UNDETERMINEDSELF-DETERMINATIONThe Afterlives of Global South Anti-colonial Solidarity
at the United Nations

June 19, 2024, 16:00–17:30 (JST)

Venue: Seminar Room (Room I-213)
2nd ﬂoor, Inamori Foundation Memorial Building

CSEAS WEBACCESS

Format: Hybrid*For Zoom participants, please join from the following link (no registration required):https://kyoto-u-edu.zoom.us/j/81718343118?pwd=NHmWWFo7TqOuxFgMkim3EuSv0cVsJk.1

Abstract

During the 1950s and early 1960s, the campaign for decolonization is often
regarded as having reached its zenith, largely due to the solidarity between theGlobal South actors who drove the process forward. What was remarkable about
the solidarity of these actors was that from Africa to South America to South-East
Asia, nationalist leaders and international advocates consolidated their diﬀerent
visions of world order, and conceptions of sovereignty into a cohesive campaign
at the United Nations. This paper asks, what happened to those variegated visionsof Global South sovereignty which had under-written and driven decolonization,
after political sovereignty had been achieved? It will probe the afterlives ofself-determination which delivered quite diﬀerent fates than those envisioned byanti-colonial actors and point to the conceptual limits and political parameters ofsovereignty after political decolonization. Traditional histories of decolonization,
largely emphasizing the North-South binary, tend to focus on how post-colonialactors across the Global South sought to challenge the vestiges of empire andpolicies & practices of perceived neo-colonialism through bilateral relationships
or the politics of solidarity. This paper will examine how, through the Special
Committee on Decolonization (Committee of 24), disaggregated experiences ofsovereignty were translated into diﬀerent practices of managing
self-determination. Implicit in these developments, was a critique of the statusquo which has historically been cast as a binary North-South struggle. However,these debates had signiﬁcant implications for territories remaining under colonial
rule, for internal conﬂicts around self-determination as well as the vast matrix ofpost-colonial relations. This paper will analyze and how between actors of theGlobal South, new political dynamics, power struggles, and ultimately hierarchiesof inclusion and exclusion evolved.
Organized by
CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES, KYOTO UNIVERSITY

Speaker
Alanna O’Malley

Alanna O’Malley is Associate Professor of International History at Leiden University in The Netherlands and an expert in the United Nations, theGlobal South and the history of international
relations. She is Principal Investigator of theproject: ‘Challenging the Liberal World Order fromWithin, the Invisible History of the United Nations
and the Global South,’ funded by a Starting Grant
from the European Research Council.

DiscussantsYuan Zhou

Yuan Zhou is a Research Associate at Graduate Schoolof Law, Kobe University. He specializes in international
relations and political communication, focusing onChina. His work has been published or is forthcomingin peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Chinese
Political Science, Social Science Computer Review,
Asian Journal of Communication, Journal of HumanRights, among others. He holds a PhD in politicalscience from Kobe University.

Tomoko Takahashi

Tomoko Takahashi is an Assistant Professor at theCenter for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto
University. In the ﬁeld of International Relations, shestudies international institutions from the perspectiveof states, and especially focuses on China and theGlobal South. She holds a PhD from the University ofTokyo.

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