The Nordic Asia Podcast: Recent Episodes
NIAS and its academic partners
The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.
How are women represented in Chinese crime films? In what ways do the representation reflect traditional Chinese values and contemporary Chinese social-cultural norms? How did boys’ love culture emerge in China? What is the role of the Chinese state in queer media production and queer culture in China? In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden, and an affiliated PhD student at NIAS, Tingting Hu talked about her book Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals: The Representation of Women in Chinese Crime Films and her latest research on A Transmedia ‘Third’ Space: The Counterculture of Chinese Boys’ Love Audio Dramas. Tingting Hu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Communication, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University. Her research interest lies in the articulation of film, media and cultural studies with feminist theories, and transmedia studies in various social and cultural contexts. You can connect with Tingting at tingting.hu_academic@hotmail.com. Victims, Perpetrators and Professionals examines the representation of women in relation to violence in Chinese crime films made on the mainland, and in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It introduces a new trajectory in the investigation of the cinematic representation of female figures in relation to gender issues by interweaving Western feminist and postfeminist critiques with traditional Chinese sociocultural discourse. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical, and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: http://www.nias.ku.dk/ Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How serious an issue is digital repression in Thailand? Who is behind it? And what effects does it have on Thai people? Listen to Janjira Sombatpoonsiri as she talks to Petra Alderman about this issue in the context of contemporary Thailand and the 2020-2021 student-led protests. Janjira Sombatpoonsiri is an Assistant Professor and Project Leader at the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), and a Research Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, the University of Helsinki and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How did the first newspaper in Macau come into being? What was the first foreign language newspaper on Chinese soil about? How was the dynamic between the Chinese and Portuguese press in the former Portuguese colony and now China’s Special Administrative Region? Hugo Pinto speaks about A Abelha da China (A Bee from China), the first newspaper in Macau, operated from September 1822 to August 1823. In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden, and an affiliated PhD student at NIAS, Hugo Pinto speaks about the book project on A Abelha da China to commemorate it 200th anniversary. Co-edited with Duarte Drumond Braga, the book A Abelha da China nos seus 200 Anos. Casos, Personagens e Confrontos na Experiência Liberal de Macau (The China Bee in its 200 Years. Cases, Characters and Confrontations in the Liberal Experience of Macau) was published by the Scientific and Cultural Center of Macau in 2022. Reflecting the complete historical background of its time, A Abelha da China would be taken up by other political agents. However, its legacy of insubordination would eventually live on. A newspaper that served as an official bulletin, and also as an arena for political confrontation, did not neglect a cultural and even literary dimension, as it carried within itself the mission of instructing its readers and denouncing the absolutist tyranny that, later, in reflux, would take over the newspaper itself. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical, and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: http://www.nias.ku.dk/ Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What does civil society look like in Indonesia and Cambodia, and who are civil society elites? In this podcast interview, editors of the recently published NIAS Press edited volume Civil Society Elites. Field Studies from Cambodia and Indonesia, Astrid Norén-Nilsson, Amalinda Savirani and Anders Uhlin dive into the themes of their book, as well as the processes and experiences of their research. Interviewed by Fanny Töpper, this episode explores the dynamics within civil society groups, highlighting their social and political roles and the power relations within them. Civil Society Elites is the first systematic study of civil society elites in Southeast Asia (and indeed anywhere in the world). Purchase a hardcopy here. Astrid Norén-Nilsson is a senior lecturer at the Centre for East and Southeast Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden. Her scholarship focuses on the politics of contemporary Cambodia. Amalinda Savirani is an associate professor at the Department of Politics and Government, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. She has published widely on civil society movements in Indonesia. Anders Uhlin is Professor of Political Science at Lund University. His research centres on civil society activism, particularly in Southeast Asia. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, the University of Helsinki and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What does a map of Southeast Asia as a pegasus have to do with translation and Southeast Asia? How can we think of translation as anything other than a unidirectional practice of bringing meaning across languages? How can Southeast Asia challenge the way we think about translation? Phrae Chittiphalangsri and Vicente L. Rafael, the editors of the first edited volume on translation and Southeast Asia Of Archipelagos and Peninsulas unpack these questions that are raised in the book, along with sharing their personal stories about translation, with Kukasina Kubaha, a NIAS SUPRA alumni. Phrae Chittiphalangsri is an Associate Professor of Translation Studies at Chulalongkorn University. She has written extensively on Orientalism, Translation, and Post-colonialism. She is also a literary translator working with Thai, English, and French. Vicente L. Rafael is a Professor of History and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Washington. His latest book The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte is published with Duke University Press like his previous books which include Contracting Colonialism, The Promise of the Foreign, and Motherless Tongues. Books and articles mentioned: On the Virtuality of Translation in Orientalism The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts
Why have issues of human rights become so contentious in Indonesia, 25 years after the much-heralded post-Suharto democratic transition? What kind of role has the Indonesian Foundation of Legal Aid Institutes, or LBH, performed in this field? Should those working on human rights try to work with governments and power-holders, or adopt an oppositional stance towards them? Timothy Mann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and recently completed his PhD on Indonesian human rights issues at the University of Melbourne. In this podcast, Tim discusses his research on LBH and the dilemmas faced by those campaigning for greater human rights in a rapidly-changing Indonesia. Duncan McCargo is Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
In this episode, Kenneth King (University of Edinburgh) & Meera Venkatachalam (University of Mumbai), discuss their recently co-edited volume, India's Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa, published by Boydell and Brewer in 2021. India has understood its relations with Africa within the framework of South-South cooperation, where postcolonial states collaborated for scientific and technological exchanges, as well as to craft common political positions against the hegemony of 'northern' powers. However, following economic liberalisation and the rise of the political right, India's relationship with Africa has changed. Kenneth & Meera discuss some of the main themes in their book, including how the nature of Indian aid to Africa has changed over the decades; how symbols such as Gandhi have been used by the Indian government as part of its soft power strategy; how mantras of post-colonial solidarity and South-South Cooperation have been replaced by a growing sense of Indian exceptionalism in recent years, and, most importantly, what Africans make of India's growing footprint on the continent. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
Why is Malaysia in need of electoral reform? How can we explain recent changes including the anti-party hopping law and the successful UNDI18 campaign to lower the voting age? And what does the outcome Malaysia's GE15, the November 2022 general election, mean for the health of Malaysian democracy? In this podcast, editors Helen Ting and Donald Horowitz discuss their recent volume on electoral reform in Malaysia with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo Helen Ting is an associate professor at IKMAS at UKM, the National University of Malaysia, while Donald L. Horowitz is James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science Emeritus at Duke University. This wide-ranging volumes features 11 chapters on various aspects of Malaysia's electoral system. Big political changes in Malaysia since 2018 have raised high expectations for electoral reform but much remains to be achieved. This impressive study takes stock of the state of democracy in Malaysia by offering readers a deep but readily understandable analysis of an array of electoral reform issues. Here is a resource that will interest the politically engaged as well as scholars of political process, a study that is both wide-ranging and focused, and a primer on electoral politics that will be of wide interest far beyond Malaysia. "an extremely timely publication" - Andrew Khoo, Bar Council Malaysia The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Did the bloody 1 February 2021 military coup in Myanmar produce an unexpected ‘solidarity dividend’ by unifying opponents of the new regime from a range of ethnic backgrounds and political perspectives? How can political ethnographers continue to study Myanmar without having physical access to the country? Why might it be fruitful to reimagine Myanmar through the lens of the ‘state-nation’ concept? Cecile Medaile is a postdoctoral researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and recently completed her PhD on Myanmar politics at the University of New South Wales. In this podcast, Cecile discusses her research on Myanmar’s ethnic minorities both before and after the February 2021 military coup. Duncan McCargo is Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts are here.
Why and how has India’s Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, become so adept at appealing to and recruiting people from the lower castes? And what does this mean for Indian politics in the short to medium term? In this episode we are joined by Samantha Agarwal to discuss the rise of Hindu nationalism, focusing on the strategies it deploys to recruit people and voters from lower caste groups as it seeks to rework its image as a Brahminical and upper caste political organization. Samantha Agarwal is currently at Johns Hopkins University and will soon join the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC., as a Changemaker Postdoctoral Fellow. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
With Afghanistan once again under Taliban rule and Pakistan reeling under a severe economic and political crisis, the relationship between the neighbouring countries is growing increasingly tense. How can we understand this contentious situation? And, what are the consequences for the civilian population? To discuss these question, and current Afghanistan-Pakistan relations more generally, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Farhat Taj (University of Tromsø). Farhat Taj is an associate professor at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
In 2023, India surpassed China in numbers of total population and holds the presidency of the prestigious G20, shortly after it overtook the UK as the world’s fifth largest economy in terms of GDP. Simultaneously, various actors are courting India's favour for international policy projects, such as the adoption of ambitious climate targets or peace plans for the war in Ukraine. Given India’s rise, the volume Global India: The Pursuit of Influence and Status (Routledge, 2023) focuses on the different manifestations of India's role in the world as well as its own multi-layered identity. To what extent do BJP Hindu nationalism and Narendra Modi’s leadership play into India’s global role? How is India's approach assessed by domestic, regional, and global audiences? Does India's role as a regional and global power materialise in the global climate regime? Simon Kaack has recently completed his Master’s in Human Rights Studies at Lund University, in which he focused on human rights in Southeast Asia, ASEAN’s institutionalisation and its relationship with the EU. As a student assistant at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies he worked on the global climate regime and future politics, particularly in the context of India. He discusses the book and the issues raised therein with its editor Chris Ogden and author Miriam Prys-Hansen. Chris Ogden is Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor in Asian Security at the School of International Relations within the University of St. Andrews. His research analyses the relationship between national identity, security and domestic politics in South Asia (primarily India) and East Asia (primarily China), as well as the rise of great powers, authoritarianism in global politics, and China’s coming world order. Miriam Prys-Hansen is Lead Research Fellow and Head of the Research Programme "Global Orders and Foreign Policies" at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. Within her work, Miriam focuses on regional and emerging powers, such as the BRICS states, as well as global and regional environmental politics and the global climate regime, specifically regarding India’s role therein.
Why was the May 2023 Thai election such a historic election? What does the surprising Move Forward victory tell us about the state of Thai politics? And what happens next? Duncan McCargo and Ken Lohatepanont join Petra Alderman to discuss the historic Thai vote and the post-election developments. Duncan McCargo is Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. Ken Lohatepanont is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
re there ways to tackle pressing social, environmental and economic problems at once? In this episode, Professor Assunta Cuyegkeng from Ateneo de Manilla University in Philippines joins Pilvi Posio to discuss the research and practice of social entrepreneurship that offers potential solutions for building holistic social, economic and also environmental sustainability. Based on the recent book Creating Sustainable Value in Social Enterprises: Stories of Social Innovation (Ateneo de Manila UP, 2021) she has published with her colleagues, Assunta introduces various examples of social enterprises in Philippines and challenges they face when aiming at generating social value through their innovative business models. These creative entrepreneurial practices engage and empower stakeholders and as such offer a way to compensate for systemic institutional failures especially in emergent economies often suffering from widespread poverty and inequality. Assunta Cuyegkeng is proferssor at the Department of Educational Leadership and Management of the Ateneo de Manilla university in Philippines, the director of the Ateneo Institute of Sustainability. Pilvi Posio is senior researcher at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Finland, and the coordinator of the project Finnish-ASEAN Academic Platform for Sustainable Development run by the Finnish University Network of Asian Studies.
What is the journalism culture in Vietnam? What role does Sweden play in the transformation of Vietnamese journalism? How has Swedish media aid fulfilled its political aim to contribute to the democratic development of media in Vietnam? Andreas Mattsson speaks about how two media aid projects from Sweden were used to intervene in the development of journalism in Vietnam between 1993 and 2007.In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden and an affiliated PhD student at NIAS, Andreas Mattsson talks about how the Swedish media aid intervened in the Vietnamese media by contributing to a technological transition of journalism although the training in newsroom management and media ethics were challenged by conflicting journalism ideology and social norms.Drawing from interviews with Swedish trainers from the media aid projects and informed by his analysis of project documents that provide first-hand information from a period when Vietnamese journalism underwent a dramatic transition towards the digitalized media system existing today, Andreas Mattsson hopes to contribute to de-colonialize media theory to rethink the development of journalism in the Global South.Andreas Mattsson is a lecturer and program director at the School of Journalism at the Department of Communication and Media, Lund University. He is also a PhD student at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki and an affiliated researcher at the Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET) at Lund University. He has conducted research and taught about journalism practice and digital technology from a comparative international perspective. Besides his university assignments, he works as a freelance journalist for various Swedish and Nordic newspapers and magazines.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the University of Helsinki.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: http://www.nias.ku.dk/Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
The brutal assassination of Prime Minister Abe in July this year shocked Japan and has produced large and unexpected consequences for the nation´s politics. In this episode, we examine the fallout of the assassination on Abe’s legacy, and on Japan: What are the consequences of Abe's association with the Unification Church for the role of religion in politics more generally? How much of Abe's political legacy will survive his assassination? And, how has current Prime Minister Kishida and the LDP dealt with the challenges brought about by the controversial state funeral that was accorded to Abe? To discuss these questions, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by a long-term collaborator, Paul Midford, professor of political science at Meiji Gakuin University in Yokohama. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, the University of Helsinki, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
What does the concept of ecological civilisation mean in practice? And how can we understand the relationship between grand visions, legal systems, green politics and development processes on the ground in contemporary China? In this episode we focus on China’s environmental ambitions and its increasingly central role in efforts towards global sustainability, as well as the importance placed upon sustainable development by the Chinese Communist Party, and by Xi Jinping himself. To unpack these issues and discuss the potentials of a greener China, Arve Hansen is joined by some of Norway’s leading experts on Chinese environmental politics and practice, Gørild Heggelund, Yong Zhou and Bjorn Leif Brauteseth.
Bjorn Leif Brauteseth is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo.
Gørild Heggelund is Research Professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute.
Yong Zhou is a postdoctoral Fellow at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo.
Arve Hansen is a researcher at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.
