How do governing elites in the global South attempt to remake hegemony in a conjuncture of durable crisis? This is the question at the core of this talk, which draws on the forthcoming book Southern Interregnum to explore how political and economic elites across emerging powers in the global South work to reconcile accumulation and legitimation at a moment when significant geoeconomic and geopolitical transformations intersect with deepening precarity and widespread popular protest. Grounded in a Gramscian approach, the argument is developed through a relational comparison of recent political trajectories in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa.

This event is organised by the Yale-NUS College Division of Social Sciences.

About the speaker

Professor Alf Gunvald Nilsen is the director of the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Pretoria, where he also works as a professor of sociology. His research focuses on the political economy of development and democracy in the global South, with a particular focus on India and Asia. In his current research, Alf draws on Stuart Hall’s work on authoritarian populism to understand the rise of far-right regimes, parties, and movements across Asia, Latin America, and Asia.

About the discussants

Professor Vineeta Sinha is Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include Hindu religiosity in the Diaspora, Eurocentric and Androcentric critique of classical sociological and anthropological canons, decolonizing knowledge production and critical pedagogy. Her new book is Temple Tracks: Labour, Piety and Railway Construction in Asia (2023, Berghahn Books). She is Editorial Board Member of Current Sociology and on the International Advisory Committee of SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Co-Editor of the Routledge International Library of Sociology and International Advisory Board Member of Decolonization and Social World Book Series (Bristol University Press).

Professor James Derrick Sidaway is Professor of Political Geography at the National University of Singapore. His main research interests are political geography, especially of cities, states, and conflicts; and the history and philosophy of geography. He has published several books and edited volumes including Geography and Geographers: Anglo-American Human Geography since 1945, currently in its seventh edition (Oxford). He is also the author of numerous influential papers in journals such as Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography, The Professional Geographer, and many more. From 2005-2017, he served as an Associate Editor of Political Geography and is currently the co-editor of the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography.