Rising Asia - Anxious Europe

While manufacturing operations continue to be outsourced to Asian countries, stocking fleets of Europe-bound container ships and cargo planes, economic outlooks have become increasingly Asiacentric as European businesses relocate headquarters staff to Asian capitals in order to focus on Asian markets. In spite of European goals about knowledge-based and high value economic activities, science and technology departments in Europe are increasingly populated by talented graduates from Asia, and many multinationals and even mid-range European enterprises are shifting their research and development activities to India and China. Experts often question whether the education system in Europe is geared to compete with Asia in future, as Asian governments invest in hi-tech education and industry. Simultaneously, we often hear about high-school students in Europe being encouraged to learn Asian languages to keep in step with the changing world. The sheer demographic materiality of a rapidly expanding middle class in Asia has led some to portray climate change as an outcome of economic growth in Asia, while security analysts continue to map the consequences of multi-polarity within and between Asia and Europe. And so forth.

Depending on the vantage point, the dramatic ‘rise' of Asia appears to Europeans as a double-edged sword, perched between allure and anxiety. The rise of Asia, within the popular European imagination, is somehow conjoined with the current politics of economic austerity, job losses, shrinking profits and industrial decline in Europe. Clearly, Asia - led by India and China - is etched within the current political imagination of Europe, and this can be witnessed in the ways in which European states and corporations are beginning to forge a ‘new' relationship with Asia. As we seek to understand this fresh encounter, we approach Asia and Europe not as distinct territorial entities that can be visibly and materially separated and contrasted with each other, but we rather place them discursively as ideas with specific histories that have been critical to the formation of popular imaginations, inimical and intimate relationships, and fears of and desires for the other.

In May 2012, the Asian Dynamics Initiative (ADI) convened an international conference to unravel the ‘new' encounter between Asia and Europe which is yet to be understood fully. The idea was to address the political and policy concerns - ranging from anxieties of economic downturn and changing capital flows, climate change attributed to increased energy consumption in growing Asian economies, continued population growth that will potentially lay an even greater demand on the world's natural resources to fears of Europe losing its competitive edge in a world where Asian economic and military power might have an upper hand. In short, the ‘rise of Asia' was not an event confined to Asia alone. Its effects can be witnessed in the ways European economies, societies, politics and cultural imaginings are themselves being rearranged as a consequence. There is of course nothing new about Europe-Asia encounters as such, yet the contours of such encounters continue to shift. The thrust of our exploration is not limited to the imagined rivalries between Europe and Asia, but includes exploring similarities, intimacies and unities in terms of intellectual, literary and artistic output that have defined and blurred the two entities predicated upon one another.

We therefore invited scholars to reflect, describe and even speculate on (from their own fields of specialization and vantage points) the current state as well as the future of Europe's ‘new' engagement with Asia. We particularly invited empirical studies, ethnographies and historically grounded accounts of the event - of the rise of Asia - as witnessed in a variety of settings and localities. These included not only different regional experiences, but also transformations experienced at the level of macro policy making to everyday individual choices and patterns. 

Possible sub-themes

2 May 2012

The Ceremonial Hall, University of Copenhagen, Frue Plads, Copenhagen

Moderator: Marie H. Roesgaard, Associate Professor in Japanese Studies, and Chair of the ADI Steering Committee

 
The conference will be recorded and streamed live.

3 May 2012

Faculty of Humanities (Building 22 and 27), Njalsgade 120-136, 2300 Copenhagen S

Panel sessions

Keynote presentation

Professor Aihwa Ong, University of California, Berkeley
"Science as the Heart of “World-Class” Cities in Asia"

Chair: Jørgen Delman

Panel 1A: Business, markets and enterprise in Asia-Europe encounters

1. Anne Schreiter: “Managerial worlds. Cultural constructs in Chinese-German business settings”
   2. Annelise Ly: “Shifts in intercultural business communication following the rise of Asia as an economic superpower”
   3. Adrian Favell: “Rise and Decline: Japan as the Model of the ‘Post-Bubble’ Society”
   4. Vincent Wai-kit Ho: “Bridging Europe and China by a Postcolonial Casino City : Macau’s Cultural Capital, Enterprise Diversity, and Mentality Transformation in 21st Century”

Chair: Oscar Salemink
Discussant: Rune Bennike

Panel 2A: Global resource competition, international aid and global consequences

1. Evan Thompson: “Central Asia: A site for a Europe-China ‘Great Game’?”
   2. Luis Mah & Raquel Freitas: “European responses to Asia´s enhanced role as aid donor”
   3. Luisa Steur & David Mosse: “Confronting the global land grab in South India: The struggle over the Thervoy SIPCOT Industrial Park in Tamil Nadu”
   

Chair: Mikkel Bunkenborg
Discussant: Oscar Salemink

Panel 3A: Resource competition and consequences for food security and rural livelihoods

1. Renata Grochowka & Katarzyna Kosior: “Implications of changes in agricultural policies in Asia for regional and global food security”
   2. Anders Riel Müller: "Korea’s Overseas Food Security Policy: Global food crisis and domestic contestations food and agricultural policy"
   3. Edyta Roszko: “How global conflict becomes local, and how local fishermen become global players: Tracing the consequences of the South China Sea dispute for local fisheries”

Chair: Mikkel Bunkenborg
Discussant: Cynthia Chou

Panel 1B: Orientalism, Asian values and perspectives

1. Anders Törnvall: “Asian Value Systems and European Ideologies and Education – A Comparative Analysis”
   2. Susanne Bregnbæk & Ayo Wahlberg: “Ambiguous Ambitions in the New Knowledge Economy Education and Science between Freedom and Constraint”
   3. Shogo Suzuki: “Is China a unique state? Orientalism in Sino-African relations literature”
   4. Manuela Ciotti: “Pavilion of mind: ‘India-out-of-India’ at the 54th Venice Biennale”

Chair: Ravinder Kaur
Discussant: Marie H. Roesgaard

Panel 2B: Anxieties and accounts

1. Ravinder Kaur:"Asia: geographies of anxiety in a flat world"
   2. Signe Overgaard Ptaszynski: “Responding to the Rise of China – attraction or compulsion?”
   3. Madhulika Banerjee: “Rising Ayurveda and the Anxious European Union: What Happens When the Twain do Meet?”
   4. Ronojoy Sen: “India’s Parliament: Re-imagining a European idea?”
   