The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts
In March 2022 the U.S. government announced its determination that genocide was committed by the Myanmar military against Rohingya communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in 2017. What will this mean for the roughly one million Rohingya refugees living in neighboring countries, for Rohingya IDPs in Rakhine, and for post-coup Myanmar? In this episode, part two of a two-part series, Terese Gagnon speaks with Kyaw Zeyar Win about this long-awaited determination and the possible implications for Rohingya both within and outside post-coup Myanmar. Click here to listen to part one of the series covering the securitization of Rohingya and roots of the 2017 genocide. Kyaw Zeyar Win is a Project Coordinator at the International Republican Institute in Washington D.C. He is an expert in international relations and human rights with a focus on Myanmar. He holds a master’s in IR from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University where he was an Open Society Fellow. He is author of the chapter “Securitization of the Rohingya in Myanmar” from the book Myanmar Transformed? People, Places and Politics. Terese Gagnon is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Copenhagen and the Nordic Institute of Asian studies researching Karen food, seed, and political sovereignty. You might also be interested in these related podcasts: --Karen Sanctuaries Memory, Biodiversity and Political Sovereignty --The Politics of Protest in Myanmar --What Remains: Textiles from Tuol Sleng The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What are the problems with Samuel Huntington’s views about civil-military relations? Why do military coups persist in countries such as Pakistan, and what might be done to reduce their likelihood? In a study drawing upon extensive interview research in Pakistan, Cornelia Baciu argues that international organisations can help create a framework of security governance which can have a positive impact upon the political roles assumed by the military. Her 2021 book Civil-Military Relations and Global Security Governance Strategy: Hybrid Orders and the Case of Pakistan investigates the relationship between international security governance, democratic civil-military relations and the relevance of strategy, as well as of absolute and relative gains, in norms formation in hybrid orders. Highlighting caveats of the legacy of Huntington’s paradigm of military professionalism, the book applies a robust methodology and data collected in four sample regions in Pakistan. It gauges the effects of international and local actors’ support in the Security Sector Reform domain and examines instances of civil-military interactions and military transition. The book also analyses determinants and strategies that can influence them to demonstrate the impact of global governance in norms diffusion, as well as of absolute and relative utility gains and incentives in normative change. The author generates a new theory pertaining to international organisations and actors as determinants of transformation processes and consequently sheds new light on the issue of global security governance, especially its impact on civil-military relations and democratisation in hybrid orders. Cornelia Baciu is a researcher at the Centre for Military Studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. She specialises in international security organizations and conflict research. Duncan McCargo is Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How can we understand the processes through which political leaders, god-men, stars of all kinds, and big or small deities mingle together in the public sphere? And what are the consequences of deifying politicians, or opening politics to the gods? In this episode, we discuss South Asian politicians who are treated like gods, and gods who enter politics. We focus, in other words, on political deification, a phenomenon that is in display across South Asia, but also beyond. In India, both national and regional parties work to reclaim the symbols of Hinduism, in order to compete with the discourse and politics of Hindu Nationalism, espoused by the incumbent government. As a result, both Hindu nationalism and its counter-cultures are now squarely placed in the domain of religious symbols, mythological narratives, and deified political figures. Similarly, deified and martyred figures of past conflicts now serve as national icons that cohere the polity in both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Moumita Sen, Michael Stausberg, Praskanva Sinharay and Sharika Thiranagama to discuss the phenomenon of political deification in South-Asia. Their discussion draws on a new thematic issue of the journal Religion, edited by Sen and Nielsen: Religion, volume 52, number 4.
Moumita Sen is an associate professr of Culture Studies at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society.
Michael Stausberg is editor in chief of the journal Religion and professor of the Study of Religion at the University of Bergen.
Praskanva Sinharay is a PhD scholar at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and also a Research Consultant with the Election Commission of India.
Sharika Thiranagama is an associate professor of anthropology at Stanford University.
The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: http://www.nias.ku.dk/ Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How is sexuality experienced in contemporary China? What are the connections and tensions between China and the West in producing knowledges of sexuality? Dr Weiyi Hu notes that most of the seminal writings on sexuality are produced in the West, and that the definition of sexuality is largely theorised by Western scholars. In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden and an affiliated PhD student at NIAS, Dr. Weiyi Hu sketches an alternative approach that questions the unreflective reliance on Western understanding of sexuality, and to cut through a cluster of dualisms, such as East and West, in theorising Chinese sexuality. She combines Xiaomei Chen’s concept of the Chinese Occidentalism discourse and Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital to elucidate the connections and tensions between China and the West. Drawing on fieldwork, she argues that within contemporary Chinese culture the meaning of sexuality experienced in everyday life is charged with tensions between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Weiyi Hu is a sessional facilitator at the University of Sydney, where she recently completed her doctorate in the social sciences. She is interested in the sociology of everyday life, sexuality, feminism, and familial relations in contemporary China. Born in Shanghai, she is fascinated by the complex ways that the Occident (West) is perceived, imagined, narrated, and experienced by Chinese peoples. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: http://www.nias.ku.dk/ Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
For decades Americans have described China as a rising power. That description no longer fits: China has already risen. What does this mean for the U.S.–China relationship? For the global economy and international security? In this conversation, Julie Yu-Wen Chen, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Helsinki discusses with Maria Adele Carrai from New York University Shanghai. Maria Adele Carrai is co-creator of a website called Mapping Global China. She recently co-edited “The China Questions 2: Critical Insights into US-China Relations” (Harvard University Press, 2022) with Jennifer Rudolph and Michzel Szonyi to offer essential insights into the many dimensions of the world’s most important bilateral relationship between the US and China. The voices included in The China Questions 2 recognize that the U.S.–China relationship has changed, and that the policy of engagement needs to change too. But they argue that zero-sum thinking is not the answer. Much that is good for one society is good for both—we are facing not another Cold War but rather a complex and contextually rooted mixture of conflict, competition, and cooperation that needs to be understood on its own terms. One unique feature of this book is that it even includes discussion of Chinese literature. In this episode, Maria Adele Carrai read a short passage from Xudong Zhang’s chapter, illuminating how Chinese writers, with “their freedom, irreverence, and subversiveness undermine the suffocating (self-)censorship, stifling conformism and the formulaic media coverage. Like a spinning gyro rotating on an invisible axis, their work points to an aesthetically determined North Star, constant and free-standing, all the while attentive to and capable of absorbing the sound and fury, sighs, and laughter around this single-minded movement (Zhang, page 393). Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on University of Helsinki Chinese Studies’ website, Youtube and Facebook, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
In March of 2022 the U.S. government announced its determination that genocide was committed by the Myanmar military against Rohingya communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in 2017. What will this mean for the roughly one million Rohingya refugees living in neighboring countries, for Rohingya IDPs in Rakhine State, and for post-coup Myanmar? In this episode Terese Gagnon speaks with Kyaw Zeyar Win about this long-awaited determination. In this conversation we hear from Zeyar about the violent origins of the Rohingya genocide, rooted in the long history of securitization of Rohingya in Myanmar. Terese and Zeyar discuss the possible implications of the genocide determination for Rohingya both within and outside of post-coup Myanmar. Kyaw Zeyar Win is a Project Coordinator at the International Republican Institute in Washington D.C. He is an expert in politics, international relations, and human rights with a focus on Myanmar. He holds a master’s in international relations from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University where he was an Open Society Fellow. He has previously worked at organizations including Voice of America and Amnesty International. He is author of the chapter “Securitization of the Rohingya in Myanmar” from the book Myanmar Transformed? People, Places and Politics. Terese Gagnon is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at University of Copenhagen in the "The Politics of Climate and Sustainability in Asia”. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Syracuse University. Her dissertation is about Karen food, seed, and political sovereignty across landscapes of home and exile. Links to related podcasts: https://nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast/podcasts/karen_sanctuaries/ https://nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast/podcasts/the-politics-of-protest-in-myanmar/ https://nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast/podcasts/what-remains-textiles-from-tuol-sleng/ The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What explains the uneven meatification of diets in three of Asia’s core ‘emerging economies’? How and why is meat consumption changing today, and what role have American fast-food chains played? To discuss these questions and more, Helene Ramnæs, coordinator for the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies, is joined by Marius Korsnes, Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Arve Hansen. Asian diets include considerably more meat now than in the recent past, but meat is a contested issue. China and Vietnam have experienced some of the world’s most dramatic meat booms but vegetarianism increases and concerns for unsafe production methods and negative health effects have made people cautious about the meat they eat. While India defies global meat trends, contemporary India is not as vegetarian as it claims, and a large beef sector exists in an uneasy relationship with Modi’s hindu-nationalist regime. Marius Korsnes specialises in Science and Technology Studies at the Department for Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). His work focuses on sustainable consumption and production and he is PI of the ERC project: “A Middle Way? Probing Sufficiency through Meat and Milk in China” Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a social anthropologist working on social movements and the political economy of development in India. In addition to working and teaching at the University of Oslo, he also leads the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies with Arve Hansen. Arve Hansen is a human geographer at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo, teaching and researching consumption and sustainability, and with a particular interest in meat and meat avoidance. He also leads the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies with Kenneth Bo Nielsen. Karen Lykke Syse and Arve Hansen: Changing Meat Cultures Food Practices, Global Capitalism, and the Consumption of Animals The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What is the oral tradition of Chinese storytelling about and what is the connection to the great Chinese novels? How to translate a Chinese classic such as the famed and defamed “Jin Ping Mei”? And how to handle the dilemma of steering one’s boat between enormous amounts of scholarship on the novel without drowning, and keeping up the tempo of translation day after day? NIAS senior researcher Vibeke Børdahl joined NIAS Press Student Assistant, Julia Heinle, to discuss her upcoming publications “Jin Ping Mei i vers og prosa”, I-X (Vandkunsten, 2011-2022) and “Jin Ping Mei – A Wild Horse in Chinese Literature” (ed. by Vibeke Børdahl and Lintao Qi) (NIAS Press 2022). Dr. Vibeke Børdahl is a senior researcher at NIAS and is generally recognized as one of the most accomplished scholars in the study of Chinese oral literature. As well as doing much research on the interplay of oral and written traditions in Chinese popular literature and performance culture, over the past decade she has translated the full work of Jin Ping Mei into Danish. The publication is celebrated with a symposium 26-28 October supported by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Carlsberg Academy and NIAS. Find the NIAS Press book here. Translation editions by Vandkunsten are here. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Can spiritually and religiously inspired environmental movements in Asia help reach the global goal of environmental sustainability? This question lies at the heart of the research project “Transcendence and Sustainability: Asian Visions with Global Promise” that we focus on in this episode. Also known as TRANSSUSTAIN, the project builds on the observation that scholars, activists, and even politicians in many Asian countries have found inspiration in traditional knowledge and in the premodern texts and practices of, for instance, Daoist, Buddhist, Hindu, and Confucian traditions to envision more ecologically sustainable futures. Exploring the mobilization and recalibration of such traditional Asian religio-philosophical ideas in response to the global environmental crisis, the project seeks to assess the potential of Asian environmental movements for helping us build sustainable global futures. Mette Halskov Hansen is professor of China Studies at the University of Oslo. Amita Baviskar is professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University. Lu Chen is a Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
How did Chinese tourism grow from almost non-existent to being the largest outbound travel source market in the world over a couple of decades? Is the word “weaponization” a fair description of how Beijing uses tourism strategically in their foreign policy? And will the Chinese tourists ever travel internationally again after several years of pandemic? In this episode, Philip Kyhl is joined by Dr. Matias Thuen Jørgensen to discuss his and co-author Anders Ellemann Kristensen’s contribution to the recently published book Chinese Outbound Tourist Behaviour (Routledge, 2022). The chapter explores the evolution of the Chinese outbound tourism industry, the behaviour of Chinese tourists abroad and how the industry is continuously affected by regulations and policy-making. Dr. Matias Thuen Jørgensen is Associate Professor and head of the Centre for Tourism Research (cftr.ruc.dk) at Roskilde University, Denmark. Matias aims to publish research that introduces novel conceptual and theoretical ideas and perspectives, but also resonate in practice. His research interests include tourism development, distribution, sustainability, entrepreneurship and experience. Empirically, his work has focused on the Chinese market and destinations in the Nordics. His work has been published in journals such as Tourism Management, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, Tourist Studies and International Journal of Tourism Research. You can contact Matias directly for a free copy of the specific chapter in the book on matiastj@ruc.dk Philip Kyhl is the assistant Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen. Philip has worked with Chinese Outbound tourism for more than a decade and experienced the rise and development of the Chinese tourism industry from several years living and working in China and later as an advisor for European companies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-a...
Nepal's recent local elections, held in May 2022 in 753 urban and rural municipalities, produced a number of surprises. Most prominent in national headlines was the victory of independent candidate and former rap musician Balen Shah in the race for mayor of Kathmandu, Nepal's capital. But is the success of Shah and several other independent candidates really a signal of a broader shift away from the dominance of traditional parties in Nepal, or were these just isolated events? What do the results tell us about the persistence of vote bank culture in Nepal? How did female candidates fare in the elections? And what are the political aspirations of Kathmandu’s new mayor? Nayan Pokhrel, a Kathmandu-based political analyst, discusses with Hanna Geschewski the election results and how they fit into larger political transitions in the young Federal Republic. Nayan Pokhrel is an independent researcher and political analyst. His recent assignments include monitoring of the implementation of federalism in Nepal with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) and political economy analysis of Nepal's elections with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD). He previously led research and observation at Democracy Resource Center Nepal which has been monitoring Nepal's political transition and settlement since the adoption of the new Constitution in 2015. Hanna Geschewski is a PhD researcher in Human Geography at the Chr. Michelsen Institute and the University of Bergen in Norway, focusing on socio-ecological adaptation processes in Tibetan refugee settlements in Karnataka, India. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Is China part of the world? Based on much of the political, media, and popular discourse in the West the answer is seemingly no. Even after four decades of integration into the global socioeconomic system, discussions of China continue to be underpinned by a core assumption: that the country represents a fundamentally different 'other' that somehow exists outside the 'real' world. Either implicitly or explicitly, China is generally depicted as an external force with the potential to impact on the 'normal' functioning of things. This core assumption, of China as an orientalised, externalised, and separate 'other', ultimately produces a distorted image of both China and the world. In this conversation, Julie Yu-Wen Chen, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Helsinki discusses with Ivan Franceschini from Australian National University and Nicholas Loubere from Lund University. Ivan Franceschini and Nicholas Loubere’s 2022 book Global China as Method (Cambridge University Press), seeks to illuminate the ways in which China and the Chinese people form an integral part of the global capitalist system. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on University of Helsinki Chinese Studies’ website, Youtube and Facebook, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Between March and May of this year, large parts of India and Pakistan were hit by a severe heat wave that claimed at least 90 lives and seriously impacted people's livelihoods and the environment. What made this heat wave so different and possibly worse than previous ones? Who was particularly at risk? And where does India stand in terms of adaptation strategies? In this episode, Hanna Geschewski talks with climate change researchers Dr. Chandi Singh and Dr. Emmanuel Raju about the recent heat wave and how to deal with increasingly frequent temperature extremes. Dr. Chandni Singh is a Senior Researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bangalore, India. She is also a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC where she covered topics of vulnerability and adaptation in Asia in the Assessment Report 6 published in March 2022. She works on examining what drives differential vulnerability to climate change and how and why certain people adapt while others don’t or can’t. Dr. Singh wrote about the 2022 heat wave in her New York Times guest essay, “Spring Never Came to India This Year.” Dr. Emmanuel Raju is an Associate Professor at the Global Health Section at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He is also currently the Director of the Copenhagen Center for Disaster Research (COPE), which provides a platform for interdisciplinary research on disaster and climate change. Dr. Raju recently co-authored a study titled "Climate Change made devastating early heat in India and Pakistan 30 times more likely," which highlighted the most severe impacts of the recent heat wave and how it can be attributed to climate change. Hanna Geschewski is a PhD researcher in Human Geography at the Chr. Michelsen Institute and the University of Bergen in Norway, focusing on socio-ecological adaptation processes in Tibetan refugee settlements in Karnataka, India. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What is the potential of podcasts to disseminate research based insights? How can a podcast function as a networking and pedagogical tool? And what is so intriguing about a Nordic podcast on Asia? Born during the pandemic to keep alive the vibrant research community on Asia in the Nordics, the Nordic Asia Podcast began as a collaborative effort between Nordic research institutions. More than two years and over 100 episodes later the podcast is, dare we say, doing better than ever. Tracing the birth and evolution of the Nordic Asia podcast, Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Duncan McCargo, Outi Luova and Julie Yu-Wen Chen discuss the potential of podcasts to disseminate research based insights, as well as how it can function as a networking and pedagogical tool for teaching Asia studies. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. Outi Louva is University Lecturer at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku. Duncan McCargo is director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and professor of political science in Copenhagen. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-a...
