Afrasian Transformations: Transregional Perspectives on Development Cooperation, Social Mobility and Cultural Change

African-Asian interactions contribute to the emergence of a decentred, multi-polar world in which different actors need to redefine themselves and their relations to each other. Afrasian Transformations explores these changes to map out several arenas where these transformations have already produced startling results: development politics, South-South cooperation, cultural memory, mobile lifeworlds and transcultural connectivity. The contributions in this volume neither celebrate these shifting dynamics as felicitous proof of a new age of South-South solidarity, nor do they debunk them as yet another instance of burgeoning geopolitical hegemony. Instead, they seek to come to terms with the ambivalences, contradictions and potential benefits entailed in these transformations – that are also altering our understanding of (trans)area in an increasingly globalized world.

Contributors include: Seifudein Adem, Nafeesah Allen, Jan Beek, Tom De Bruyn, Casper Hendrik Claassen, Astrid Erll, Hanna Getachew Amare, John Njenga Karugia, Guive Khan-Mohammad, Vinay Lal, Pavan Kumar Malreddy, Jamie Monson, Diderot Nguepjouo, Satwinder S. Rehal, Ute Röschenthaler, Alexandra Samokhvalova, Darryl C. Thomas, and Sophia Thubauville.

Ruth Achenbach serves as coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies, researcher, and lecturer at Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research interests include migration and decision making theory, student migration in Asia, the role of skills in Asian migration regimes, IR theory, Japanese management practices and development cooperation.

Jan Beek currently leads the research project ‘Police-translations’ at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. His research focuses on policing, fraud, transregional connections, and collaborative research.

John Njenga Karugia is a lecturer at the Institute of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt where he teaches Transregional Politics. His research focuses on memory politics and cosmopolitan ethics across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Afrasian Sea transregion.

Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel holds the Chair for International Gender Politics at the University of Kassel. Her research focuses on transnational and postcolonial perspectives in international politics, and political dynamics in African-Chinese relations.

Frank Schulze-Engler is Professor of New Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Goethe University Frankfurt. He is a former co-leader of the Africa's Asian Options (AFRASO) project at Goethe University and has published widely on African, Asian and indigenous literatures, postcolonial theory, globalisation, and transcultural studies.