Engendering an East Asia pop culture research community
CHUA Beng Huat
One of the off shoots of my work with the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies project, and journal in particular, is the development of interest in the field of East Asian Pop Culture; ‘pop’ is used here to signify commercially produced, profit driven cultural product meant for mass entertainment, which constitute only part of a larger ‘popular’ culture of everyday life of the non elite population. My interest in East Asian Pop Culture began serendipitously with a request from colleagues in the geography department to present the keynote address for a Global Conference on Economic Geography in the National University of Singapore campus in December 2000. It was a very last minute request on account that one of the keynote speakers had backed out at the very last minute. Although I was given the freedom to speak on a topic of my choice I nevertheless felt that it must have something to do with geography.
Author’s biography
Chua Beng Huat is Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology, and also the Cluster Leader of Cultural Studies in Asia research cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He is also the founding co-executive editor of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.