A conference to be held at the College
of the Holy Cross
November 4 - 6, 2005
Over the past two decades, references to "Asian Values" have
circulated in political, academic, and economic discussions,
often to assert the cultural particularity of Asian economic
systems and activities in the midst of rapid growth. This
discourse of "Asian Values" has accompanied the
expansion of an urban middle class in many Asian nations
that has been variously celebrated and critiqued as "the
New Rich." Following the economic crises of the late
1990s, the triumphalism of Asian Values political discourses
waned, but economic anxieties seem to have sparked their
own kinds of assertions of cultural particularity. Now is
an opportune time to trace the genealogy of these discourses,
to reconsider their relationship to forms and experiences
of Asian-ness and of class, and to theorize the connections
between cultural politics and political economy.
Class-ifying "Asian Values": Culture, Morality,
and the Politics of Being Middle Class in Asia will provide
a forum for examining intersections between economics, culture,
governmentality, middle class subjectivities, ethics, and
religion in contemporary Asian societies. For example, how
do individuals experience the privileges and anxieties of
class positions that have economic, political, and cultural
dimensions? How might institutional and discursive constructions
of an idealized middle class serve broader political goals?
What kinds of connections can be drawn between these two
levels of analysis? How can we understand new modes of distinction
as both material and part of imaginative landscapes that
produce new forms of cultural politics? How can we trace
the effects of these relationships? The conference description provides
a more detailed outline of the conference themes and goals.
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