Short Abstract

The roundtable rethinks Cold War legacies in Asia as the effects of particular articulations. Moving beyond "Asia as a Method", we examine how our experiences and fieldwork across Asia reveal a plural Cold War relatedness that continues to shape the region's politics, culture, and knowledge.

Long Abstract

In Asia as Method (2010), Chen Kuan-Hsing reflected on the Western legacy haunting Asia and its intellectual conditions. While powerfully criticizing the not-going-away US imperialism, Asia as Method has yet reproduced another Cold-war framework that polarized and essentialized two worlds: "The West" ( namely "US") and "The East" (namely "Asia") and refutes other movements, possibilities, and desires around the Asia that have struggled for modernity and sovereignty along with their own longing for agencies.

This roundtable seeks to ask two interconnected questions: how does the Cold War still matter to us? And what are the structuring moments of Asia? Together with five Taiwanese early-career scholars working on topics such as nuclear energy, mountain medicine, religion, food policy, and material culture, this roundtable invites us to imagine alternative understandings beyond the universal Cold War framework and the all-too-simple "Asia as Method" approach. By discussing the dynamic relations between our own life experiences from Taiwan and our field sites across Asia, which have both been long entangled with and negotiated through the diverse effects of particular articulations of the so-called Cold War's legacies in Asia, we argue for a more sophisticated understanding of the complicated and pluralized Cold War-relatedness.

Our discussion highlights the importance of viewing the Cold War not as a monolithic event, but as a complex and multifaceted constellation of relations that spans various temporalities, continuing to shape Asia’s political, cultural, and intellectual landscapes today. By situating ourselves within these intertwined histories, this roundtable aims to open space for rethinking “Cold War relatedness from Asia” — a perspective that foregrounds Asia’s diverse agencies, interconnections, and ongoing transformations.