertainty in traditionally communitarian Asian societies. How have members of marginal or disenfranchised groups responded to the predicaments of precarity, and how are views of these groups changing among the general public? What kind of politics are emerging in response to mass disillusionment regarding a better future, and what kind of influence are disenfranchised groups beginning to exert against the forces arrayed against them? Could precarity also provide opportunities for marginalized groups that did not exist in the past?
Invited Speakers:
- Dr. Rey Chow (Duke University)
- “Democracy or Totalitarianism? Terms of the New Cold War”
- “Thresholds of Precarity”
- Dr. Youngmin Choe (USC)
- “The Viscous Return of the Rheol”
Possible topics might include:
- labor and precarity
- disability rights
- migrant workers in Asia
- precarity and the shaping of biopolitics
- the crisis of the low birth-rate
- the emergence of neuro-diversity (such as Extraordinary Attorney Woo)
- the transformation of family life
- gender identity in uncertain times
- cults as a phenomenon of precarity
- Squid Game and other metaphors of precarity
- environmental politics and the loss of the future
- precarity and the experience of deep time
- the impact of the Old and the New Cold War
- lives under authoritarian regimes
Early inquiries with 200-word abstracts are appreciated. By 20 August 2023, we would invite you to submit your 4,000-word Chicago-format conference presentation with its abstract and keywords (the acceptance of the presentation will be decided based on the 4,000-paper). Each invited participant will then be expected to turn his or her conference presentation into a finished 6,000-word paper for possible inclusion in a future issue of the SCOPUS-indexed journal, Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context. All inquiries and submissions should be sent to both situations@yonsei.ac.kr and skrhee@yonsei.ac.kr.
Submissions should follow the Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.), using only endnotes.
Venue: Grand Hyatt Jeju
Notes:
We will pay the hotel accommodation for those participants whose final papers we accept. The presenters will share twin bedrooms.
Contact Info:
situations@yonsei.ac.kr; skrhee@yonsei.ac.kr.
Contact Email:
situations@yonsei.ac.kr
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