From Polycrisis to Polytunity

3 Credits.

Around the world, people speak of living through a “polycrisis”—a time when overlapping disruptions create fear and paralysis. In this course, Prof. Yuen Yuen Ang invites you to flip the script: from polycrisis to polytunity, seeing disruption as a portal to new possibilities. Polytunity opens into Ang’s broader paradigm, AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive, Moral) Political Economy, which builds on her earlier works (How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, China’s Gilded Age). Together we’ll explore AIM’s three pillars: Adaptive (systems not machine thinking), Inclusive (diverse pathways, not one template), and Moral (ideas are shaped by power and positionality)—and trace how they can inspire both new research agendas and real-world applications across a range of fields. We’ll see how Ang’s “ideational forest” grows from roots to canopy, offering a generative compass for navigating our age of disruption.