You are invited to a guest lecture by Prof. Dr. Jörn Dosch

Chair for International Politics and Coordinator for International Relations and ERASMUS of the Faculty for Economic and Social Sciences

Is Asia still Unique? The Continent’s Relevance for Theory-building in Social Sciences

For the past three decades Asia has been one of the most important empirical hunting grounds for theory-building in political science, international relations, political economy and development studies. The “developmental state”, modernisation theory, the concept of collective social orders (“Asian Values”), the idea of illiberal or defect democracies, are key inputs to the discourse on nationalism and nation-building, and the notion of soft regionalism all originated against the backdrop of observed phenomena in Asia. But what has happened to these and other Asia-centric approaches in social sciences?  Are they still relevant? Or has Asia become a “normal region” that lost its unique and specific relevance as a prime empirical case for academic theorising and the construction of counter-models which challenge Eurocentric worldviews?

Date: Wednesday, 12 June 2019, 16:00 – 18:00 h
Location: Location: SG 183 (Campus Duisburg, Geibelstraße)

Please register with kerstin.lukner@area-ruhr.de