How green is green energy really? And what role does Asia, more specifically China play in the transition to green energy? On the 7th of July, International Energy Agency came out with a press release warning the world to diversify the solar panel supply chain, which as of now is dominated by China. In this episode, Saskia Lilli Lehtsalu, an intern at University of Tartu Asia Center will take a look at the current energy green energy dilemma and discuss the future scenarios with energy expert Einari Kisel from Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) in Estonia. Einari is the current Head of Partnerships and Strategy in the Fin-est Center for Smart Cities in TalTech and former World Energy Council Regional Manager for Europe. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-a...
Is a Chinese invasion on Taiwan a storm on the horizon when the West is busy with the Ukrainian war? Will Nancy Pelosi’s plan to visit Taiwan in August, the first by a Speaker of the US House of Representatives since 1997, escalate tensions between China and Taiwan? Joining us Julie Chen to talk about this hot topic is Sean King, senior vice president at Park Strategies, a New York business advisory firm which has undertaken research and analysis on Taiwan and its neighborly relations. He is also an Affiliated Scholar at the University of Notre Dame Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies. Based on his experience in the government and business sectors, Sean King believes that Russia’s Ukraine invasion was not a prelude to China's moving on Taiwan. The two situations are very different. In Sean’s view, visits by US officials to Taiwan are not without precedent and Nancy Pelosi’s visit should not be viewed as a provocation by the United States or Taiwan. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on University of Helsinki Chinese Studies’ website, Youtube and Facebook, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
With the upcoming G20 summit this November, all eyes should be on Indonesia – the fourth largest country in the world and current holder of G20 presidency. How has Indonesia reacted so far to the war in Ukraine? Why are so many Indonesians sympathetic to Russia, despite Indonesia’s historical tendency to favour the underdog in international disputes? What does all this have to do with the price of instant noodles in Jakarta? And why exactly have some people suggested that Indonesian president Joko Widodo might be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? In this episode, Saskia Lilli Lehtsalu, an intern at University of Tartu Asia Center, takes a look at Indonesian perspectives on the war in Ukraine together with Radityo Dharmaputra. Radiyo is a junior research fellow in Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu, Estonia and a lector in international relations at Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia. Radityo has written a number of commentaries about Indonesian perspectives on the Ukraine war, which can be accessed through the links below: Why do so many Indonesians back Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Why many Indonesian experts are pro-Russia and ignoring Ukraine’s perspective How will Indonesia deal with Russia and Ukraine at the G20?Jokowi’s visits to Russia and Ukraine are more about domestic gains than the global interest The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Why does Japanese immigration policy have such a bad name? What are the historical origins of tight immigration policies? Where have these policies left immigrants of Korean descent, many of who lost their Japanese nationality in the wake of the Pacific War? Are Koreans in Japan still torn between competing loyalties to North and South Korea? And what prospects are there for immigration reform in Japan, especially given the country’s aging population and urgent need for more labour? Sara Park is a lecturer in Japanese culture at the University of Helsinki, who has written widely on questions of gender, the family, immigration, ethnicity and minorities in Japan. Her latest book in Japanese is ヘルシンキ 生活の練習 (Practice of Life in Helsinki, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 2021), about living through the Finnish Covid-19 lockdown. Duncan McCargo is director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. He has previously published three editions of Contemporary Japan, a widely-assigned introductory text. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How can we get our articles in Asian studies published? What criteria should we use in selecting what journals to target? On what basis do journal editors make decisions on what articles to publish? How should prospective authors deal with harsh and even contradictory reviewer reports? In this special double-length summer podcast, based on an online event convened by NIAS in 2021, two editors of Asian studies journals discuss the challenges of publishing high-quality articles in the field, in a lively and wide-ranging conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Helsinki. One of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science, until recently Julie was also the editor-in-chief of Asian Ethnicity. Hyung-Gu Lynn is AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research at the University of British Columbiaand the longstanding editor of Pacific Affairs. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
As COVID-19 disrupted maritime trade with China, the world was again reminded of the importance of shipping in global commerce. The roots of Nordic maritime trade relations with Asia go back centuries, and this history reveals interesting details about early Finnish interaction with China. For example, the Swedish East India Company’s 18th century trade voyages produced the first-ever Finnish academic dissertation on China, which was defended by Cadet Israel Reinius in Turku in 1749. In this episode, Dr. Erja Kettunen-Matilainen from the University of Turku introduces us to this fascinating but somewhat less known historical aspect of Finnish relations with China. Dr. Erja Kettunen-Matilainen is a Senior Research Fellow in Economic Geography and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Marketing and International Business at the University of Turku. She has written about Cadet Israel Reinius and Finland’s first China-related dissertation from 1749 as well as the participation of Finns in the Swedish East India Company’s trade voyages in the 18th century (in Finnish). Ari-Joonas Pitkänen is a Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Why should we view the anti-China protests that began in Hong Kong in 2019 through a comparative lens? How do earlier episodes in Hong Kong’s history help us make sense of what has happened? How far can we make useful parallels with other protest movements in places like Thailand and Myanmar? And is a distinct field of ‘Hong Kong studies’ now beginning to emerge? In May 2022, Jeffrey Wasserstrom gave a keynote address entitled ‘The Struggle for Hong Kong: Comparisons Across Space and Time’, to the conference Unknown Futures: A Seminar on Hong Kong, held at the University of Copenhagen. Here, Jeff is in conversation about Hong Kong in comparative perspective with Duncan McCargo, director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. Jeff’s books include Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai (Stanford 1991), and most recently Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (Columbia Global Reports, 2020), which examines the protests against Chinese rule that began in 2019. Enjoyed this podcast? You might also like this much-downloaded 2021 Nordic Asia Podcast episode, in which Wasana Wongsurawat and Mai Corlin Fredriksen discuss Popular Protests in the Age of #MilkTeaAlliance. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has dramatically affected international politics, and the effects are also felt in East Asia. We have heard a lot about China’s position regarding the war, but the situation has also affected security and defense calculations in Japan, one of the key allies of the West in Asia. How did Japan react to the war, what has it meant for Japan's own territorial dispute with Russia, and how do the evolving East Asian, Indo-Pacific, and European security environments look from a Japanese perspective? In this episode, Ari-Joonas Pitkänen is joined by two specialists on Japanese society and politics, Dr. Kamila Szczepanska and Dr. Silja Keva, to answer these questions. Dr. Kamila Szczepanska is a University Lecturer at the Centre for East Asian Studies and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Political Science and Contemporary History at the University of Turku. Dr. Silja Keva is a University Teacher at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku. Ari-Joonas Pitkänen is a Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What is the relationship between Spirit Possession Rituals and Buddhism in mainland Southeast Asia? How has modernity transformed Spirit Possession cults in the 21st century and what has led to the efflorescence of possession rituals across Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam in recent decades? Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière and Peter A. Jackson joined Terese Gagnon on the Nordic Asia Podcast handing out important insights of their new edited volume Spirit Possession in Buddhist Southeast Asia, Worlds ever More Enchanted that was published with NIAS Press in March 2022. Spirit Possession examines the upsurge of spirit cults and diverse forms of magical ritual in Buddhist Southeast Asia by exploring the interplay of neoliberal capitalism, visual media, the network cultures of the Internet, and the politics of cultural heritage and identity. Visit the NIAS Press Webshop to find the book and get your copy here. Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière is an anthropologist at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris and former director of its Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CASE). She specializes on Burma-Myanmar, where she has conducted regular field research since the 1980s, and has written widely on religion and rituals.
Peter A. Jackson is Emeritus Professor in Thai cultural history at the Australian National University. Over the past four decades, he has written extensively on religion, gender and sexuality in modern Thailand as well as critical approaches to Asian area studies. His ongoing research includes studying media and masculinity in Thai gay cultures and religion and ritual in Thai communities affected by HIV. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What is artificial intelligence (AI) with Chinese characteristics? Why is the Chinese Government labelling AI as a matter of security? How has AI been empowering China’s authoritarian governance? Jinghan Zeng, Professor of China and International Studies at Lancaster University, talks about his latest book Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Chinese Characteristics: National Strategy, Security and Authoritarian Governance (Palgrave, 2022) at the Nordic Asia Podcast. In his conversation with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden and affiliated PhD at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Jinghan Zeng introduces his book which argues that China’s AI approach is sophisticated and multifaceted, and it has brought about both considerable benefits and challenges to China. The book suggests that a more accurate understanding of AI with Chinese characteristics is essential in order to inform the debate regarding what lessons can be learnt from China’s AI approach and how to respond to China’s rise as the AI leader, if not a superpower. Jinghan Zeng is Professor of China and International Studies at Lancaster University. He is also Academic Director of China Engagement and Director of Lancaster University Confucius Institute. He plays a key role in supporting the development and implementation of the University’s China strategy. He is the author of Slogan Politics: Understanding Chinese Foreign Policy Concepts (2020) and The Chinese Communist Party's Capacity to Rule: Ideology, Legitimacy and Party Cohesion (2015). He is also the co-editor of One Belt, One Road, One Story?: Towards an EU-China Strategic Narrative (2021). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
The prolonged farmers' protests that unfolded in India in 2020-2021 undoubtedly represents the most significant and successful farmers’ movement in the country in recent decades. Often referred to as the farm law movement, protesting farmers demanded the withdrawal of three new laws that would have considerably liberalised agricultural production and trade. Their demands were met after more than a year of protests, in December 2021, when Prime Minister Modi - in an unprecedented policy setback - announced that the controversial laws would be repealed. Yet since then, we have not heard much from the many farmers unions and organizations that made up the movement. What’s has become of the farm law movement? And, what kind of lasting legacy has it left on Indian popular politics? To discuss these questions, we are joined by the award-winning author, journalist, and columnist Amandeep Sandhu, who has closely followed and worked with the farm law movement from its inception. Amandeep Sandhu writes regularly for The Caravan, Scroll, and The Hindu. He has been a Fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, and is currently a Homi Bhabha Fellow. Sandhu is the author of several books, including "Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines" from 2019. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What enabled the 2022 electoral victory of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of a dictator that the historic People Power Revolution ousted 36 years ago? To what extent did the campaign of Bongbong Marcos’ main rival, Leni Robredo, represent a progressive alternative? Do the election results reflect a larger phenomenon of “illiberal turn” across electoral regimes in Asia and beyond? What are at stake now that the Marcos-Duterte duo will once again govern the Philippines together? In this episode, Prof. Duncan McCargo, Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, joins Dr. Mai Van Tran, a postdoc at the institute, to discuss his experience being an election observer on the ground and his reflections on the electoral campaigns, dynastic politics, Gen Z voters, and future political scenarios. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Disparaged as "Japanese devils" and "half-breed," some children with Chinese mothers and Japanese fathers born during the Second Sino-Japanese war long looked to Japan as their true homeland. Learn about this largely unseen group of individuals, just a few of the countless children born of war who have dealt with extreme social and political adversities as well as persistent questions of self identity. Kanako Kuramitsu speaks to Satoko Naito to share her research on children born of consensual relationships between Chinese mothers and Japanese fathers during and after the Second Sino-Japanese war, particularly those who migrated to Japan after the normalization of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations in 1972. Her work highlights men and women who, while sharing the many hardships of other children born of war, stand out for their strong identification with their fathers and their paternal country. The participants of Dr. Kuramitsu's study underscore the far-reaching effects of military conflict while simultaneously reminding us of the complexity of each individual's life story. The animation film "Michiko," mentioned in the episode, is available to view here. Kanako Kuramitsu received her PhD from the University of Birmingham and is currently a visiting scholar at the Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at the University of Turku in Finland. Satoko Naito studies and teaches Japanese literature and film as a docent at CEAS and holds a PhD from Columbia University. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Why did Chadchart Sittipunt win the Bangkok governor race? What does his win tell us about broader political trends in Thailand? And how did it feel covering the Bangkok election? Saksith Saiyasombut, CNA’s Thailand Correspondent in Bangkok, joins Petra Alderman to talk about the significance of the Bangkok governor race – and the local administrative and council elections – and the challenges of being a journalist in Thailand. Saksith Saiyasombut is CNA’s Thailand Correspondent based at its Bangkok Bureau, where he focuses on the latest political, social and economic developments in Thailand. Since joining full-time in July 2016, he has covered major news events such as the passing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 2016, the Royal Cremation Ceremony in 2017, the 2018 Chiang Rai Tham Luang cave rescue, the 2019 Thai elections, the 2019 Royal Coronation Ceremony of King Maha Vajiralongkorn and the 2020-2021 youth-led Thai protests. Dr Petra Alderman (prev. Desatova) is an associate researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a post-doctoral research fellow at the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests lie in the area of authoritarian legitimation, electoral studies and promotional politics. Her regional focus is on Southeast Asia and has a particular expertise on Thailand. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Have you ever read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises? When asked how he went bankrupt, a character replies, “Gradually, then suddenly.” In this conversation, Julie Yu-Wen Chen, professor of Chinese studies at the University of Helsinki, discusses with Jonathan Fulton about his newly edited Routledge Handbook on China–Middle East Relations. Jonathan Fulton is assistant professor of political science at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. According to Fulton, China’s emergence as an important actor in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) brings to mind this piece of dialogue from Hemingway’s work. “Those of us watching China’s growing presence in the region have seen a gradual expansion of China’s influence and interests over the past decade, but those not paying attention would understandably be surprised by the apparent sudden depth and breadth of its presence”, explained Fulton. The Routledge Handbook on China-Middle East Relations brings together a mix of established and emerging international scholars to provide valuable analytical insights into how China’s growing Middle East presence affects intra-regional development, trade, security, and diplomacy. As the largest extra-regional economic actor in the Middle East, China is the biggest source of foreign direct investment into the region and the largest trading partner for most Middle Eastern states. This portends a larger role in political and security affairs, as the value of Chinese assets combined with a growing expatriate population in the region demands a more proactive role in contributing to regional order. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is professor of Chinese studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of the Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and editor-in-chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on the University of Helsinki Chinese Studies’ website, Youtube and Facebook, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Does Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida´s new administration represent the true beginning of the “Post-Abe” era for Japan? After the one-year transitional administration of Yoshihide Suga, Kishida was able to win a three-year term as head of the LDP, the premiership, and lower house election in fall 2021. Since then Kishida has proven to be reasonably popular, and is leaving his stamp on Japanese foreign policy, abandoning Abe´s close ties with Russian President Putin with a hardline toward Russia. Domestically Kishida promotes a “New Capitalism” that promises a reduction in income inequality compared to Abenomics. In this episode Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Paul Midford to look at the new Kishida administration and discuss whether it will set Japan on a new course. Paul Midford is professor of political science at Meiji Gakuin University and the author of a recent book on Japan, “Overcoming Isolationism - Japan’s Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism”. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
The People’s Republic of China has undergone tumultuous and varied sociocultural developments over the course of its history. In this episode, Dr. Suvi Rautio talks about some of the ways in which people and communities have dealt with the resulting change (or lack of it) based on her ethnographic research. Dr. Rautio is currently working on a research project dealing with Maoist China, drawing from her own family history in Beijing to explore how intellectuals navigated life in China’s capital during social upheaval. By contrast, Dr. Rautio’s previous research has focused on rural village life in Southwest China – she has conducted fieldwork in a traditional Dong ethnic minority village where villagers and authorities try to combine heritage preservation and socioeconomic modernisation. We also discuss how similar struggles between preserving the old and making way for the new have unfolded in modern-day Beijing. Suvi Rautio is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her current project focuses on the transmission of memory and loss among Beijing’s intellectual class during the Maoist era. She has also hosted podcasts on Chinese studies and anthropology in the New Books Network. Ari-Joonas Pitkänen is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
