Wednesday, February 16, 2022 12:30pm to 2pm
About this Event
The Department of Global Studies' Colloquium Series is a lecture series, which has been made possible by the generosity of the Orfalea Endowment for the Master's Program in Global Studies. The Colloquium Series strives to open and explore a wide range of interdisciplinary debates and their interaction and engagement with the global, hosting new guest speakers each quarter from UCSB and beyond. The upcoming event will be hosted via Zoom on Wednesday, February 16th at 12:30pm. Zoom link is https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/84246564996 (Meeting ID: 842 4656 4996). Please see below for the featured talk:
Joshua Neves, Underglobalization
Chair: Bishnu Ghosh, Global studies UCSB
Joshua Neves’ Underglobalization (Duke UP 2020) examines the cultural politics of the fake as a key site through which contemporary forms of underdevelopment are governed, mediated, and contested—in China and globally. The talk will explore how tensions between (il)legality and (il)legitimacy shore up dominant models for development and, paradoxically, drive dismissals of Chinese modernization as counterfeit or excessive. Combining site-specific research in Beijing with a set of theoretical problems tied to Asian and Southern globalizations, the book enacts a critical shift from the routine focus on copyright violations and the creative industries to the proliferation of illegal cities, citizens, and futures. In particular, it explores how piracy and fakes are manifestations of “underglobalization”—the ways social actors undermine and refuse to implement the specific procedures and protocols required by globalization at different scales. Arguing for a shift from global civil society to global political society, it considers how mundane and mediated practices of faking—from informal media networks to piratical citizenship—undergird globalization as we know it.
Joshua Neves is Canada Research Chair and Director of the Global Emergent Media (GEM) Lab at Concordia University (Montréal). His research centers on global and digital media, with a particular focus on China, Asia and the Global South. He is the author of Underglobalization: Beijing’s Media Urbanism and the Chimera of Legitimacy (Duke 2020) and co-editor of Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global (Duke 2017). His current research examines contemporary neuropolitics, cultures of optimization, and overdevelopment. He is the lead author of TechnoPharmacology, University of Minnesota/Meson Press, 2022.
For more information about the Colloquium Series, please contact Professor Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Global Studies Colloquium Director:
jnp@global.ucsb.edu