Events

Over the past few years, several Asian countries have seen mass demonstrations and occupation of public spaces for sustained duration, the most recent examples being the ‘Occupy Hong Kong Central – Umbrella Movement’, the ‘Sunflower Student Movement’ in Taipei and in mid-2000s, the ‘Anti-American Beef Candle-light Vigil’, in Seoul, Korea. These mass movements are organic grassroots movements, non-partisan, disinterested in achieving structural power of the state but undoubtedly political in changing fundamental conditions in their respective nations. In the contemporary global political context, these movements may also be placed within a lineage from the massive Arab Spring uprising that had shaken up the entire Middle East to the more disparate ‘Occupy’ movements that were inspired by the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Within the regional context, an antecedent to the recent movements could be said to be the People’s Power movement in the Philippines. While each of these movements has its own immediate cause, they are in fact expressions of a multitude of underlying grievances against the existing social and political conditions; in the case of Hong Kong and Taiwan, for example, grievances against rising income inequalities, rising costs of living particularly in housing and high unemployment and underemployment among the young job-seekers.

Such occupation movements are highly visual phenomenon, which is part of their political impact. They are horizontally organized, apparently without a centralized authority, although there might be designated ‘spoke’ persons who are the movements’ public faces. They are orderly although inevitably disrupt the normal routines of the occupied locations. They are noisy but peaceful. The politics is largely symbolic, expressed through different media. The organizing work is highly dependent on social media. They are unavoidably media events, locally and globally. It is all these characteristics, rather than its overt political themes, which tend to be abstract and idealistic, that is of interest to Cultural Studies in Asia.

The international workshop on ‘Mob Politics in Asia’ brings scholars who have participated in the different movements to compare and inter-reference their experiences and analyses, within the regional context.

Two specific foci will be explore: first, ethnographies of the movements which documents the cultural practices in situ, during the occupation periods and, second, as such events are always conducted with the awareness of its media representations,  the contestation of the events on mainstream and social media.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free, however registration is required. Kindly register early as seats are available on a first come, first serve basis. Please email Valerie at valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg to indicate your interest to attend the event.

CONTACT DETAILS

Workshop Convenor

Prof CHUA Beng Huat
Asia Research Institute, and Department of Sociology, NUS

Secretariat

Ms Valerie YEO
Asia Research Institute, NUS
E | valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg