The academic seminar on “Landscape of vulnerability in Asia: Aged society – choices and innovation for the end-of-life”
Friday, October 21, 2022, from 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM at the Chumbhot-Pantip meeting room, 4th floor, Prajadhipok-Rambhai Barni Building, Chulalongkorn University.
Due to the issues that lead the society to realize about the near future of such a situation, it is an important opportunity that the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, the Faculty of Social Administration, Thammasat University, and the network partners recognized the academic situation which necessary to open up a stage for exchanging. The academic seminar on “Landscape of vulnerability in Asia: Aged society – choices and innovation for the end-of-life” will be held on Friday, October 21, 2022, from 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM at the Chumbhot-Pantip meeting room, 4th floor, Prajadhipok-Rambhai Barni Building, Chulalongkorn University. This seminar aims to create an academic space to enhance understanding, especially in terms of social policy for understanding the cultural bases of Asian society towards aging and death, experiences of the elderly under the complex pressures of social structures, and the possibility of future death scenarios through a multidisciplinary perspective. Finally, to jointly design the end of life and manage it through innovation to transform this fragile landscape.
The concern about the problems of becoming “complete-aged society” in Thailand where the proportion of the elderly population will be counted for 20% of the total population, it was a big time bomb that many people questioned about it all the time. Especially when the elderly population in 2022 increases to 12,116,199 people which can be counted for 18.3% of the total population, while the birth rate has declined. Therefore, it accelerates the entry into a super-Aged society. Then, what will happen in the daily life of Thai society in the age of aging that dominates the country?
The reflection of the tsunami from the elderly which affects all parts of society has been imagined through the scene in many academic fields. Lessons learned from societies in different countries have been thought through in various forums. The aspect also helps to open the experience through the movie, especially from the PLAN75 movie. It leads to the idea that we have to live together under the atmosphere of many people of all ages, to have joint decision-making and to take responsibility for policy options more clearly. The conflict of the film reflects the policy options that use the way of death to manage the aging population and reflects the politics in terms of life and death. It is a necropolitic approach that is more open to question the concept and ethics of death and the meaning of human life, especially when looking back at the landscape of vulnerability under Asian society. It is not only in Japan, but the proportion of the elderly population is 58 percent of the world’s elderly population in Asia. Additionally, elderly population can be counted as 11 percent of the total ASEAN population (Thai Elderly Situation, 2019). Even though aging is a situation that the whole world has to face, in terms of value and culture, Asian societies are challenged and also need interdisciplinary spaces to jointly discuss and design a possible future. Importantly, under the tsunami of this age, the mechanisms which Asian societies affect physical deterioration, fragility, and death need to be addressed.
