Minorities in Asia and Africa in Focus

On 9-10 October 2015 Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg hosted the international conference “Minorities and Conflicts: Asia and African states in the Modern World”, which was organized by the Department of Asian and African Studies and the Centre for Asian and African Studies. The conference welcomed Russian and international researchers from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Armenia, Turkey South Africa and South Korea, as well as students and PhD candidates from St. Petersburg’s universities.

The Director of HSE St Petersburg, Sergey Kadochnikov gave a welcoming address at the openning ceremony. At the plenary session Professors Alexander Poddiakov, Leonid Ionin, Evgeny Zelenev from the HSE and Gerrit Olivier, Professor at the Department of Political Science (University of Pretoria), discussed theoretical and practical approaches to the study of racial, ethnic, religious and other minorities, and conflicts developed within sociology, psychology, philosophy and political science.

During the next session titled ‘Small Social Groups in Multicultural Societies’ the participants learned about the current status of minorities and their participation in the political and socio-economic life of several countries in Asia – the Kurds in Turkey, the Zaidi in Yemen, the Yazidis in Iraq and Koreans in Japan.

Professors from South Africa Gerrit Olivier and Deon Geldenhuys, made presentations about racial and ethnic discrimination after the end of Apartheid and discussed the possibility of establishing cultural autonomy in South Africa. Professor Sang Chul Park delivered a talk on the role of migrants workers in Korea and respective govermental policies. Professor Vahe Boyajian from the Armenian National Academy of Sciences presented the results of his field work research of ethnic minorities in Iranian Balochistan. Moreover, Islamic State and events of Arab Spring were among  the most discussed topics at the conference, in particular tools of population mobilization, such as religious ideas and the Arabic language.    

The theme of the conference corresponds to the research project of the Centre of Asian and African Studies “Minority vs. Majority in the Historic and Cultural Continuum of Asia and Africa”. The Centre plans to publish a selection of papers presented at the conference in the nearest future.