Tony KIM YEAT

Bio

Tony is a PhD student focusing on Cambodia as part of the ERC Starting Grant project "Longing for an Economic Past? Political Economic Nostalgia in East Asian Societies (PENEA)."
He grew up in Phnom Penh and holds a Bachelor’s degree from Sciences Po Paris and a Master’s degree in Global Energy Transition and Governance from CIFE-European Institute.
His interests lie in degrowth, climate change adaptation and intergenerational transmission. As an artist photographer, he has also exhibited work addressing these themes in Cambodia.

► CV

Research interests

• Nostalgia
• Degrowth
• Climate adaptation
• Khmer Rouge
• Art

Research overview

The ERC project PENEA explores whether frustration with capitalist modernity leads East Asians to express discontent with economic development and to seek alternative futures. East Asian societies have experienced accelerated modernisation, but citizens in late-industrialised economies today reject hypercompetitive and unequal societies. In parallel, nostalgia has emerged as a major trend in consumer practices and cultural productions in the region. It is mostly contemplated as a cultural phenomenon. But when nostalgia expresses longing towards a pre-developmental past, it also belongs to the field of discontent with economic development and can shape citizens’ political economic mobilisation. The PENEA project therefore explores if East Asians long for their pre-developmental past, and if they mobilise for political economic change on this nostalgic basis? Combining sociology and political economy, it documents and conceptualises the expressions of nostalgia among East Asian citizens and it analyses if and how nostalgia is a source of mobilisation for post-growth change in six East Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia). It contributes empirically to the study of post-growth transitions, beyond the euro-centric character of the degrowth/post-growth literature. The project is led by Dr Juliette Schwak.