The anti-feminist movement in South Korea is gaining global attention. The story has been covered by many western mainstream news outlets including the New York Times, CNN, and BBC. Is this trend a new trend in South Korea? Where does this anti-feminist idea come from? In this episode, we invite Prof. Ju Hui Judy Han and discuss South Korean feminist history and gender politics. We discuss pre- and post-democratization feminist movements, the new president’s worrisome position on gender issues, and predict the future feminist movements in South Korea. We end our conversation with the conclusion that although there have been many obstacles, we cannot overlook the progress at the grassroots level. If you are interested in learning about South Korean feminist history, join Myunghee Lee for this interview with Judy Han. This is the second episode in the series. The first episode can be found here. About the interviewer Myunghee Lee is a Postdoctoral Fellow at NIAS. She also is a Non-resident Fellow at the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on protest, authoritarian politics, and democratization. About the speaker Ju Hui Judy Han is a cultural geographer and assistant professor in Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and has previously taught at the University of Toronto in Canada. Her comics and writings about (im)mobilities, faith-based movements, and queer politics have been published in journals such as The Scholar & Feminist Online, Critical Asian Studies, positions: asia critique, Geoforum, and Journal of Korean Studies as well as in several edited books such as Rights Claiming in South Korea (2021), Digital Lives in the Global City (2020), Ethnographies of U.S. Empire (2018), and Territories of Poverty (2015). She is currently working on a book on “queer throughlines” and co-writing another book on protest cultures. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How has digital nationalism manifested amid the Covid-19 pandemic in China? How does anti-American sentiment in China feed into the disinformation campaigns in regard to the war on Ukraine? What lessons can we draw from Asian countries' handling of the public health crisis? Florian Schneider, Senior Lecturer in the Politics of Modern China at Leiden University, shares his research on the multiple dimensions of digital nationalism and how it is constructed and manifested in the complexity of digital networks. In his conversation with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden and affiliated PhD at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Florian Schneider talks about the role that digital media plays in the construction of digital nationalism and how the Chinese state's legitimation mechanism could impact the decoupling of realities in China. He also shares insights from his newly co-edited book Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic (Amsterdam University Press, 2022) with lessons to be learned from how the Asian countries responded to the public health crisis. Florian Schneider is a Senior Lecturer in the Politics of Modern China at Leiden University and the director of the Leiden Asia Centre. He is the managing editor of the academic journal Asiascape: Digital Asia, and the author of Staging China: The Politics of Mass Spectacle (Leiden University Press, 2019) and China's Digital Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2018). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How does queer life fit into Buddhism and ritual? What role do gay men and trans women play in the practice of spirit mediumship and how do queer spirit mediums mediate between Thailand’s religious fields? How can we understand the increasing numbers of queer spirit mediums across mainland Southeast Asia? Peter A. Jackson and Benjamin Baumann provide important insights into their new book Deities and Divas, Queer Ritual Specialists in Myanmar, Thailand and Beyond (NIAS Press 2021). Deities and Divas is the first book to trace commonalities between queer and religious cultures in Southeast Asia and the West. The book details the very prominent roles that gay men and trans women are playing in the spirit medium cults rapidly growing in Myanmar, Thailand and beyond. Visit the NIAS Press Webshop to find the book. Peter A. Jackson is Emeritus Professor in Thai cultural history at the Australian National University. Over the past four decades, he has written extensively on religion, gender and sexuality in modern Thailand as well as critical approaches to Asian area studies. His ongoing research includes studying media and masculinity in Thai gay cultures and religion and ritual in Thai communities affected by HIV. Benjamin Baumann is an assistant professor at the University of Heidelberg. His ethnographic work examines rural lifeworlds, socio-cultural identities and local language games in Thailand's lower Northeast, focusing on how the ghostly structures the imagination, reproduction of social collectives and communal sentiments of belonging. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Does the rise of China mean that studying Japan is inexorably declining? Many students become interested in Japan because of popular culture, such manga and video games: is this a good or a bad thing? In an era of Google Translate and nifty smartphone apps, do people still need to spend years and years learning Japanese? What kind of problems do prevailing notions of methodological nationalism create for the study of Japan? And how can scholars of Japan best adapt to the rapidly-changing academic landscape? In this wide-ranging conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, Aike P. Rots, an associate professor of Japan Studies at the University of Oslo, explains the thinking behind an engaging March 2022 keynote address he gave to a conference at Copenhagen Business School on the topic of ‘Japan and Japanese Studies in the Twenty-First Century’. Aike Rots works on a variety of Asia-related issues, including religion, culture, biodiversity and the environment. He currently holds a European Research Council Starter Grant entitled ‘entitled ‘Whales of Power: Aquatic Mammals, Devotional Practices, and Environmental Change in Maritime East Asia’ . Read his short article on methodological nationalism in Japanese studies here: The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
What can textiles tell us about histories of genocide and the lived experiences of prisoners? In this episode, Dr. Magali-An Berthon discusses the treatment of prisoners at S-21 and how clothes played a role into their imprisonment and dehumanization. She retraces the formation of the textile collection at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, starting with a large pile of clothes on display in the first years of the museum, which was then moved in 1991, before being removed altogether in 2011, and which was recently recovered. The current content of the collection includes about 3,500 recovered garments, textiles and fragments, that all tell intimate stories of individuals and survival. Dr. Magali-An Berthon is a textile historian focusing on the contemporary history of Southeast Asian dress and textiles. She is a European Union Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Terese Gagnon is an environmental anthropologist and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Politics of Climate and Sustainability in Asia at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
In the past few years, youth-led groups such as the Fridays for Future school strike movement have changed the face of climate activism globally. In this interview, Malaysian youth climate advocate Farhana Shukor talks about her experience working on climate change issues in her native country as well as at the international stage as an observer at the COP26 climate conference in November 2021. Farhana discusses the significance of loss and damage in the Malaysian context, her wishes for Southeast Asian collaboration on climate change as well as what Nordic youth activists could learn from the Malaysian climate movement. Farhana Shukor has over 4 years of experience in climate advocacy in both local and international NGOs. She serves as the co-focal point for the Malaysian Youth Delegation for climate change (MYD) and is the co-founder of bumii, a platform for climate action. Farhana was interviewed by Quynh Le Vo, who received a NIAS SUPRA scholarship when working on her master’s thesis about the Asian Development Bank’s climate adaptation projects in Southeast Asia. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Jose Ramos-Horta topped the first round of polling in the 2022 Timor-Leste presidential elections, securing 46.56 per cent of the popular vote on 19 March. Here he speaks to Amber Woortman in a special interview for the Nordic Asia Podcast. During the 24 years he spent in exile, José Ramos-Horta was a strong advocate for the people of Timor-Leste during the brutal Indonesian occupation, and travelled all over the world to bring international attention to the cause of Timor-Leste. In 1996, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo “for their work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor”. José Ramos-Horta later served as his country’s second president from 2007 until 2012. In the second episode of the short series of the Timor-Leste focused Nordic Asia Podcasts, Amber Woortman, a master’s student in political science at the University of Copenhagen, talks with presidential front-runner José Ramos-Horta about the election, running against incumbent president Francisco Guterres (aka Lu’Olo), the recent constitutional crisis, Timor-Leste’s main political challenges in the post-independence era, the role of history in the daily life of Timorese people, the new generation, and his hopes for the future of Timor-Leste as a member of ASEAN. You can listen to Amber’s first Timor-Leste podcast on the background to the 2022 elections here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/understanding-east-timors-2022-presidential-elections The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
The Russian war in Ukraine has placed India in a difficult situation: how to retain the historically good relationship with Russia, without jeopardizing the increasingly important strategic partnership with the USA? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Ravinder Kaur, Henrik Chetan Aspengren and Sunniva Engh to analyze the diplomatic tightrope that India has had to walk over the war in Ukraine, and draw out the implications of India handling of its Ukrainian Dilemma for the country’s position in the world, and for global geopolitics more broadly. Sunniva Engh is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Oslo. Henrik Chetan Aspengren is a Research Fellow at the Asia Programme at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. Ravinder Kaur is an Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies and directs the Centre of Global South Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What is “binary nationalism” and what has it got to do with free-style skiing? The explosive popularity of Eileen Gu’s is an excellent case for understanding the common Chinese mindset. In this conversation, Professor Julie Yu-Wen Chen is joined by Professor Jiang Chang to discuss the wide popularity of freestyle skier Eileen Gu during and after the 2022 Winter Olympics. Jiang Chang will share his unique insight into Gu’s rise to a new kind of poster child in China, while at the same time, he cautions us to be mindful of the invisible hand (i.e., Chinese propaganda) in shaping Gu’s popularity. For most Chinese people, the primary framework for their perception and interpretation of the world is what Chang terms “binary nationalism.” It is nationalism, but it is very simple and is intended to be simple. In that framework, the US is the default opposite of China. Meanwhile, there has been an astonishing rise of a kind of “hero-worshiping” social atmosphere since Xi Jinping rose to power in China, where common people tend to resent elites but look up to those whom they know they could never ever surpass in status. This weird contradiction somehow paves the way for Gu’s popularity: She grew up in the US but chose to play for China in the Winter Olympics. Besides excelling in sports, she performs well educationally (which many Chinese people consider criteria for judging a person’s success in life), and she is beautiful by appearance. Gu has achieved so much that most Chinese people “heroize” her. Prof. Jiang Chang is a visiting professor of Chinese studies at the University of Helsinki. Chang is a famous media scholar and observer. He is widely published in English, Chinese, and French on topics that include journalism and propaganda, digital media cultures, and digital feminism in contemporary China. His representative works are published in leading journals such as International Journal of Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Journal of Contemporary China. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is professor of Chinese studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of the Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and editor-in-chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on the University of Helsinki Chinese Studies’ website, Youtube and Facebook, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
“An atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” is how UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the IPCC report published in February 2022. But what did the report have to say about climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerability in Southeast Asian cities? What are the greatest climate risks for the region and where are we in terms of adapting to them? And why are the concepts of maladaptation and climate resilient development important as we focus our attention on urgent climate action? This episode delves into these issues. It also discusses the significance of including references to climate justice, colonialism and indigenous knowledge in the report, to future international climate action. This episode was recorded on 14 March 2022 and covers the IPCC Working Group II contribution to the 6th Assessment Report, published on 28 February 2022. Professor Chow (@winstontlchow) is Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Singapore Management University and an International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Lead Author. His research interests include urban vulnerability to climate change, urban heat island science, impacts and mitigation, and sustainability in urban climatology. Quynh Le Vo (@voquynhle) works as the climate campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth Finland. She received a NIAS-SUPRA scholarship in 2021 while writing her master’s thesis on the Asian Development Bank’s climate adaptation projects in Southeast Asia. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Bangladesh has turned into a hybrid regime with an increasingly authoritarian culture that silences critics and oppositions in many brutal ways. How does the increasing authoritarianism of a surveillance state affect people, including society’s outsiders such as rap musicians and homosexuals? How does the edifice of government survive and sustain itself despite the criticism from global human rights organisations? In this episode Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Arild Engelsen Ruud, Mubashar Hasan, Maha Mirza and Asheque Haque to discuss a new edited volume on Bangladesh, edited by Arild Ruud and Mubashar Hasen titled Masks of Authoritarianism: Hegemony, Power and Public Life in Bangladesh (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) Arild Engelsen Ruud is professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Oslo. Mubashar Hasan Adjunct Research Fellow at the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI), University of Western Sydney. Maha Mirza is a writer, researcher and human rights activist based in Dhaka. Asheque Haque is a political and security researcher on South Asia currently working with security and human rights issues in a civil society organisation. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
South Korean presidential election ended and the conservative party candidate, Yoon Suk-yeol won the election. How will he balance the relationships between Korea and the US and China? The current progressive Moon Jae-in administration has pursued strategic ambiguity in foreign policy, trying to maintain a strong alliance relationship with the US while pursuing an economic partnership with China. During the campaign, Yoon promised that he will reverse the Moon’s foreign policy and pursue strategic clarity, emphasizing security concerns in the Korean Peninsula. In this episode, Dr. Sungmin Cho shares his expertise on South and North Korea’s relations with China, North Korea’s newly posed threats this year, and the security dynamics surrounding the Korean Peninsula. Dr. Sungmin Cho is a professor of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, an academic institute of the US Department of Defense, based in Hawaii. His area of expertise covers China-Korean Peninsula relations, North Korea’s nuclear program, and the US alliance in East Asia. Dr. Cho has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, including World Politics, The China Journal, Asian Security, Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, and Korea Observer. His commentaries also appeared in Foreign Affairs, War on the Rocks, The Diplomat, and Defense One, among others. Prior to the academic career, Dr.Cho served in the Korean Army as an intelligence officer for three years, including seven-month deployment to Iraq. He received his PhD in Government from Georgetown University, his Master’s degree in International Relations from Peking University, and his B.A. in Political Science from Korea University. Disclaimer: Views expressed in the podcast belong to the commentator. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shaken the ground of global politics, and one of the key questions has been China’s position in the situation. In this episode, Dr. Matti Puranen analyses China’s international relations and strategic position in the context of the Ukraine crisis and China’s relationship with Russia. The newfound Western unity in response to the situation may also complicate China’s relations with Finland. According to Dr. Puranen, Finland’s traditionally good relationship with China has already shown some signs of cooling in recent years. We also discuss the implications of the current situation for Taiwan and China’s overall visions regarding the existing international order. Read Dr. Puranen’s article “Sino-Russian Relations Already Bear Signs of a Military Alliance” (with Juha Kukkola) in the National Interest and his articles “Finland’s China Shift” (with Jukka Aukia) and “China-Finland: Beijing’s ‘Model Relationship’ in Europe?” in The Diplomat. Matti Puranen is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Warfare of the Finnish National Defense University. His research focuses on strategy and international relations, particularly China and Chinese strategic thought. Ari-Joonas Pitkänen is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Timor-Leste is choosing a president. What is the significance of the 2022 presidential elections in Timor-Leste? Has Asia’s youngest and newest country become a prisoner of its short but turbulent political past? How do young people view the older generation of former freedom fighters who continue to dominate the political order? What has the atmosphere been like on the ground during the election campaign? In the first of a short series of Timor-Leste-focused Nordic Asia Podcasts, Amber Woortman, a master’s student in political science at the University of Copenhagen, talks to NIAS Director Duncan McCargo from Dili about her observations and her conversations with candidates and voters in Timor-Leste over the past couple of weeks. This is a rare opportunity to hear about an election that has received very little mainstream international media coverage. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Cocktail umbrellas and refugee camps, serene Buddhist monasteries and soldiers in combat fatigues – Sri Lanka is a country of paradoxes. When the country became independent in 1948 it was a strong candidate to prove that the transition from colonialism to democratic sovereignty could indeed be successful. Today, after 30 years of civil war and with conflicts yet to be resolved, the country is on the brink of qualifying as a failed state. With the exception of a short interlude from 2015 to 2019 political power has since 2005 been in the hands of the Rajapaksa family. In this period, Sri Lanka has gone through a process of militarization and ethnocratization, and has redefined its international relationships, building strong ties with China. Particularly since Gotabaya Rajapaksa was installed as President in 2019, governance increasingly rests on patronage and personal associations. In this episode Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Professor Øivind Fuglerud from the University of Oslo, to analyze and discuss Sri Lanka’s democratic backslide. Øivind Fuglerud is a professor at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, and also the keeper of the ethnographic collection from Pakistan, India, Bangaladesh and Sri Lanka at the museum. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
The past few months have been election season in India. Although these are state elections, many view them as a key midterm evaluation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP government. What are the takeaway messages from these recently concluded assembly elections? In this episode, we zoom in on the elections in the five Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, and Punjab. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by a panel of experts on Indian democracy and politics: Arild Ruud, Guro Samuelsen, Edward Moon-Little, Rahul Ranjan and Shreya Sinha, who analyze the results from all five states, the BJP’s impressive performance, and the many localized surprises that these elections threw up. We also reflect on the implications of the outcome for national politics as the next general election scheduled for 2024 inches ever closer. Guro Samuelsen is postdoctoral fellow at MF School of theology, Religion and Society, where she is part of the ‘Mythopolitics in South Asia’ project. Arild Engelsen Ruud is professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Oslo. Edward Moon-Little candidate in social anthropology at Cambridge and a fellow at the Highland Institute. Rahul Ranjan is postdoctoral fellow at Oslo Metropolitan University, where he is part of the ‘Riverine Rights’ project. Shreya Sinha is lecturer in international development at University of Reading. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
Southeastern Myanmar (Burma). The Myanmar military has carried out arial attacks on villages: targeting schools, libraries, and villagers’ agricultural fields. In the past year, roughly one hundred thousand civilians have been displaced in the Southeast alone. Many have attempted to seek refuge in neighboring Thailand but have not been accepted as refugees. In addition to this ongoing emergency of forced migration, there are currently an additional hundred thousand refugees from Myanmar living in nine refugee camps in Thailand, which have existed for over thirty years. In early 2022, for the first time in years, there were protests in the camps over lack of rights and demanding decreased restrictions for refugees. In this podcast Terese Gagnon speaks with Hayso Thako about the experiences of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border and what they can tell us about approaches to humanitarianism and development more broadly. Read this co-authored article about the refugee situation on the Thai-Myanmar border by Hayso and Terese here. Hayso is a PhD candidate at Department of Peacebuilding, Payap University, Thailand. He has been working with the refugee community and community-based organizations along the Thai-Burma border for the last 20 years. He is currently the Education and Livelihood Coordinator of the Karen Refugee Committee, the chair of Refugee Affairs at Karen Peace Support Network and a leading advocate for the Karen Student Network Group. He is also one of the founding members of the relatively new Asian Pacific Network of Refugees. His research interests include refugee and IDPs, ethnic education and border issues in Thailand and Burma.
