Conference "Crossroads Studies: Mobilities, Immobilities and the Issue of Positionality for Rethinking Area Studies"

Crossroads Asia Conference to be held November 27-28, 2014 at ZEF, Bonn

The research network Crossroads Asia: Conflict, Migration, Development, funded by the Area Studies Initiative of the German Ministry of Education and Research since March 2011, questions the validity of the conventional ‘world regions’ of Central and South Asia as defining bases for Area Studies as conceptualized, organized and taught at German universities. The increasing mobility of people, goods and ideas along Asia’s crossroads – so the network's assumption – does not justify a division of the world in territorially fixed ‘areas’, defined by certain character traits to be found on the ‘inside’, but instead demands for concepts that take these dynamisms into account. The network chose Norbert Elias’ concept of figurations to generate knowledge transgressing conventional areas and brought together researchers trained in Central, South Asian and Iranian Studies with geographers, political scientists, sociologists, linguists and social anthropologists.

The conference on ‘Crossroads Studies’ as research programme will bring together the empirical research conducted by the network members with empirical, conceptual and methodological debates on the rethinking of Area Studies – from Asia just as much as from other parts of the world. It is the explicit aim to identify several empirically based common lines of thought and emic patterns of defining socio-cultural and physical spaces relevant for the rethinking of disciplinary constructs of those, namely for Area Studies.

Please download the conference flyer along with the programme <media 974 - external-link-new-window "TEXT, Flyer International Conference ZEF 27-28.11.2014, Flyer_International_Conference_ZEF_27-28.11.2014.pdf, 3.0 MB">here</media>. We welcome your registration before November 20th, 2014 via crossroads(at)uni-bonn.de. 

For further insight into 'Crossroads Studies' please check the newly published <media 933 - - "TEXT, Xroads Working Paper 15 Mielke/Hornidge Crossroads Studies edited, Xroads_Working_Paper_15_Mielke_Hornidge_Crossroads_Studi.pdf, 3.5 MB">discussion paper</media> by Katja Mielke & Anna-Katharina Hornidge.