Project description
Nostalgia motivates mobilisation in East Asia
East Asian societies are modernising. However, citizens are rejecting inequality. Nostalgia is rising in consumer trends and reflects discontent with economic development, influencing political mobilisation. The ERC-funded PENEA project aims to explore how frustration with capitalist modernity drives East Asians to express discontent with economic development and seek alternative futures. It will explore whether nostalgia for a pre-developmental past motivates political and economic change, and analyse expressions of nostalgia among East Asian citizens and how these feelings may inspire mobilisation. The project will focus on high-income countries (Japan and South Korea), middle-income communist states (China and Vietnam), and lower-middle-income nations (Cambodia and the Philippines), making it the first study of political-economic nostalgia in East Asia.
Objective
This project explores whether frustration with capitalist modernity leads East Asians to express discontent with economic development and to seek alternative futures. East Asian societies have experienced accelerated modernisation, but citizens in late-industrialised economies today reject hypercompetitive and unequal societies. In parallel, nostalgia has emerged as a major trend in consumer practices and cultural productions in the region. It is mostly contemplated as a cultural phenomenon. But when nostalgia expresses longing towards a pre-developmental past, it also belongs to the field of discontent with economic development and can shape citizens’ political economic mobilisation. The PENEA project therefore explores if East Asians long for their pre-developmental past, and if they mobilise for political economic change on this nostalgic basis? Combining sociology and political economy, it achieves three objectives: 1. documenting the expressions of nostalgia among East Asian citizens; 2. conceptualising these forms of nostalgia; 3. analysing if and how nostalgia is a source of mobilisation in East Asia. In East Asian societies that are post-developmental or developmental, expressions of longing for a recent economic past can be expected, and this longing can motivate actors to undertake individual or collective actions that produce political economic change. The PENEA project will test these hypotheses in high income, late-industrialisers (Japan, South Korea), middle-income Communist states (China, Vietnam) and fast-growing lower middle-income states (Philippines, Cambodia), through an innovative combination of traditional and social media analysis, surveys, interviews, participant observations and discourse analysis on textual and visual documents. The PENEA project is the first systematic, interdisciplinary and comparative study to identify political economic nostalgia in East Asian societies today, and to analyse how East Asians react to rapid development.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1050 Bruxelles / Brussel
Belgium
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