Why did Restart Thailand, a 2020 student-led pro-democracy movement, sport a red Communist-style logo with a hammer and sickle? Why did a Thai BNK48 singer wear a swastika t-shirt for the band’s 2019 concert rehearsal? And why did the latest Thai junta produce a video of two boys applauding a portrait of Adolf Hitler to promote Thai values? Verita Sriratana, an Associate Professor in Literary Studies at Chulalongkorn University, discusses this deeply troubling Thai infatuation with Nazi and Communist symbolism with Petra Alderman (prev. Desatova), an Associate Researcher at NIAS. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang is Associate Professor of East Asian History, Department of History, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA . His book “The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory and Identity in Modern Taiwan” was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021 and it won the 2021 Memory Studies Association’s First Book Award. In this conversation, Julie Yu-Wen Chen, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Helsinki discusses with Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang his award-winning book. Yang’s book covers one of the least understood forced migrations in modern East Asia—the human exodus from China to Taiwan following the Nationalist collapse and Chinese Communist victory in 1949. Peeling back layers of Cold War ideological constructs, the book tells a very different story from conventional historiographies the Chinese civil war, Chinese revolution, and Cold War Taiwan. Underscoring the displaced population’s trauma of living in exile and their poignant “homecomings” four decades later, Yang presents a multiple-event trajectory of repeated traumatization with the recurring search for home, belonging, and identity. By portraying the Chinese civil war exiles in Taiwan both as traumatized subjects of displacement and overbearing colonizers to the local peoples, Yang’s work challenges the established notions of trauma, memory production, diaspora, and reconciliation. It speaks to the importance of subject position, boundary-crossing empathic unsettlements, and ethical responsibility of researching, narrating, and representing historical trauma. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on University of Helsinki Chinese Studies’ website, Youtube and Facebook, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
India has been caught in a question for almost a decade now: is it a secular democracy or is it a Hindu nation? The struggles over this question goes from the parliament to the streets, from Facebook to living rooms, from the metropolis to the margins. The Indian Prime minister and his party routinely invoke Hindu deities in political campaigns. Hindu nationalist forces have been transforming and coopting traditional religious practices to upper caste Hinduism in indigenous and oppressed caste communities for several decades. Activists trying to stop this process of cooption claim that Hindu myths —with all the deities and their stories of good and evil—form the moral core of the supremacy of upper caste Hindus. They deconstruct these myths through social media campaigns to question the chastity of Hindu goddesses, the moral uprightness of Hindu gods, and the purity of Hindu scriptures. They demand that we reexamine the role of religious myths in contemporary politics. In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Moumita Sen, Silje L. Einarsen, The’ang Theron and Guro W. Samuelsen to discuss the ongoing narrative construction and mythological contestations of the current Hindu nationalist regime. The project Mythopolitics in South Asia, led by Moumita Sen at the MF School of Theology, Religion and Society, studies how the Hindu nationalist party and its oppositional forces use popular mythic Hindu narratives in electoral politics and social movements in contemporary India. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
Authoritarian regimes have often been discussed in contrast to democratic governments and defined in terms of what they lack--namely, democratic features. Dr. Elina Sinkkonen highlights the need for a new method of conceptualizing authoritarian regimes on their own terms, by including variables like personalization, centralization, and state control over economic assets. Focusing on these factors allows for better quantification and understanding of how governments and regimes change. Dr. Sinkkonen discusses the example of Xi Jinping's China and explains the degrees to which technological innovations and the COVID pandemic have affected the CCP leadership. Elina Sinkkonen is a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and a specialist in authoritarian governance. Satoko Naito is a docent at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku. Read Dr. Sinkkonen's article "Dynamic dictators: improving the research agenda on autocratization and authoritarian resilience" in Democratization, mentioned in the episode (open access) here. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What role does the Islamophobic conspiracy theory of “love jihad” play in the politics of Hindu nationalist statecraft—the legal codification of Hindu nationalist ideology—in India today? In this podcast, Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Alf Gunvald Nilsen unpack this question on the basis of a recent article published in the journal Religions. The idea of love jihad, they argue, is both a conservative ideology for the governance of gender relations, and a marker that is being used to draw a line between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority in contemporary India. Legislation to prevent love jihad is an example of how the current BJP regime in India is engaged in a project of Hindu nationalist statecraft. Alf Gunvald Nilsen is professor of sociology at the University of Pretoria. His research focuses on the political economy of development and democracy in the global South. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a social anthropologist working on social movements and the political economy of development in India. In addition to working and teaching at the University of Oslo, he also manages the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
How has digital communication technologies impacted the dynamics of political contention in China? What is the role of mobile technology in the country with the world’s largest number of mobile and internet users? Why is there little domestic resistance about surveillance and technology-related privacy risks in China during the pandemic? Jun Liu, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, shares his book Shifting Dynamics of Contention in the Digital Age: Mobile Communication and Politics in China (Oxford UP, 2020) with the Nordic Asia Podcast. In his talk with Joanne Kuai, PhD candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden and affiliated PhD at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Jun Liu introduces his work on mobile communication and political activism based on first-hand in-depth interview and fieldwork data. He also draws on one of his latest papers to explain how China’s unprecedented measures to mobilise its diverse surveillance apparatus played a crucial part in the country’s containment of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Jun Liu’s research stands at the intersection of communication, technology, politics, and society, with particular attention to the social, cultural, and political implications of digital communication. Drawing upon theories from communication, sociology, and political science, his research focuses on how digital technology interacts with socio-cultural forms and settings and generates new power dynamics in politics in specific cultural and institutional contexts such as authoritarian regimes like China. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Why has Myanmar experienced so many massive street protests recent years? How can we go about studying these sorts of mass demonstrations? What kinds of roles do bystanders perform in these protest movements? Have the protests since February 2021 been significantly different from earlier movements such as those of 1988 or 2007? And how are the most recent protests related to developments elsewhere in the region, including Hong Kong and Thailand? Mai Van Tran, a newly appointed postdoctoral researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) and the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, discusses her 2020 Cornell University PhD dissertation on Myanmar protests in this conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Ever tried to cross the road in Hanoi? There’s no point in waiting for a gap. Close your eyes and start walking: the traffic will magically weave around you. While Vietnamese cities were once dominated by bicycles and pedestrians, the growth in motorized mobility over the past decades have been astounding. The speed with which Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have changed into hostile environments for pedestrians and cyclist is quite remarkable. Yet in mobility terms Vietnamese urban transport somehow works, largely thanks to the continuing dominance of motorbikes. In this episode, Hue-Tam Jamme and Arve Hansen discuss motorbike madness in Vietnam, and what we can learn from the combination of vibrant street life and relatively efficient transport of millions of people on two wheels. Hue-Tam Jamme is an assistant professor at Arizona State University. She studies urbanisms in transition from a comparative perspective, using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, focusing on the lived experience of societal transformations Arve Hansen is a researcher at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Environmental protection and climate actions has embedded in China’s foreign policy and the Chinese government has recently pledged to make the Belt and Road Initiative “open, green, and clean”. How far is this an agenda designed primarily for international consumption? How do domestic interest groups respond to China’s environmental foreign relations? To what extent can they influence and shape China’s domestic and international environmental discourse? In this episode, Heidi Wang-Kaeding talks to Vorawan Wannalak about her recently published book China’s Environmental Foreign Policy (2021, Routledge), which explores China’s attempts to assert alternative norms – “Ecological Civilization” - in the global environmental governance and highlights the importance of domestic forces as a key factor that influence diverse and contradictory environmental behaviors of China at international levels. Over recent decades, China has moved from being a follower towards taking on a leadership role in global environmental governance. This book discusses this important development. It examines the key role of Chinese interest groups, showing how through various domestic dynamics they have influenced how China has approached issues such as climate change and the environment. Focusing on examples of multilateral environmental treaties, bilateral cooperation, and the proposition of alternative norms – the idea of China as an "ecological civilisation" – the book provides crucial insights on the evolution of China’s approach to international relations and engagement with global environmental governance, and contributes to the discussion of what kind of power China is poised to become. Dr. Heidi Wang-Kaeding is a lecturer in International Relations at Keele University and a co-founder of the Hong Kong Studies Association, based in the UK. Vorawan Wannalak is a PhD student at the University of Potsdam. She was a 2021 Virtual SUPRA Fellow at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.. You may also be interested in another Nordic Asia Podcast mentioned by Heidi, in which Mette Halskov Hansen discusses the concept of ecological civilization here. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Since the 1980s, pictures by the late Goan cartoonist Mario Miranda have been used to adorn and confer ‘local’ flavour on a variety of public settings in Goa. Today, Miranda’s work is a familiar sight to travelers in Goa. While some of the pictures selected for display – including by the government in spaces that it controls – are historically and regionally evocative illustrations, others are cartoons, that is, metaphorical and funny drawings. Beginning in the 2000s, these illustrations and cartoons were also adapted to regional circuits of souvenirs and memorabilia, giving vision and voice to an essential ‘Goanness’. In this episode Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Prakruti Ramesh to discuss her work on the emergence of a public aesthetic in Goa, perhaps India’s best known tourist destination. Drawing on her doctoral research, Ramesh discusses the factors that prompted the diffusion and acceptability of this aesthetic, and the political, economic and social conditions in Goa’s history that prepared the grounds for these pictures to emerge as significant. Through this, she offers fascinating insights into the politics of memory and representation in the fashioning of subnational Goan identity. Dr. Prakruti Ramesh recently defended her PhD thesis entitled Making a Public Aesthetic: Heritage, Humour and Regional Identity in Goa at the Department of Global Studies at Århus University in Denmark. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Does ‘citizenship’ exist in a socialist or communist context? If it does, what would this mean in the case of Vietnam? To what extent do the Vietnamese state and Vietnamese citizens perceive citizenship differently? And how are those differences negotiated? Why does the wave of recent popular protests in neighbouring countries concern the Vietnamese government? Two lecturers from the University of Passau, Mirjam Le and Franziska Nicolaisen, share and discuss with Linh Phương Lê their findings on these issues. Mirjam Le is a lecturer and PhD researcher in Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Passau, Germany. Her thesis focuses on small town urbanization and the production of urban space in Vietnam. Her research interests involve urbanization and state-society relations in Vietnam, especially processes of self-organization and citizenship. Franziska S. Nicolaisen is a lecturer and research assistant for the chair of Development Economics at the University of Passau in Germany. Her work focuses on sustainable urban mobility in Vietnam. Other research interests include heritage tourism, health governance and social movements in the context of Southeast Asia. This episode is a discussion of their chapter of the same title, published in Vietnam at the Vanguard: New Perspectives Across Time, Space, and Community, edited by Jamie Gillen, Liam Kelley and Phan Le Ha (Springer 2021). Linh Phương Lê is a PhD Researcher at the Institute for Media Studies, KU Leuven University in Belgium. Her work explores the media representation of Vietnamese female migrants to China and Taiwan. A former NIAS-SUPRA scholarship receiver, Linh’s regional focus is on Vietnam and East Asia. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Anti-vaccination movements pose an increasing threat to global public health, but what of vaccine hesitancy? Join us for a discussion on the effects of vaccine hesitancy in Japan during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. University of Turku's Centre for East Asian Studies University Teacher Dr. Yoko Demelius and University Lecturer Dr. Kamila Szczepanska discuss historical, cultural, and legal factors that have led to present trends ranging from general vaccine skepticism to online and real-life anti-vaccination activism. Learn about historical developments in Japanese public health policy as well as socio-demographic factors that contribute to current attitudes. Dr. Szczepanska and Dr. Demelius also speak of the state of domestic vaccine manufacturing and Research & Development, and the significant continuing influence of anti-vaccination propaganda and misinformation campaigns from the US and Europe. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Satoko Naito is a docent of Japanese studies at the Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku, Finland. Research interests include Japanese literature, cultural history, and gender studies.
