On 29 May 2018 the 3rd Asiascape: Digital Asia (DIAS) conference, is held in Leiden, the Netherlands.
Conference Theme: Rethinking Communities
Information and communication technologies like the internet are frequently singled out as harbingers of social and political change, in Asia as much as elsewhere. Yet there has not been a sustained scholarly effort to explore how contemporary ICT affect social groups, how they change interpersonal dynamics, to what extent they shape our sense of community, and what laws and regulations are leveraged to then govern such communities. Do digital technologies extend and accelerate the established logics of social interactions and group affiliations, or do they transform the rationale behind our relations? What happens to friendships, family ties, work relations, and political interactions once they are ‘upgraded’ to Web 2.0? What does it take to bring users together and turn them into political subjects like ‘netizens’? Can there ever be such a thing as a ‘digital community’, and if so: what would make such a community sustainable as a viable political group? And what changes do digital media networks introduce to traditional ‘imagined communities’, that is: to large-scale associations like nations, religious orders, or political movements, in which members do not personally know all other members but construct their sense of belonging through screens and digital interfaces? Questions like these go to the heart of how we conceptualize digital media and their relevance today.
For more information please visit the website.
This event is organised by the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) which is one of the many LeidenGlobal partners.
IIAS is a global humanities and social sciences research institute and knowledge exchange platform that supports programmes which engage Asian and other international partners. IIAS aims to contribute to a better and more integrated understanding of present-day Asian realities as well as to rethink ‘Asian Studies’ in a changing global context and works to encourage dialogue and link expertise, involving scholars and other experts from all around the world in its activities.
