Theories to catch up with the realities: A workshop on Global Asia, Tokyo

We organized a fascinating workshop, 'Global Asia: Entanglements Between West, South, Central and East Asia, 1900-2020’, at Tokyo University, 27–28 October 2023, thanks to the fund by Kaken project (Ministry of Education) of the Professor Keiko Sakai (Chiba University) and thanks to the host of the Institute for Future Initiatives, the University of Tokyo (Thanks to Associate Professor Naosuke Mukoyama, Tokyo University).

In response to the criticism of Euro (or Euro-American) centricity of the disciplinary knowledge of International Relations (IR), there have been significant moves to explore the new concepts, framings, and methodologies to understand global and regional affairs in the past, the present, and the future, more fully and in a more meaningful way. The moves are involving not only IR scholars, but also scholars across the diverse disciplinary boundaries of International History, Global History, History of International Law, Sociology, and Area Studies.

This October Tokyo workshop has stemmed from a zoom workshop series which Keiko Sakai (Chiba), George Lawson (ANU), and Tomoko Akami (ANU) had conducted throughout the Covid period with this sense of mission that we want to figure out what we can do, inspired by relational framings, such as ‘historical global sociology’ and ‘relational studies of global conflicts’. In late October 2023, we managed to get great participants, ‘physically’ gathered at leafy Tokyo University, Hongo Campus, from various parts of the worlds, and engaged in most fascinating discussions on the theme of Global Asia: Entanglements Between West, South, Central and East Asia, 1900-2020. From CAP, Amy King and Deepak Nair also participated. We trust that this will lead us to various new intellectual ventures both as a group and individually!