When did the Cold War in East Asia really begin? According to ADI-NIAS researcher Kuan-Jen Chen, the answer is 1945 – if we view the Cold War through a maritime lens. In conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, KJ explains how he is using Japanese and Taiwanese sources to gain a more nuanced perspective on East Asian Cold War maritime history, which is far from a simple narrative of American naval dominance. KJ also discusses the relevance of the Cold War context to understanding recent geostrategic developments in the region, and why he is trying to put international historians into a more fruitful dialogue with scholars of international relations. Kuan-Jen Chen (https://kjchen.net/) is the Asian Dynamics Initiative-Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He has published articles in various journals including Cold War History and the Journal of American-East Asian Relations. KJ is currently completing a book based on his Cambridge PhD, entitled The Making of America’s Maritime Order in Cold War East Asia: Sovereignty, Local Interests, and International Security. KJ was recently jointly awarded Taiwan’s 2021 Openbook Award in Translation for his co-translation into Chinese of Barak Kushner’s Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice, Harvard 2015 (see NBN podcast here). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts can be found here. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Why did so many of South Korea’s senior citizens take to the streets between 2016 and 2019? What motivated their participation in rallies? And what do these rallies tell us about the state of South Korea’s democracy? Korea Foundation and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies postdoctoral researcher Myunghee Lee discusses these and other questions with Petra Desatova. Myunghee Lee is a Korea Foundation and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on protest, social movement, authoritarianism, and democratization. Her work appears in journals such as International Security, International Studies Review, and Politics & Gender. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Why was there a large flow of overseas remittances into Vietnam after 1975, and how were they channelled? Why was there so little public discussion of the financial role played by the Vietnamese diaspora? What was the Vietnamese state’s attitude towards these remittances, and how much did they help transform the Vietnamese economy? In this podcast, Linh Phương Lê talks to Hoàng Minh Vũ, a diplomatic historian of twentieth-century Vietnam and the Asia-Pacific, about the significance of remittances from the Vietnamese overseas community in reducing hyperinflation and stabilising the national economy during after the Đổi Mới period. This episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast offers a snapshot of Vietnam’s recent economic history that has far-reaching implications. Hoàng Minh Vũ completed his PhD on the Third Indochina War at Cornell in 2020. He is currently a faculty member in history at Fulbright University in Vietnam – see here for his profile and recent publications: https://fulbright.edu.vn/our-team/vu-minh-hoang/ Linh Phương Lê is a PhD student at the Institute for Media Studies, KU Leuven University, Belgium. Her work explores the media representation of Vietnamese female migrants to China and Taiwan. A 2020 NIAS SUPRA Fellow, Linh works on media systems, journalism practices and gender (in)equality in the media in Vietnam. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Although autocratic forms of rule have a longer history in postcolonial South Asia, the slide towards autocratization has arguably accelerated in recent years, albeit unevenly. In this episode Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Sten Widmalm to discuss his new edited book, The Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in South Asia. Widmalm offers a comprehensive analysis of the processes and actors contributing to this, as well as issues of state power, the support for political parties, the role of civil society, questions of equality and political culture, and more. This innovative handbook spanning 400 pages is the first to describe and to explain ongoing trends of autocratization in South Asia, demonstrating that drivers of political change also work across boundaries. It will be published on 31 December, 2021, and can be downloaded for free in its entirety here. Sten Widmalm is professor of political science at Uppsala University and a leading Nordic scholar of Indian democracy and politics. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
Several high-profile cases of sexual harassment and assault have helped the #MeToo movement in China continue to make impacts on a society that is highly controlled and surveilled. Most recently, tennis star Peng Shuai’s saga has accused former top Chinese Communist Party leader, Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Although Peng did not say that she is part of the #MeToo movement, her speaking out has given fresh impetus to the campaign. Joining us to talk to Julie Chen about the #MeToo movement in China is Dusica Ristivojević, Kone Foundation Bold Initiatives Senior Researcher at the University of Helsinki. Dušica works in the areas of interdisciplinary Chinese studies, media studies, and international relations. Recently, she published a co-authored journal article on the #MeToo movement in China. See Jing Xiong and Dušica Ristivojević (2021) #MeToo in China: How do the Voiceless Rise Up in an Authoritarian State? in Politics & Gender. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on University of Helsinki Chinese Studies’ website, Youtube and Facebook, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
COP26 was billed as the make or break event in the fight against climate change. In conversation with Quynh Le Vo, Sharon Seah, coordinator of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme, discusses Southeast Asian countries’ key priorities going into the conference and the commitments they made in Glasgow, including climate finance, exit from coal and ending deforestation. She also reveals some insights from the annual Southeast Asia Climate Survey reports, such as perceptions in the region of the US as a climate leader and the (dis)connects between climate action and COVID-19 responses. Sharon Seah is Senior Fellow and Coordinator at the ASEAN Studies Centre and the Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. She co-edited 50 Years of ASEAN and Singapore (World Scientific: 2017) and Building a New Legal Order for the Oceans (NUS Press: 2019). Prior to academia, Ms Seah worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore and the National Environment Agency for fifteen years. She may be reached at climatechange@iseas.edu.sg. Quynh Le Vo is a master's student in environmental change and global sustainability at the University of Helsinki. Previously, she has worked at the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and at the Permanent Mission of Finland to the UN. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
As the Covid-19 pandemic spread to Europe and other parts of the globe in spring of 2020, the Chinese government started reporting donations of Personal Protective Equipment as well as other medical supplies to areas experiencing severe shortage. Listen to Dr. Lauri Paltemaa and Dr. Hermann Aubié discuss their research on the exact nature of China's so-called Mask Diplomacy. How did the recent situation differ from past examples of Chinese humanitarian aid and disaster relief? What are the difficulties in obtaining hard data about the donations? Dr. Paltemaa and Dr. Aubié explain the multiple players that have participated in providing China's international humanitarian aid, as well as the symbolic significance of such aid. Dr. Lauri Paltemaa is professor and director of the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Dr. Hermann Aubié is a senior researcher at CEAS. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What does a cup of coffee tell us about Thailand’s intricate power relations? Where does the country’s monarchy come into this? And why does it matter? Prominent political scientist and NIAS director Duncan McCargo joins Petra Desatova to revisit his famous ‘network monarchy’ concept and explain why Thailand should not be seen as a ‘Deep State.’ Duncan McCargo is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Duncan is well-known for publishing a dozen books and over 100 articles and chapters on Asian politics. His latest books are Fighting for Virtue: Justice and Politics in Thailand (Cornell 2019) and (with Anyarat Chattharakul) Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party (NIAS Press, 2020). His 2005 Pacific Review article on Thailand’s ‘network monarchy,’ which is the subject of this episode alongside his 2021 Pacific Affairs article that revisits this concept, has been extremely influential. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
What is digital vigilantism? How do Chinese citizens seek justice online? How does digital vigilantism reflect contemporary Chinese technological and socio-political development? In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, a visiting PhD Candidate at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Qian Huang, lecturer and PhD Candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam, explains the growing phenomenon of online collective action against an individual to protect a shared value and the consequences of it. Digital vigilantism refers to citizens’ practice of weaponising online visibility for retaliation when collectively offended. Qian Huang speaks to the Nordic Asia Podcast about her research on Chinese digital vigilantism, a part of the research project funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) entitled Digital Vigilantism: Mapping the terrain and assessing societal impacts. Qian Huang is also the co-editor of the book Introducing Vigilant Audiences (Open Book Publishers, 2020) The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
In his new book In Search of New Social Democracy: Insights from the South - Implications for the North (Zed-Bloomsbury), Olle Törnquist has returned to findings from fifty years of research on democracy and social rights movements in especially Indonesia, India and the Philippines, to address the major puzzle of our time: why the vision about development based on social justice by democratic means has lost ground, and if there are openings. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Olle Törnquist to discuss the main results and arguments in what he calls his endbook. Olle Törnquist is a Swedish global historian and Professor Emeritus of Politics and Development at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has written widely on radical politics, development and democratisation. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Who are the Wa of Myanmar and how, in three decades, have they built a force that is now the largest non-state military actor in Asia-Pacific? How does China’s economic, political, and military support for the Wa factor into the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative? What role might the Wa play in the unfolding political crisis in the wake of the February 1, 2021 coup in Myanmar, and Covid-19 pandemic? In this episode, Bertil Lintner discusses these topics and more, related to his recent book The Wa of Myanmar and China’s Quest For Global Dominance from NIAS Press (2021). Bertil is Swedish journalist who has lived permanently in Thailand since 1979. He is a full-time correspondent for Asia Pacific Media Services and writes regularly for Asia Times, The Irrawaddy and other publications. He has written 20 books on Asian politics and history. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How is childhood experienced in the slums of Bangkok and how does it relate to socio-political processes in Thailand? What role do mothers play in the leadership of the slums? And how can we understand recent mass protests in Thailand through the lens of children’s activism? Giuseppe Bolotta gives insights into his recently published book Belittled Citizens: The Cultural Politics of Childhood on Bangkok’s Margins (NIAS Press, 2021). This study explores the daily lives, constraints and social worlds of children born in the slums of Bangkok. It examines how slum children define themselves – and are defined by others – in relation to a range of governing technologies, state and non-state actors, and broad cultural politics. To learn more about the book, visit the NIAS Press website. Giuseppe Bolotta is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian and North African Studies at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Research Associate at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
At the start of 2021, a widespread belief held that India had escaped the Covid-19 pandemic relatively unscathed - this was evidenced, the story went, in the country's comparatively low death rates. Narendra Modi boasted to the World Economic Forum in January 2021, "that the country has saved humanity from a big disaster by containing corona effectively.” In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen (Norwegian Network for Asian Studies) is joined by Alf Gunvald Nilsen to discuss the devastating second wave of the pandemic in India. Nilsen argues how the second wave was the outcome of various forms of mismanagement and manipulation integrally linked to the construction of a narrative of victory in a purported war against the coronavirus, and reflects on whether the deadly reality of India's second wave is likely to erode Modi's public image. Alf Gunvald Nilsen is professor of sociology at the University of Pretoria. His research focuses on the political economy of development and democracy in the global South. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Why do Southeast Asia specialists get tired of explaining that the politics of the region cannot be reduced to a zero-sum game of Chinese-US great power rivalries? How do relatively small Southeast Asian states negotiate their relations with these major powers in an increasingly antagonistic environment? And why has the idea of the Indo-Pacific become so popular in recent years, and where does that leave the region most of us still call ‘Asia’? Prominent Singaporean political scientist Joseph Liow Chin Yong discusses these and other questions in conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo. Joseph Liow Chin Yong, is the Tan Kah Kee Chair in Comparative and International Politics at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, where he also serves as Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Joseph is well-known for his work on the politics and international relations of Southeast Asia. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which are Ambivalent Engagement: The United States and Regional Security in Southeast Asia after the Cold War (Brookings 2017) and Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press 2016). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
How can one approach religion as both an academic researcher and a spiritual practitioner? Join us for this wide ranging talk with Dr. Albion Butters, historian of religion and a specialist in Tibetan Buddhism. The first half of the conversation focuses on the Finnish Oriental Society (Suomen Itämainen Seura) and academic publishing through the digital journal Studia Orientalia Electronica, edited by Dr. Butters. In the second half of the episode, Dr. Butters shares his experiences and insights on studying and teaching Buddhism, first in the USA and India, and now in Finland. Dr. Butters is also currently an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Turku. Klaus Karttunen's History of the Finnish Oriental Society (in Finnish) (Vuosisata Aasiaa ja Afrikkaa. Suomen Itämainen Seura 1917-2017). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
What is the impact of Internet technology communication in China? How do Chinese people view "privacy" differently from the western perspective? How is the newly passed China's Personal Information Protection Law going to impact people's lives? In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, a visiting PhD Candidate at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Elaine Yuan, an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, Chicago, talks about her recent book, The Web of Meaning: the Internet in a Changing Chinese Society (University of Toronto Press, 2021). Elaine Yuan's research focuses on how new and emerging forms of communication mediate various social institutions and relations. She has extensively researched the subjects of network and mobile communication, social media, digital infrastructure, and cultural change processes. Her latest book examines the role of the Internet as symbolic fields for reproducing the cultural practices of privacy, nationalism, and the network market in China. Through three empirical cases – online privacy, cyber-nationalism, and the network market – the book traces how different social actors negotiate the practices, social relations, and power structures that define these evolving institutions in Chinese society. Examining rich user-generated social media data with innovative methods such as semantic network analysis and topic modelling, The Web of Meaning provides a solid empirical base to critique for critiquing the power relationships embedded in Chinese society's very fibre. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Indonesia’s corruption eradication commission, known as the KPK has widely been considered one of the most powerful and successful anti-corruption agencies in the region, if not in the entire world. Yet over the past years, it has been systematically undermined from above. One of the most devastating developments was a revision of the law on the KPK. The law effectively stripped the KPK of autonomy in important investigative functions and in its human resources management. It culminated earlier this summer, when a number of key investigators were purged from the KPK. Kenneth Bo Nielsen (coordinator of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies) is joined by Sofie Schütte - senior researcher at the U4 Anti-corruption Resource Centre at Christian Michelsen Institute in Norway, to discuss the turbulence and controversies surrounding the KPK, her experience with academic work on anti-corruption and the future of anti-corruption in Indonesia. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
On September 3, 2021, Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide announced that he would not seek reelection as the president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), effectively declaring his resignation as Japan’s head of government. Listen to Dr. Giulio Pugliese discuss Suga’s short tenure, including his deep unpopularity due to his government’s slow response to the Covid pandemic and insistence on holding the Olympics, as well as his ambitious goals towards digitization and renewable energy. Dr. Pugliese also considers Suga’s position in the context of the history of the LDP and former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō's continued profound influence. Learn also about the new generation of LDP lawmakers represented by Kōno Tarō, the leading candidate to replace Suga, as well as other contenders for the party leadership position including Kishida Fumio and Takaichi Sanae. (This episode was recorded on September 15.) Dr. Pugliese is Lecturer in Japanese Politics and International Relations, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, and Part-Time Professor in EU-Asia Studies, Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute (EUI). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
How important is Islam to Indonesia’s identity? How different is Salafism from a more mainstream Sunni Islam? Why is it popular with mostly young Indonesian Muslims? And what effect does it have on Indonesian identity and democracy? In this episode, Chris Chaplin joins Petra Desatova to discuss his new book Salafism and the State: Islamic Activism and National Identity in Contemporary Indonesia (NIAS Press 2021). Focusing on the nexus between religion, the nation, citizenship and political identity, the book is the first comprehensive ethnographic study of the Salafi Islamic movement in Indonesia. It explores the role of Islamic activism among Indonesian youth and how it has transformed the country’s religious and political discourse. To learn more about Chris’ upcoming book launch on 23 September 2021, visit the official event page. Chris Chaplin is an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Religion and Global Society Research Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science as well as a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
