Asian internationalism: Bandung's echo in a colonial metropolis
Amrith, Sunil S. (2005) Asian internationalism: Bandung's echo in a colonial metropolis. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6 (4), pp. 557-569. ISSN 1464-9373.
Abstract
This paper argues that two conflicting discourses of internationalism stood in uneasy counterpoint and contention in the Asian arena of the 1950s, reflected in the legacies of the Bandung conference. The first drew on a language of global citizenship and rights. The second saw the international system as a source of strength and support for state sovereignty, and state-directed programmes of national development. The remainder of the paper uses the case of late-colonial Singapore to examine the intersection of these two discourses of internationalism. An Asian internationalism, which spanned to include Africa over the course of the 1950s, became one of a stock of narratives that made Singapore's 'everyday cosmopolitanism' possible, in the worlds of the hawkers, the dockworkers and the agriculturalists. The political aspirations of these groups were sacrificed, ultimately, to the goal of disciplined national development, supported by an international order that had closed in to defend the interests of state power.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | Internationalism, Bandung, Afro-Asian, Singapore, decolonisation, cosmopolitanism, development |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies |
| Depositing User: | Sandra Plummer |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Oct 2007 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 16:47 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/574 |
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