Asia Globalizing

Samsung billboards advertise the company’s smartphones, tablets and washing machines across the world. Japanese cars are found on almost every street in the world. China is building railways across the world and her merchants hawk their wares in African cities. All these are visible signs of a globalizing Asia. The sub-theme will try to unpack the forces shaping this process as Africa and Asia interact from especially a micro-narrative perspective (without neglecting meso-narratives) focusing on the socio-institutional and historical underpinnings and dynamics. This particular sub-theme(one of the three Research Clusters),seeks to encourage as a consequence the excavation of vital elements such as agency, being, cognition, subjectivity and culture as explananda for particular instantiations of Asia globalizing and how this interfaces with Africa’s peoples, institutions, values, hopes and fears.  In this undertaking the explication of core concepts such as ‘reciprocity’, ‘mutuality’, ‘learning’, ‘modernity’, ‘futurity’ and ‘vulnerability’ in the Asian and African settings will be vigorously explored.