ISD8: Cultures of Inequality in the Sinosphere

Collaborative Goals

The “Cultures of Inequality in the Sinosphere” Working Group is focused on the developments of social, economic, gender/sexuality, and ethnic/racial inequalities within the modern and contemporary Sinosphere. In an era that has been fixated on the "Rise of Asia/China/Multipolarity," we would like to give duress to the idea that the intensification of inequality accompanies any new formation of political, economic, and imperial hegemonies in our global capitalist system. Whether such inequalities stem from post-WWII developmental capitalism (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia), post-socialist opening and reform policies (the People’s Republic of China) or the legacies of colonialism, the Working Group combines humanities and social sciences approaches and methodologies to discuss and analyze the significance of the cultural, historical, sociological, and anthropological forms of inequality that confront us today. While attentive to the global context, we are particularly attentive phenomena that are relatively autonomous from the context of Euro-America.

Our Working Group's work begins with a collaboration between two scholars in Literary/Cultural Studies and Sociology/Labor Studies respectively based in Syracuse and Ithaca. One of our core goals in the Working Group is to publish peer reviewed journal articles directly discussing cultures of inequality in the Sinosphere. To accomplish this, we are building a trans-regional network of researchers in our Working Group, with whom discussions, reading/writing workshops, and invited talks are held. Beyond our Corridor institutions, we regularly involve scholars of the Sinosphere in NY state and NYC in the form of Zoom and in-person lectures. We also organize workshops where we collectively read and discuss other scholars’ work, where we exchange our research drafts for comments and feedback