Cold War Cultures in Asia

This subject examines one of the defining contexts of Asia’s post-Second World War history: the Cold War. The Cold War was a total conflict that shaped all aspects of societies, including in states across Asia. Employing a broad definition of “cultures”, the subject considers the Cold War’s influence on cultural forms such as music, sports, the performing arts, and material culture, but also on cultures of protest, consumption, and political radicalism, to name just some examples. Through these varied lenses, the subject explores how the Cold War was put to powerfully transformative ends in Asia, encouraging competing states within national boundaries to attempt to mobilise their populations and remake the societies over which they ruled to serve the exigencies of the conflict. The subject benefits from the insights of the new Cold War historiography to show that culture and the Cold War had a mutually constitutive relationship in Asia: the conflict influenced cultural representations, while local cultures and traditions also shaped how the Cold War struggle was waged. Students are expected to engage critically with this historiography and to draw connections between Asian cultures and societies, thus exploring how states and people in Asia embraced, resisted, and ultimately redefined the logic of the global Cold War.