This workshop probes the relationships between discourses of ‘development’, changing gender roles, and intergenerational socio-economic mobility. It asks how imaginaries of ‘development’, ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’ shape and reflect familial aspirations and intergenerational expectations. How do they articulate with changing gender roles, new subject positions, and idealised life paths? And what happens when hoped for futures fail to materialise?

With the rise of capitalism, mass media, migration and education, now is a time of profound socio-economic change throughout Asia. While social scientists often examine such changes through large-scale patterns, the changes are lived as deeply personal and relational. Within communities, young people are often viewed as instrumental to upward familial mobility, and this effects divisions of labour, norms of domestic moral economy, expectations of marriage and childbearing, and distributions of power. It creates new subject positions for men and women, but it also generates tensions and slippages where ideals compete or become nearly impossible to achieve.

Join us for afternoon tea and discussion lead by five ethnographers working across Asia: Dr Hannah Bulloch (ANU), Dr Justine Chambers (ANU), Dr Tanya Jakimow (UNSW Sydney), Dr Annie McCarthy (University of Canberra) and Dr Margaret Becker (University of Adelaide). The panel will consider parallels and differences between their fieldsites in the Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia India and Nepal, and will welcome reflections from the audience.