Chair: Susanne Bregnbæk
Discussant: Ayo Wahlberg

Panel 3B: Languages and forms of Asia-Europe Comparison

1. Michala Hvidt Breengaard: “Mater matters”
   2. Hilda Rømer Christensen: “(Re)making middle Class Families”
   3. Rudolph Ng: “From Coolie Trade to Shoes Trade: A Comparison of Sino-Spanish Encounters”

Chair: Marie H. Roesgaard
Discussant: Ayo Wahlberg

Panel 1C: Changing Security Dynamics

1. Tunsjø, Øystein: “Europe in the coming of a bipolar system”
   2. Veena Ravikumar: “Rising Asia, Anxious Europe: The Problem of Security”
   3. Kim Nødskov: "China's Military Rise"
   4. Niels Thygesen & Bertel Heurlin: "The Chinese Security Policy-Economic Policy Nexus, a research project"

Chair: Bertel Heurlin
Discussant: Ras Tind Nielsen

Panel 2C: Trade and investment flows between Europe and Asia

1. David Chiavacci: “New Economic Ties between Europe and East Asia: Background and Trade Effects of the Free Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (FTEPA) between Switzerland and Japan”
   2. Jonas Parello Plesner: “China’s helping hand in the eurocrisis”
   3. Fredrik Sjöholm: “Foreign Ownership and Employment Growth”
   4. Damoun Ashournia: “The impact of Chinese import penetration on Danish firms and workers”

Chair: Jakob Roland Munch
Discussant: Daniel Nguyen

Urban Imaginaries

Panel 1D: Urban ecology, transformation and negotiations

1. Anders Blok: “Worlding European and Asian cities through their climate projects? On eco-housing assemblages, cosmopolitics and comparisons”
   2. Nikolaj Vendelbo Blichfeldt: “Low-Carbon Life with Chinese Characteristics: Connecting with Climate Change in an Urban Community in Hangzhou”
   3. Lau Blaxekjær: “China’s two dragon images and other contradictions of climate politics”
   4. Tommaso Bobbio: “The will to appear global: urban development, marginality and territorial transformation in the narratives of slum dwellers of Ahmedabad (West India)”

Chair and discussant: Jørgen Delman

Panel 2D: Urban identity, space and everyday life

1. Jun Liu: “Mobile Phone Rumors as “Weapons of the Weak”
   2. Manpreet Janeja: “Re-Imagining Urban Intimacies: Domestic Anxieties and Culinary Aesthetics”
   3. Mai Corlin: “Transforming Urban Spaces: Meishi Street and the battle of the narratives”
   4. Elena Kilina: “Public space for Japanese “nomads” (who don’t go home): Interaction between people and space”

Chair and discussant: Anders Blok

Panel 3D: Xindu case and Discussion of Urban Imaginaries and Power

1. Jan Annerstedt: “Xindu in Chengdu, China: Practical case of innovation driven urban development”
   2. Tina Schilbach: "Between the worlds: the emotional geographies of class and cosmopolitanism in global Shanghai"
   3. Jørgen Delman: “Urban Imaginaries and Power" - where do we move from here?

Chair TBA / Discussant: Aihwa Ong

• Prof. Dr. Peter van der Veer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen
  "Coping with Diversity in Europe, India and China"

• Isabel Hilton, London-based international journalist and broadcaster, Editor of chinadialogue.net
  "Future green superpowers: Chinese competition or cooperation?"

• Prof. Dr. Ulrich Beck, Department of Sociology
  Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich and London School of Economics
  "World at Risk: are Asia and Europe chasing the same dream or nightmare?"

• Prof. Wang Gungwu, Chairman of the East Asian Institute and University Professor, National University of Singapore
  "The China Effect in Asia and Europe"

• Prof. Aihwa Ong, Socio-Cultural Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
  "Science as the Heart of “World-Class” Cities in Asia"

Rising Asia, Anxious Europe

Link to larger map: http://map.krak.dk/m/9Fche

Day 1

Opening Conference on 2 May 2012

University of Copenhagen
The Ceremonial Hall
Frue Plads 4
1168 Copenhagen K

Day 2

Panels sessions on 3 May 2012

Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen
South Campus (New KUA - the green buildings on the map)
Njalsgade 120-136, Building 22 and 27
2300 Copenhagen S

Bus no. 12, 33 or metro to Islands Brygge Station

Contact

• Marie Yoshida, Asian Dynamics Initiative, Conference Coordinator

Organizing Committee

• Ravinder Kaur, Associate Professor, South Asian Studies

• Ayo Wahlberg, Postdoc, Anthropology

• Oscar Salemink, Professor, Anthropology

• Jakob R. Munch, Professor, Economics

• Ildiko Beller-Hann, Associate Professor, Central Asian Studies

• Jørgen Delman, Professor, China Studies

• Marie H. Roesgaard, Associate Professor, Japanese Studies

• Lars Bo Kaspersen, Professor, Head of Department of Political Science