Guest lecture by Dr. Igor Rogelja under the title “From Asian Values to Human Rights and Implications for the International Human Rights Regime”

On Thursday, 20 November 2022, the Department of International Relations and the East Asia Resource Library (EARL) co-hosted a guest lecture by Dr. Igor Rogelja, a Lecturer in Global Politics at University College London. In the lecture, Dr. Rogelja questioned the distinctiveness of the process of the constitution of the concept of Asian values, analysed the impact of this process on the dominant understanding of Asia in the broader discourse of international relations and shed light on its importance in the current functioning of key state actors in the Asian region.

The lecture was divided into three main substantive parts that were followed by a seminar. In the first substantive part, Dr. Rogelja questioned the dominant understanding of Asia. The conceptual discussion here relayed on the discussions of discourse and power surrounding the concept of Orientalism, as well as the conception of the concept of West and the Rest in the works of S. Hall. In the next, second part of the lecture, Dr. Rogelja focused on the historical process of the construction of Asia, where European orientalism and modernization were highlighted as the key mechanism. In the last, third part, of the guest lecture, the examination returned to the concept of Asian values. In this part, Dr. Rogelja presented the significance of the concept and often used term Asian Values for modernization, democracy, human rights and the present state of international relations.