What is image-based abuse? Why has it been on the rise in Asia, especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic? What has been done to tackle the issue? Raquel Carvalho, Asia Correspondent for the South China Morning Post, shares the story of how a group of journalists across some Asian newsrooms collaborated in a months-long investigation and uncover the stories inside the online groups spreading stolen sexual images of women and children, how the victims are struggling to have such content removed from online platforms, and how sextortion syndicates in Asia and Africa are raking in millions from targets around the world. In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, a visiting PhD Candidate at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, the Portuguese journalist currently based in Hong Kong tells about why the cases of women threatened with the release of their intimate photos or videos have increased in recent years, how this type of abuse tears the victims’ lives apart, and how ill-equipped authorities are struggling to deal with the cases. Advocates and survivors say too little is being done to stop the abuse. While the cases proliferated in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea, some women – and a few men – have decided to take action. The SCMP’s series of stories on image-based abuse is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute’s Asian Stories project, in collaboration with The Korea Times, Indonesia’s Tempo magazine, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and Manila-based ABS-CBN. Most of Raquel Carvalho’s investigative and in-depth stories have been focused on human rights, cross-border security, illicit trade and corruption. She was previously the chief reporter at a Portuguese daily newspaper in Macau, where she moved to from Europe in 2008. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Climate change is one of the key challenges of our time and large amounts of development aid are allocated towards adaptation in the Global South. Yet, to what extent do such projects address local needs and concerns? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Camelia Dewan to discuss her latest book: Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development, and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh (University of Washington Press, 2021), and her fieldwork experience in Bangladesh. Vulnerable to floods, erosion and cyclones, Bangladesh is one of the top recipients of development aid earmarked for climate change adaptation. Both an ethnography of Bangladeshi development professionals and rural people in the coastal zone, “Misreading the Bengal Delta” critiques development narratives of Bangladesh as a "climate change victim". Dewan examines how development actors repackage colonial-era modernizing projects, which have caused severe environmental effects, as climate-adaptation solutions. Camelia Dewan is an environmental anthropologist focusing on the anthropology of development. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Creating jobs and providing decent employment is central to global development agendas. Indeed, Sustainable Development Goal 8 targets nothing less than decent work for all by 2030. Yet precarious—simply put poorly paid, unprotected and insecure—work is a defining feature of late capitalism, and nowhere is this more obvious than among the migrant workers in Asia whose labour largely sustains global production networks. How did the Covid-19 pandemic impact the lives and livelihoods of migrant workers in East and Southeast Asia? What kind of long term impacts is the pandemic likely to have, and what are the prospects for decent jobs in the region? In this episode Arve Hansen of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies is joined by Dennis Arnold and Thomas Sætre Jakobsen to discuss pandemic precarity in China and Cambodia. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
In this episode, Camilla T.N. Sørensen joins Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS for a conversation about the Indo-Pacific region as seen from a Danish and broader European perspective. Camilla was recently tasked by the Danish government to provide an assessment of current development trends in the Indo-Pacific ahead of a forthcoming new Danish foreign and security policy. Apart from discussing the scope, character, and drivers of Denmark/Europe’s growing interest in the Indo-Pacific, she offers an insightful account of China’s increasingly prominent role in the region. Camilla TN Sørensen is an associate professor at the Danish Royal Defense Academy in Copenhagen, at the Institute for Strategy and War Studies. Apart from being one of the leading China specialists in Denmark, Camilla covers a wide array of research areas, including Danish foreign and security policy, great power relations, and the Arctic and Indo-Pacific regions. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Seeds, plants and food can act as repositories of memory and identity, thus countering the alienation caused by displacement. How does this manifest in the case of Karen refugee communities across the world holding on to a connection to their homeland in Myanmar? And how is the Karen people’s struggle for political sovereignty connected to global biodiversity and climate change issues? Terese Gagnon discusses these questions, as well as the role of the Karen territory as a biodiversity and political refuge, and how this has changed since the military coup in Myanmar in February 2021. Terese Gagnon is an incoming Postdoctoral Fellow on "Climate and Sustainability in Asia" at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Syracuse University. Her dissertation is about Karen food, seed, and political sovereignty across landscapes of home and exile. She is co-editor of the book Movable Gardens: Itineraries and Sanctuaries of Memory. Terese is in conversation with Quynh Le Vo, a master's student in environmental change and global sustainability at the University of Helsinki, who has recently spent a month in virtual residency at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Previously, she has worked at the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and at the Permanent Mission of Finland to the UN covering environmental and development questions. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
What happened to the Filipinas who migrated to Denmark to staff iconic new international hotels in the 1960s and 1970s? Why did the Philippine government encourage so many talented people to leave the country? How did Danes react to this influx of lively Southeast Asians? What was the impact on the Danish labor movement? And why did so many lives change forever? In this conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, Danish journalist and researcher Nina Trige Andersen discusses both the socio-economic context for the influx of Philippine workers in postwar Denmark, and the individual stories she chronicles in her meticulously-researched book Labor Pioneers: Economy, Labor, and Migration in Filipino-Danish Relations, 1950-2015 (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019). The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Teaching cross-cultural communication is challenging at the best of times, but how can Nordic students learn to engage with Asian cultures when they are forced to study entirely online? Award-winning teacher Annelise Ly tells NIAS Director Duncan McCargo why it’s good to show her messy home on camera, why she doesn’t give lectures, why virtual coffee breaks matter so much, and how she plans to adopt many of the instructional innovations she started during the pandemic lockdown on a permanent basis. Annelise Ly is an associate professor at NHH, the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen. Inspired by teaching ideas she acquired during a stint at Harvard Business School, Annelise was awarded Excellent Teacher Practitioner status in 2021. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
The world is in a midst of a renewable energy revolution, with the price of utility scale photo-voltaic solar power falling by nearly 90% between 2009 and 2019, and the price of wind power falling by 70% during the same period. Annual global investment in renewable electricity generation assets is now more than double that for fossil fuel and nuclear-powered generation facilities combined, and yet the pace of adoption varies greatly across countries. In this episode Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Assistant Professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo and coordinator of Norwegian Network for Asian Studies, moderates a discussion on the various barriers and opportunities countries in Asia and the Nordics face in trying to take advantage of this renewable energy revolution. He is joined by Paul Midford a Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of International Studies at Meiji Gakuin University, in Yokohama, Japan, Espen Moe, a Professor at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, and Eric Zusman, senior policy researcher and area leader at the Institute for Global Environmental Studies in Hayama, Japan. The talk focuses on two new books: New Challenges and Solutions for Renewable Energy: Japan, East Asia and Northern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), edited by Midford and Moe, and Aligning Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies in Asia (Springer, 2021), edited by Zusman with Hooman Farzaneh and Yeora Chae. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
What influence can online and visual activism have on protest movements? With a wave of anti-establishment protests sweeping over East and Southeast Asia over the past couple of years, the online phenomenon of the #MilkTeaAlliance has gained increasing international recognition. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast Chiara Elisabeth Pecorari is joined by Wasana Wongsurawat and Mai Corlin Fredriksen to discuss the Milk Tea Alliance. Departing from the Thai and Hong Kong contexts, they explore what role this alliance plays in the broader political context, and what future it may have. Wasana Wongsurawat is an associate professor at the Department of History at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. Her research has focused on the Chinese diaspora and Thai nationalism. Mai Corlin Fredriksen is a Carlsberg Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Her current work focuses on the role of protest walls and the use of visual material in the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Chiara Elisabeth Pecorari is a student of social anthropology at the University of Bergen in Norway. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
What is China's new vision for regulating cyberspace? What does its new Data Security Law intend to do? Is China's Personal Information Protection Law comparable to Europe’s GDPR? What are the ramifications of China's plan to become a major global cyberpower in other parts of the world? In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, a visiting PhD Candidate at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Rogier Creemers, an Assistant Professor in Modern Chinese Studies at Leiden University, discusses China's latest laws and policies in the digital space and China's plans to become a global AI leader. Creemers says China’s new Data Security Law is innovative and unique as it potentially covers every piece of data in the country. He explains that personal information protection in China's legal context concerns more about confidentiality rather than privacy. He observes how China's regulations targeting tech platforms share significant similarities with the ones in the EU. As China and Europe come to a convergence in terms of what is happening in the digital space, a previous notorious term, "cyber sovereignty", is gaining popularity. Rogier Creemers has a background in Sinology and a PhD in Law. His research focuses on Chinese domestic digital technology policy, as well as China's growing importance in global digital affairs. He is the principal investigator of the NWO Vidi Project "The Smart State: Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and the Law in China". For the Leiden Asia Centre, he directs a project on China and global cybersecurity, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is also a co-founder of DigiChina, a joint initiative with Stanford University and New America. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Aase Kvaneid’s new book explores local perceptions of climate change through ethnographic encounters with the men and women who live at the front line of climate change in the lower Himalayas. From data collected over the course of a year in a small village in an eco-sensitive zone in North India, this book presents an ethnographic account of local responses to climate change, resource management and indigenous environmental knowledge. Aase Kvanneid’s observations cast light on the precarious reality of climate change in this region and bring to the fore issues such as access to water, NGO intervention and climate information for farmers. In doing so, she also explores classic topics in the study of rural India including ritual, gender, social hierarchy and political economy. Overall, this book shows how the cause and effect of climate change is perceived by those who have the most to lose and explores how the impact of climate change is being dealt with on a local and global scale. Aase J. Kvanneid is an anthropologist and a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Oslo. She is in conversation with Professor Rita Brara, Senior Fellow at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Why are land rights so bitterly contested in Indonesia, even after the end of Suharto’s New Order in 1998? What methods have grassroots movements used to re-possess – or to occupy – lands that have been seized by powerful entities? How come small-scale Indonesian farmers and marginalized communities crave legal recognition from the state? How did the Free Aceh Movement make the post-conflict land rights situation there worse than before? And why does Christian Lund insist that his new book is not primarily a book about Indonesia? And above all, why is “What is to be done?” the wrong question to ask about the problem of land dispossession? In this wide-ranging conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, Christian Lund – a professor in the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen – talks about his ground-breaking new book, Nine-Tenths of the Law: Enduring Dispossession in Indonesia (Yale UP, 2021). Christian explains how he switched from studying Ghana to working on ‘bedazzling’ Indonesia; and what he discovered during a long, collaborative journey of deep ethnographic immersion, during which he focused on troublesome and intractable questions of land rights, in cases drawn from North Sumatra, West Java and Aceh. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Our relationship to paper and paper products is changing every day. Fewer newspapers and magazines are in print, but growing dependence on online retail has increased demand for cardboard packaging. Have you ever wondered how it all began? Listen to scholar on global economic history Timo Särkkä explain the history of Arabic and East Asian papermaking traditions, India's crucial role within the British empire, and issues of sustainability in the pulp and paper industries. Dr. Särkkä is a researcher in the department of History and Ethnography at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and a visiting professor at the Institute for Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives, Global History Division, Osaka University (Japan). His most recent publication is Paper and the British Empire: The Quest for Imperial Raw Materials, 1861-1960 (Routledge, 2021): The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
What is happening to the labor movement in Hong Kong? Why was May Day this year such a muted commemoration? And how have recent political upheavals in Hong Kong affected the work of trade unionists there? Bill Taylor, associate professor in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong, discusses the plight of organized labor in Hong Kong with Hong Yu Liu, a PhD student in sociology at the University of Cambridge, who recently spent a month in virtual residency at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Former Philippine President Noynoy Aquino (in office from 2010 to 2016) recently passed away at the age of just 61. How should we assess the legacy of this “accidental” president, the scion of a prominent political dynasty whose strong sense of duty made up for his complete lack of flamboyance? Prominent Philippine journalist and public intellectual Sheila Coronel argues in this special Nordic Asia Podcast that “there's now sort of a wave of nostalgia for a president who was honest, sincere, didn't curse and didn't kill, and who took governance seriously”. NIAS Director Duncan McCargo discusses Aquino’s legacy and the prospects for Philippine politics with Sheila Coronel, Toni Stabile Professor of Professional Practice in Investigative Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, Columbia University in the City of New York, and co-founder of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. For Duncan’s recent Asia Times op-ed about the challenges of moderating President Aquino’s 2014 World Leaders Forum speech at Columbia University, see “Just the Facts: Noynoy Aquino and Me.” Sheila Coronel highly recommends “The Impossible Dreamer”, some reflections on Noynoy by his former speech writer Manual L. Quezon III. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast Kenneth Bo Nielsen of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies is joined by Htwe Htwe Thein (Curtin University in Western Australia), Michael Gillan (University of Western Australia, UWA Business School) and Kristian Stokke (University of Oslo) to analyse how international governments and businesses have responded to the Myanmar military coup. At first glance, many of the current responses from these international actors seem familiar: some actors – the US, UK and EU impose sanctions; others such as ASEAN advocate ‘constructive engagement’; while international businesses has to navigate familiar ethical dilemmas, operational challenges and motives when deliberating whether to ‘stay or go’. However, this time the responses are shaped in significant ways by a new condition within Myanmar: the existence of a robust pro-democracy social movement, the formation of an alternative ‘National Unity Government’, and the associated legitimacy crisis of the military regime. In other words, this time around not everything about the international response has been business as usual. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Forum for Asian Studies at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Does Southeast Asia face a stark choice between aligning with China or the United States? Can we understand domestic developments in the region as driven by wider geopolitics? Can the lacklustre regional organization ASEAN play a central role in mediating these dynamics, or are individual Southeast Asian countries locked into deeply unequal bilateral linkages? Is China a largely benevolent force in the region, or an untrustworthy would-be hegemon? In this session, we meet the authors of two recent books on interactions between China and Southeast Asia: Sebastian Strangio and Murray Hiebert. Both authors are veteran foreign correspondents who lived in Southeast Asia for many years. Sebastian Strangio’s book In the Dragon’s Shadow (Yale 2020) and Murray Hiebert’s Under Beijing’s Shadow (Rowman and Littlefield 2020) address closely related topics: how does Southeast Asia navigate relations with a much larger neighbour that has become increasingly powerful in recent decades, economically, politically and indeed militarily? Both books discuss regional relationships as well as bilateral ties between China and individual Southeast Asian nations. Wasana Wongsuwarat (Associate Professor of History, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand) and Petra Desatova (NIAS postdoctoral researcher) discuss the two books with their respective authors, in a conversation moderated by Duncan McCargo, Director of NIAS. This podcast is taken from a session at the Fourteen Annual Nordic NIAS Council Conference ‘China’s Rise/Asia’s Responses’ (https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/chinas-riseasias-responses) held on 10-11 June 2021 in collaboration with the Nordic Association for China Studies and the University of Helsinki. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
How seriously should we take the Chinese government’s discourse about ‘ecological civilization’? Mette Halskov Hansen argues that whatever the shortcomings of this rather grandiose notion, it offers an invaluable means of engaging China in important global debates about the future of the planet – and should not simply be glibly dismissed as an exercise in green-washing. She finds particular hope in pop-up local environmental initiatives that deploy the official discourse creatively to advance a green agenda. Mette Halskov Hansen is professor of China studies at the University of Oslo Her latest book is the The Great Smog of China (Association for Asian Studies, 2020, co-authored with Anna L. Ahlers and Rune Svarverud). This podcast is one of a series recorded with the keynote speakers from the Fourteenth Annual Nordic NIAS Council Conference ‘China’s Rise/Asia’s Responses’ held on 10–11 June 2021, in collaboration with the Nordic Association for China Studies and the University of Helsinki. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
How can we theorize international relations by looking at how nose sizes are depicted in Asian art and literature? Why are Vietnamese immigration officials furious about the maps that appear in Chinese passports? What do Japanese gardens tell us about how nation-states are constructed and defined? And how we could re-imagine border walls as sites of creative destruction, illuminating the sublime? Anyone who knows the work of William Callahan professor of international relations at the London School of Economics), will be familiar with his playful juxtapositions and his relentless determination to break down simplistic categories. In this animated conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, Bill explains how his latest book Sensible Politics expands the idea of visual politics to embrace a wider range of artifacts, while also challenging what he views as the Eurocentrism of the larger “visual turn” in IR. Bill also discusses the making of his own films including the recent Great Walls (2020) and the extremely popular Mearsheimer vs. Nye on the Rise of China (2015) This podcast is one of a series recorded with the keynote speakers from the Fourteen Annual Nordic NIAS Council Conference ‘China’s Rise/Asia’s Responses’ (https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/chinas-riseasias-responses) held on 10-11 June 2021 in collaboration with the Nordic Association for China Studies and the University of Helsinki. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
