AMT Research Themes

AMT focuses on five themes that define the activities that we propose to undertake. Although the themes each have been designed to address a specific bundle of questions, they also deliberately overlap to fit together into a larger framework that defines the general orientation of AMT.


Asia in the international system

Since the 1960s, Japan and somewhat later the four Asian ‘tigers’ (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) have featured prominently in accounts of the promise and threat of Asia. Now that China and to a lesser extent India are emerging a regional hegemons, Asia’s rise has indeed become imminent. Although not even China is as yet in a position to challenge US dominance in the region, Asian power has become a much more important aspect in Asian security and international relations, and, as US dominance decreases, the potential for conflict between China and the US or between Asian powers (for instance China vs Japan or India; India vs Pakistan; North Korea vs South Korea) increases. The largest Asian power, China, is becoming a major global player with strategic interests beyond Asia itself in Africa, Latin America, Europe and Oceania. Beyond security and international relations, the international political economy of Asia has also become much more complex. China may be the manufacturing hub of the world, but plays that role only as part of (and not necessarily the dominant partner in) a system of trade, investment & finance and international migration and mobility spanning the whole of East and Southeast Asia with further links to South Asia. The scramble for natural resources (oil, water, minerals, but also including land), environmental degradation, international population movements, human security and ‘soft’ power are emerging as key issues of contention between Asian states likely to shape Asia’s future in the international system.

Power and limits of the Asian state

The nation and the modern state in Asia are ongoing projects informed deeply by postcolonialism, nationalism and a quest for cultural, religious and political identities that are new and modern, yet simultaneously rooted in indigenous culture and tradition. The formation and the functioning of Asia’s systems of law and governance reflect strong developmental ambitions as well as deep heterogeneity and insecurity. At the same time, the concepts of state and nation do not remain static and have developed in the Asian context. Singapore or Japan now serve as model of successful nation-states that other Asian states aspire to emulate. However, the reach of the Asian state quite often extends only tentatively across the full territory of the nation. Being governed or, conversely, freedom from being governed is in many places anything but secure, and violence from and against the state is very common. The state, in other words, is in many places only a partial, negotiated, and sometimes even ephemeral presence. Even in core areas firmly under the control of the state, endemic corruption, factionalism, and violence associated with elections or coups d’état make rule anything but stable and predictable. Differences of religion, ethnicity, caste, uneven development, or generation are flashpoints. Likewise, local and national authorities struggle with disputes over natural resources, land appropriation, pollution, and environmental protection that are emerging everywhere. Long-term demographic trends will produce a whole new set of national and international policy challenges. The population of East Asia (including China) will age increasingly rapidly and ultimately shrink, while a similar demographic transition will take much longer in most of South and Southeast Asia.

Asian debates on history and modernity

In the last two centuries at least scholars and thinkers from Asia have contributed to debate and struggle over the meaning of reason, nationalism, socialism, religion, secularism, development, equality, justice in the context of strong indigenous Asian traditions. Although their ideas often reverberated all over Asia even under colonial rule, their voices have rarely been heard in the West. It is not only in opposition to the West but also other Asian countries that colonial and then postcolonial states define their own trajectories. Asian debates on history and modernity have affected all spheres of life, and socio-economic and legal-political ordering in particular. Asia as a source and forum of ideas becomes increasingly relevant to other parts of the world. The ways in which knowledge in Asia can feed back into ways of thinking about the world elsewhere is thus a central aspect of this theme, ranging from Amartya Sen’s work on development and justice to the export of a ‘Beijing consensus.’

New and old diversities in Asia

Asia is home to probably the world’s richest diversity of ethnicities, languages and religions, some coexisting in durable peace and mutual accommodation, others engaging in conflict ranging from sporadic clashes to enduring warfare. None of these groups or conflicts are simply autochthonous leftovers of a pre-modern past. They have been moulded, if not created by Asia’s many modernities and their agents. In addition, long-distance and international migration and urbanization forge new forms of cultural, religious and linguistic diversity, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. The resurgence of Islam since the 1970s, for instance, poses complex questions about integration of sharia in legal systems based on the rule of law and human rights. Asia’s cities and larger metropolitan areas are the key sites where Asia’s new modernities are being forged and where people, cultures, life-styles and ideologies meet, mix and clash. The postcolonial experience and still incomplete projects of nation and state building in many Asian countries, in fact, further add fuel to an already combustible mix of rapidly rising diversity, modernity and globalization.

Production and flow of modern Asian cultures

What modernity is and stands for is constructed from below as much as from above. The production, flow and consumption of practices, styles, objects, fashions, media, and the like that have come to exemplify the modern are an integral part of how Asia manifests itself globally. This includes literature, art, heritage sites and museums, but also graffiti and street theatre, media productions (film, television, the internet, and the increasingly ubiquitous social media), and in aesthetics of the self – style, fashion, youth culture. As an ideology and an aspiration, modernity directly encounters tradition, engendering new forms of traditional religion, philosophy, scholarship and culture. In these new forms the modern is contested, embraced, or disavowed by social groups, is linked to places within or outside of Asia, and more generally figures as a claim, an aspiration, or a hope. Alternatively, modernity is something to be rejected or is a source of conflict within the everyday lives of peoples across Asia.

 
Last Modified: 01-08-2011