Socialisms in Asia

Undergraduate / Graduate

Western ideas about "actually existing" socialism are dominated by the failures and tyranny of the Soviet bloc. But decolonizing Asia may have a different story to tell. Tracking revolutionary information technology, new statistical and social sciences, and cybernetic techniques for governance entering into Asia in the era of decolonization, partitions and the Bandung Conference, this course reconsiders plural possible socialisms, not based on earlier European histories in which the ends exceeded the means, but on later Asian histories. These are not so much histories of self-determination and worldmaking, as scientific and social, self and world refashioning. This course is intended to be of interest to any student interested in the applying techniques of science and technology studies to the history of social science, interested in the history of applied science outside the west, and/or in Asian decolonization, and/or in the past, present, and future of socialism.