Global Asia in the Time of Polycrisis

Panel Convenor(s)

• AN

  Alf Nilsen

  Centre for Asian Studies in Africa, South Africa

Panel Chair(s)

• DY

  Diatyka Widya Permata Yasih

  Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia

Presenter(s)

• AN

  Alf Nilsen

  Centre for Asian Studies in Africa, South Africa
• DY

  Diatyka Widya Permata Yasih

  Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
• JY

  Junjia Ye

  Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

The twenty-first century is purportedly also the Asian Century – that is, an era in which the Asian continent is set to regain its position as an economic and political centre of gravity in the world-system after two centuries of western hegemony. In doing so, Asia is also spearheading the transformation towards what some call a multipolar world order, in which American geopolitical supremacy is fundamentally unsettled by the rise of emerging powers in the global South. However, the Asian century is also a time of polycrisis – that is, the consequential transformations of the world system, driven by Asia’s developmental trajectory, is closely intertwined with several intersecting and deeply consequential crises. For the purposes of this panel, we focus on and across the crisis of inequality and precarity, the crisis of democratic erosion and autocratization, and the planetary crisis of climate breakdown. How, we ask, can we understand global Asia – that is, Asia understood beyond the confines of methodological nationalism and through connections and entanglements rather than as a bounded unit – in the time of polycrisis? Bringing together scholars working in the field of global Asian studies and whose work is focused on deciphering the dynamics of economic, political, and ecological crises, this panel sets out to explore how best to conceptualize and engage the confluence of world-systemic transformation and polycrisis in the current turbulent

conjuncture.
Institutional panel by: Centre for Asian Studies in Africa, University of Pretoria and Asia Research Centre, University of Indonesia

Presentations:

• 14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)

  Locating Authoritarian Populism in Asia: Political Economies, Structures of Feeling
  

  Presenter: Alf G. Nilsen – Centre for Asian Studies in Africa
• 14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)

  Maintaining Life Under Neoliberal Rules: A Case Study of Muslimah Labourers in Central Java, Indonesia
  

  Presenter: Diatyka Widya Permata Yasih – Universitas Indonesia
• 14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)

  Skill as Product and Instrument: Shaping Labour Migration and Precarity
  

  Presenter: Junjia Ye – Nanyang Technological University