Yu-Hung Wang MA
PhD candidate
E-mail: y.wang18@uva.nl
Area(s) of interest: Colonialism & Postcolonialism, Cultural Anthropology, Historiography & Theory of History, Oral History & Life Writing, Political History, Transnational History
Cohort/Start PhD: 2024-2025
Challenges to democratic representation
Overarching project: Seeing like an indigenous eco-anarchist: decolonizing political theory in the age of anthropocene
University of Amsterdam
Supervisor(s): Enzo Rossi, Paul Raekstad, Kevin Pham, Elizabeth Buettner
Duration: September 2024- August 2028
This research aims to develop a decolonial theory of eco-socialism/degrowth inspired by indigenous eco-anarchist village Smangus in Taiwan. Drawing on anthropological and indigenous critiques, as well as interviews, I explore what we can learn about degrowth, decarbonizing freedom, sustainable planning, intergenerational responsibility, interspecies kinship from indigenous ecological practices and thoughts, in which the ideas of freedom and equality are intimately rooted in embodied experience and natural conditions.
Besides studying the contemporary case, I will conduct historical and archival research on the transnational encounters between colonial agents and Taiwan’s indigenous community, examining what prevented them from recognizing the ecological dimensions of the indigenous knowledge they encountered, and instead, contributed to establishing problematic visions of freedom and progress in modernity.