Asia in the Old and New Cold Wars: Ideologies, Narratives, and Lived Experiences

ISBN-13: 9789811976803 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023 / 164 str.

Kenneth Paul Tan

Opis

This is a collection of essays marking the 30th anniversary of the historic Cold War’s formal conclusion in 1991. It enriches Cold War studies—a field dominated by Political Science, International Relations, and History—with insights from Sociology, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, and Film and Media Studies. Through critical analysis of newspaper and magazine articles, films, novels, art exhibits, museums, and other commemorative sites that engage with the themes of conflict, violence, trauma, displacement, marginalization, ecology, and identity, the book provides rich and diverse perspectives on the complex relationship between the historic Cold War and its legacies on the one hand and, on the other, their impact on Asia, its plural histories and peoples, and their shifting identities, ideological beliefs, and lived experiences. 

Today, we often speak of an ‘Asian century’ and witness intensifying concerns over ‘new cold wars’ or ‘Cold War 2.0’. A United States in decline and a China on the rise create conditions for a new superpower rivalry, with a trade war already being fought between the two competitors. Russia continues to flex its geopolitical muscles, launching a full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022, as its strongman leadership yearns nostalgically for the good old days of the USSR. As grand narratives and strategies of the Cold War jostle to make sense of high-level geopolitical events, this book descends to the level of lived experience, zooming in on ordinary and marginalized peoples, whose lives and livelihoods have been affected over the decades by the Cold War and its legacies.

Spis treści

Chapter 1:Interpreting the Cold War and the New Cold War in Asia.- Chapter 2: Curating Memory: Cold-War Narratives in Museums and Memorials in Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, And Cambodia .- Chapter 3: Ecology as a Cold-War Scale: Lau Kek Huat’s Absent Without Leave and Ha Jin’s War Trash.- Chapter 4: Where is My Homeland? Mainland Chinese Refugees and Hong Kong Tenement Films during the Cold-War Era.- Chapter 5: Grand Strategies and Everyday Struggles under the New Cold War and COVID-19: A Sociological Political Economy.- Chapter 6: The Cold-War Structure of Feeling: Revisiting the Discourse of “Dalumei” (Mainland Little Sister) in Taiwan.- Chapter 7: China’s Health Diplomacy in the “New-Cold-War” Era: Contrasting the Battle of Narratives in Europe and the Middle East and North Africa.- Chapter 8: Hungary and the New-Cold-War Narrative on China.- Chapter 9: Haunted History: Exorcizing the Cold War.

O autorze

Kenneth Paul TAN is a tenured Professor of Politics, Film, and Cultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), which hired him under its Talent100 initiative in February 2021. He teaches and conducts interdisciplinary research within and across the Academy of Film, the Department of Journalism, and the Department of Government and International Studies. He is a member of HKBU's Smart Society Lab. Previously, he was a tenured Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKY School). He was Vice Dean of the LKY School during the most rapid and critical years of its growth and served in its senior leadership team for almost a decade.

Blurb

This collection of essays marks the 30th anniversary of the historic Cold War’s formal conclusion in 1991. It enriches Cold War studies—a field dominated by Political Science, International Relations, and History—with insights from Sociology, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, and Film and Media Studies. Through critical analysis of films, television shows, novels, newspaper and magazine articles, tourist souvenir shops, art exhibits, museums, and other commemorative sites that engage with the themes of conflict, violence, trauma, displacement, marginalization, ecology, and identity, the book provides rich and diverse perspectives on the complex relationship between the historic Cold War and its legacies on the one hand and, on the other, their impact on Asia, its plural histories and peoples, and their shifting ideological beliefs, narratives of identity, and lived experiences. 

Today, we often speak of an “Asian century” and witness intensifying concerns over a “New Cold War”. A United States in decline and a China on the rise create conditions for a new superpower rivalry, with a trade and tech war already being fought between the two competitors. As grand narratives and strategies of the Cold War jostle to make sense of high-level geopolitical events, this book descends to the level of lived experience, zooming in on ordinary and marginalized peoples, whose lives and livelihoods have been affected over the decades by the Cold War and its legacies.

Kenneth Paul Tan is a tenured Professor of Politics, Film, and Cultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), which hired him under its Talent100 initiative. His recent books include Movies to Save Our World: Imagining Poverty, Inequality and Environmental Destruction in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2022), Singapore's First Year of COVID-19: Public Health, Immigration, the Neoliberal State, and Authoritarian Populism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Singapore: Identity, Brand, Power (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and Governing Global-City Singapore: Legacies and Futures After Lee Kuan Yew (Routledge, 2017).