Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations

The Outline of a Seed Workshop at

Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, December 15-16, 2009

Jointly organized by Institute of Social Research, Chulalongkorn

University; Rupantar Center for World Spirituality, Indian
Business Academy, Bangalore and Greater Noida, India;
Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario, London,
Canada and Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai,
India.

Social theory at present, despite all talks of globalization, is still very much a
Euro-American endeavour not only in its production but also in its presuppositions and in
order to transform sociology to a truly planetary conversation on the human condition
there is the need for a transcivilizational dialogue and widening and deepening our
universe of discourse. This is as much true of classical social theory as of the
contemporary critical turns. Both classical social theory as in the works of Marx, Weber
and Durkheim and critical social theory as in the work of Foucault and Habermas reflect
an Eurocentric bias. The task here for us is to open these theories to varieties of
transformational conversations from the positions and locations where we belong. Our
proposed seed workshop in Bangkok seeks to undertake such a journey and exploration
by critically exploring the presuppositions of contemporary social theory from our
varieties of starting points in Asia, for example Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and
Javanese reflections. It wants to critically interrogate the presuppositions in
contemporary critical social theory about man, culture and society, and also about
important themes such as knowledge and power, and knowledge and liberation. It seeks
to carry out dialogues along multiple trajectories between social theorists from the Euro-
American world and the Asian universes such as between Kant and Gandhi, Habermas
and Sri Aurobindo, the Bildung tradition in Europe and the Confucian traditions.
You are most cordially invited to join us in this workshop and send us an abstract
of your presentation within 500 words by November 30, 09 and full paper if you are able
 2

to make it by December 7, 09 to Dr. Ananta Kumar Giri at aumkrishna@yahoo.com.

Even if you are not able to prepare a formal paper you are most cordially welcome with
your abstract as our objective is to move towards a forming a circle for Asian Forum for
Social Theory.
The workshop is collaboratively nurtured by Dr. Ananta Kumar Giri of Madras
Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India (www.mids.ac.in/ananta.htm), Professor
Surichai Wun’gaeo of Chulalongkorn University , Professor Subhash Sharma, Dean,
Indian Business Academy, Bangalore and Greater Noida, India, and Dr. Scott Schaffer of
University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
We begin this workshop on December 15 and the following participants, among
others, have already confirmed their participation: Professors Des Gasper, ISS, The
Hague; Professor Raymond Apthorpe, Australian National University; Professor Subhash
Sharma, Indian Business Academy, India; Dr. Scott Schaffer, University of Western
Ontario, Canada; Dr. Prasenjit Biswas and Dr. Sukalpa Bhattacharjee of North Eastern
Hill University, Shillong; Professor Chouping, Nanhua University, Taiwan; Professors
Kiran Reddy and Byra Reddy, Acharya Institute of Management Sciences, Bangalore and
Dr. Parthasarathi Mondal, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. We would send you
a detailed program by Dec. 7, 09.
The workshop proceeds a related workshop at Chulalongkorn University on
December 14, 2009 on “In Search of Theories In / Of Human Security” and you are most
cordially invited to join us in this workshop as well.
We are nurturing this workshop with little financial resource and we are not able
to take care of your travel but we are trying our best to provide local hospitality.