Kurs-Information

This research seminar will examine social movements in Asia from a trans-regional perspective, focusing on case-studies of “contentious politics” (Tilly/Tarrow 2015) in the context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI, initiated in 2013, constitutes a massively ambitious and complex development policy designed to build infrastructure and coordinate policymaking across Eurasia and eastern Africa (Lee/Zeng 2019). From the outset, however, the planning and implementation of BRI projects has been accompanied by a large variety of protests and social movements in China, Southeast-, South and Central Asia. Against this background, this seminar will discuss and analyze selected cases of labor, environmental, feminist activisms, in particular (but not only), in BRI countries, compare the respective dynamics and repertoires of contention and look for transversal linkages of movements across regions and nation-states.

The first part of the seminar will provide an introduction to key theoretical and methodological literature in the study of social movements, focusing on decolonial, indigenous and feminist approaches, but also enlarge its analytical scope to micro movements and activisms (Seeth 2008). Moreover, it will also introduce the history and political-economic cornerstones of China’s BRI policy. The second part of the seminar will then zoom into selected examples of social movements in China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Afghanistan, providing participants with a firm grounding in the various issues and dynamics of contention. The seminar will not only be based on collective discussions of academic literature, but also plans to include guest lectures and documentary film screenings. 

PLEASE NOTE: The research seminar is entangled with the RDL “Analyzing Social Movements in Asia in transregional perspective – Contentious Politics and the Belt and Road Initiative”, co-taught by Andrea Fleschenberg and Daniel Fuchs for both courses and scheduled as alternating block sessions. This is in view of Module 9 requirements of attending one research seminar and RDL course plus MAP to complete the module. The respective RDL course (see separate AGNES entry) will provide students with an in-depth training on research design processes and fundamental skills (in areas such as literature review, method selection, academic writing, theoretical framework-building), mentoring / reflection spaces to discuss and present the various stages of conceptualizing, developing, presenting and peer-reviewing student research projects on self-selected case studies in the research field of social movements / activisms / contentious politics (but open to students joining only one of the courses as well).