What do startling photographic images of state violence from events such as the 6 October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University tell us about the nature of human rights in Thailand? In conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, Karin Zackari of Lund University discusses some of the key themes that emerge from her doctoral thesis, the first study to view egregious episodes of human rights violations in Thailand through a photographic lens. Karin talks about some of the iconic images she studied, the challenges of tracking down archival sources, and how a recent online project is now making some of these important materials more accessible (see https://doct6.com/). Karin Zackari defended her PhD thesis entitled Framing the Subject: Human Rights and Photography in Contemporary Thai History at Lund University in September 2020. You can download her thesis here. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Feeling betrayed by liberal ideals in the US and UK, how are Chinese international students dealing with rising racism during the pandemic? Bingchun Meng from LSE talks to Joanne Kuai, a visiting PhD student at NIAS, about her latest research project, “Mediated Experience of Covid-19”, based on her students' real stories and their sophisticated reflections. The author of the book The Politics of Chinese Media: Consensus and Contestation (Palgrave, 2018) shares her views on the commonalities and differences between Chinese and western media against the backdrop of a rising Chinese threat narrative. She also comments on how Chinese tech giants, such as Huawei or ByteDance’s journey expanding their businesses overseas have implicated in global geopolitics. Dr Bingchun Meng is an Associate Professor in the Department for Media and Communications at LSE, where she also directs the LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Research Center. Her research interests include gender and the media, political economy of media industries, communication governance, and comparative media studies. She has published widely on these topic areas in leading international journals. She is currently working on a book project about technology industries in China. Joanne Kuai is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography, Media and Communication at Karlstad University, Sweden. She is a media scholar with a research focus on data and AI for media, computational journalism, and social implications of automation and algorithms. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk
Satoko Naito speaks to Lasse Lehtonen about his research on Japanese women singer-songwriters of the 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on popular pioneers like Yumi Matsutoya (Yūmin), Miyuki Nakajima, and Takako Okamura, Dr. Lehtonen discusses how the artists assert their agency and artistry, not necessarily through their lyrics but via what Matsutoya once identified as "backstage feminism." He also shares his ideas on the important potential of incorporating music history and musicology in the study of social and cultural histories. Dr. Lehtonen is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Tokyo. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Why has the military junta that seized power in Myanmar on February 1 failed to gain popular support and legitimacy? How credible are attempts by the opposition to form an alternative government in exile? Have strikes and civil disobedience run their course? Why are those opposed to the military turning towards violent resistance? And what future scenarios might we expect to unfold in the months ahead? In this conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, from a recent event co-hosted by the Danish Institute for International Studies and the New York Southeast Asia Network, four experts with extensive field experience in Myanmar share their views on the country’s current political quandary. Speakers:
Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, Professor and Chair of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
Myat The Thitsar, PhD candidate, University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
Liv Stoltze Gaborit, Postdoctoral researcher, Lund University and co-founder of Myanmar Action Group Denmark
Helene Maria Kyed, Senior researcher and head of research unit, Danish Institute for International Studies
You might also like these earlier Nordic Asia Podcasts on Myanmar here and here. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How could we turn the tables on the military junta who held power in Thailand between 2014 and 2019, by using legal mechanisms to challenge the culture of impunity under which the regime operated? Like previous military coups in Thailand, the May 2014 coup was completely illegal – yet the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), as the regime called itself, did not hesitate to deploy the full force of the Thai legal and judicial system to suppress dissent and crush opposition. In conversation with NIAS Director Duncan McCargo, Tyrell Haberkorn of the University of Wisconsin, Madison explains how her new Guggenheim fellowship is supporting her work to craft a legal indictment of the NCPO. She also plans to re-write the judgements issued in a number of landmark legal cases against junta opponents, as a means of showing how genuine justice might instead be done. Tyrell Haberkorn is professor of Southeast Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. https://alc.wisc.edu/staff/tyrell-haberkorn-2/ She is the author of Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law and Violence in Northern Thailand (2011) and In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand (2018), both from University of Wisconsin Press. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
How has the study of China evolved in the Nordic region since the 1970s? What are the challenges for Danish scholars of China today? In this wide-ranging conversation, recently-retired Professor of China Studies at the University of Copenhagen - and former NIAS Director - Jørgen Delman discusses his life, his distinguished career and the changing nature of China studies with current NIAS Director Duncan McCargo. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
Western media accounts often suggest that China is rising inexorably as a global economic and political powerhouse. A new book by Luke Patey offers a more nuanced picture, focusing on the growing backlash against Chinese aspirations. Author Luke Patey, a senior researcher from the Danish Institute for International Studies, discusses his new book How China Loses: The Pushback against Chinese Global Ambitions (Oxford University Press, 2021) with Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS. Their conversation covers a wide range of topical issues in the current debate about the rise of China, including China’s economic coercion, the dependency myth and specific manifestations of pushback against China. How China Loses is a critical look at how the world is responding to China's rise, and what this means for America and the world. China is advancing its own interests with increasing aggression. From its Belt and Road Initiative linking Asia and Europe, to its "Made in China 2025" strategy to dominate high-tech industries, to its significant economic reach into Africa and Latin America, the regime is rapidly expanding its influence around the globe. Many fear that China's economic clout, tech innovations, and military power will allow it to remake the world in its own authoritarian image. But despite all these strengths, a future with China in charge is far from certain. Rich and poor, big and small, countries around the world are recognizing that engaging China produces new strategic vulnerabilities to their independence and competitiveness. How China Loses tells the story of China's struggles to overcome new risks and endure the global backlash against its assertive reach. Combining on-the-ground reportage with incisive analysis, Luke Patey argues that China's predatory economic agenda, headstrong diplomacy, and military expansion undermine its global ambitions to dominate the global economy and world affairs. In travels to Africa, Latin America, East Asia and Europe, his encounters with activists, business managers, diplomats, and thinkers reveal the challenges threatening to ground China's rising power. At a time when views are fixated on the strategic competition between China and the United States, Patey's work shows how the rest of the world will shape the twenty-first century in pushing back against China's overreach and domineering behavior. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries began to confront their political differences and economic and security challenges with China and realize the diversity and possibility for cooperation in the world today. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
In this episode Kennth Bo Nielsen of Asianettverket at the University of Oslo is joined by Niladri Chatterjee (University of Oslo), Zaad Mahmoud (Presidency University) and Arild Engelsen Ruud (University of Oslo) to analyse the results of the recently concluded West Bengal state assembly elections. The elections dealt a major blow to the expansionist ambitions of the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP, while the regional party Trinamool Congress (TMC) scored a landslide victory. How was the TMC able to stop the BJP juggernaut? And what will the results mean for national politics? The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Forum for Asian Studies at Stockholm University. About NIAS: https://www.nias.ku.dk/ Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: https://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
In this episode Astrid Norén-Nilsson of Lund University discusses her latest research about the Cambodian online news outlet Fresh News with Duncan McCargo, the Director of NIAS. Fresh News has become an indispensable source of information for Cambodia’s political and bureaucratic elite – but just how independent is the platform from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party? How can we classify the role that such new media platforms perform in a hybrid authoritarian political system? Astrid is an associate professor at Lund University’s Centre for East and Southeast Asian Studies and a leading expert on Cambodian politics. Her article “Fresh News, innovative news: popularizing Cambodia’s authoritarian turn” appeared in the journal Critical Asian Studies in November 2020. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Forum for Asian Studies at Stockholm University. About NIAS: https://www.nias.ku.dk/
Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: https://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
This episode is from the opening session of the 2021 Thailand Update Conference, held annually at Columbia University and co-hosted by NIAS. Distinguished Thailand historian Thongchai Winichakul is in conversation with Duncan McCargo on the subject of political protests: how do the student-inspired demonstrations of 2020 compare with those of the 1970s, especially with the 6 October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University? The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Forum for Asian Studies at Stockholm University. About NIAS: https://www.nias.ku.dk/ Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: https://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast
In this podcast, Andrew Nathan of Columbia University talks to Duncan McCargo about the NIAS Director’s recent co-authored book, Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party (NIAS Press 2020). How far did the success of Future Forward symbolize the rise of a new and more politically conscious Generation Z, which in turn launched a wave of mass student-led protests during 2020?
In this episode, Kristian Stokke, Professor at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, and Marte Nilsen, Senior Researcher at PRIO, analyse the consequences of the military coup in Myanmar and the sustained popular resistance this has triggered.
In this episode, Professor Xiangming Chen from the Trinity College in Hartford joins Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS to talk about his new book on `The Belt and Road Initiative as epochal regionalization´. Focusing mainly on relations between China and Southeast Asia, the conversation revolves around topics such as infrastructural connectivity projects and regional economic development within the broader BRI framework.
In this episode, Arve Hansen talks to Jonathan London to get an update on politics and development in Vietnam. How do we make sense of the ‘socialist market economy’ today, what came out of the recent party congress, how does Vietnam balance its relations to China and the US, and how does Vietnam’s Covid success impact the legitimacy of the party?
In this episode, Adela Briansó talks to Rosalie Stolz about her latest NIAS Press book 'Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits: Sociality among the Khmu of Northern Laos.' She offers a fresh perspective on the actual lived experience of kinship based on fascinating insights from her extensive fieldwork among this upland minority group.
In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by Øystein Tunsjø, Henrik Chetan Aspengren, and Paul Midford to discuss what the new Biden administration will mean for the balance of power in Asia.
In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen talks to Guro Samuelsen, Arild Engelsen Ruud, and Niladri Chatterjee about the striking changes in the style, dress, and appearance of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Has the erstwhile "CEO of India" transformed into a Sage King?
Jimmyn Parc of Sciences Po speaks with Satoko Naito about the global popularity of K-pop and the history of the Korean Wave (Hallyu), highlighting significant factors like Korea-Japan political relations, copyright laws, and digitisation. Dr. Parc also explains how consumer trends and collaborations with producers from Nordic countries have contributed to make K-pop the international phenomenon it is today.
Jyrki Kallio of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs returns to the podcast to discuss Confucianism in China, including its beginnings in The Analects, key developments by Mencius, and the Ming-Qing reinterpretation of select teachings. Dr. Kallio explains to Satoko Naito the various complexities of Confucianism's internal contradictions as well as its enduring legacy, seen in Beijing's current 'Confucian Revival.'
Join Jason Keith Fernandes and Kenneth Bo Nielsen in conversation about Fernandes’s new book 'Citizenship in a Caste Polity: Religion, Language and Belonging in Goa.' Fernandes uses his study of the way Catholics in Goa negotiate a space for themselves within the Indian nation-state to critique popular and academic discourses on secular citizenship in India. Most importantly, he documents how caste is co-opted into legal frameworks of citizenship through official language of the state to show how India is not a secular republic but in fact a caste polity.
In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen is joined by sociologist Alf Nilsen who analyses the economic and political impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in India, where a prolonged lockdown has resulted in an unprecedented disruption of everyday life.
In this fascinating episode, Jacob Ricks joins Petra Desatova to talk about the politics of rice and rice prices in Thailand. Why is rice such a politically significant subject in Thailand? How have the different incarnations of the state rice policy shaped Thailand's political direction since the Second World War? And what role did rice play in the country's latest 2014 military coup?
In this episode, Stig Toft Madsen from NIAS - the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies joins Kenneth Bo Nielsen from the University of Oslo to talk about the liberalization of Indian agriculture and the ongoing farmers’ protests that have seen tens of thousands of Indian farmers laying siege to the national capital New Delhi for more than a month.
In this podcast, Friederike Trotier talks to Petra Desatova about her recent book titled ‘Nation, City, Arena: Sports Events, Nation-Building and City Politics in Indonesia’ published by NIAS Press. Friederike shares her insights into why sports events matter, how she researched them in Indonesia and how they helped to transform the previously grim image of South Sumatra’s capital city, Palembang.
In this episode, Edyta Roszko joins Adela Brianso from NIAS Press to talk about her latest book Fishers, Monks, and Cadres: Navigating State, Religion, and the South China Sea in Central Vietnam published by NIAS Press in October 2020. Edyta Roszko and Adela discuss the fascinating geopolitics of the South China Sea, religion in Vietnam, and the pragmatic ways in which people navigate the Vietnamese state in their daily lives. To learn more and buy Roszko’s timely book, visit https://www.niaspress.dk/book/fishers-monks-and-cadres/
Following the resignation of Japan’s Abe Shinzo in September 2020, Suga Yoshihide became the country’s first new Prime Minister in nearly 8 years. Suga served under Abe as his Chief Cabinet Secretary for many years, but what does this change mean for Japan? In this episode, Benedicte Irgens talks to Paul Midford and Dick Stegewerns about Japan’s direction after Abe including domestic politics, foreign policy, the role of the media, immigration, and environmental and energy policy.
Stephen Ranger of the European Centre for International Political Economy speaks with Satoko Naito about his recent publications on the early twentieth century Japanese film industry. Stephen explains the state of the Japanese, European, and American film industries of the time, including the decline of British influence on the international film market and subsequent Hollywood domination. He also discusses the role of Japanese governmental entities in select restrictions on films, as well as the global political and economic factors that brought about the situation.
In this recording from a book launch that NIAS arranged together with FREIA (Aalborg University), Researcher Pauline Stoltz and Director of NIAS, Duncan McCargo, discuss her latest book: “Gender, Resistance and Transnational Memories of Violent Conflicts”. In the book, Stoltz analyses the politics of memories of three violent conflicts that took place in Indonesia, covering the period between 1942 and 2015. By highlighting how people’s memories and experiences of injustices are related to gender, ‘race’, sexuality, nationality, and generation, she addresses not only how these historical conflicts were the result of inequalities, but also how these inequalities still hurt today both in Indonesia and in other parts of the world. In the book launch, McCargo and Stoltz discuss her use of innovative transnational and gender approaches in the research fields of transitional justice and memory politics and an original approach to the narrative analysis of four major Dutch and Indonesian novels.
What has been the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international and Japanese NGO communities? How has Japanese humanitarian and development NGOs responded to the crisis both at home and abroad? How did Japanese NPOs step up to help vulnerable communities in the country and provided support in cases when governmental measures were not sufficient or absent? In this episode Silja Keva speaks with Kamila Szczepanska and Yoko Demelius to look beyond the response of PM Abe's administration to the pandemic and highlight contributions made by Japanese civil society actors to the ongoing struggle against socio-economic fallout from the COVID-19.
Art historian Minna Valjakka speaks with Satoko Naito to discuss her concept of Socially Engaged Creativity, which aims to both broaden and complicate the notion of civic participation through art and creativity. The conversation focuses on her research on protests in Hong Kong as well as various forms of urban hacking and environmental art, highlighting the wide range of protagonists that actively participate in civil discourse and the diverse expressions of their engagement. Dr. Valjakka also shares her approach to on-site fieldwork, stressing the prioritization of respect for the protagonists.
How did American imperialism affect Thai scholarship? And what does Buddhist cosmology got to do with the Thai royal tours to Burma and the United States in the 1960s? In this fascinating episode, Matthew Phillips talks to Petra Desatova about moving beyond binary readings of Thai history, avoiding existing preconceptions and using images to get a more holistic understanding of the past.
In this episode, Katarzyna J. Cwiertka speaks with Satoko Naito to share her expertise on Japanese food and food packaging. The discussion deals with washoku (“Japanese food”), designated as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013, as well as the fascinating and interrelated histories of edible meibutsu (noted product of a particular site) and omiyage (souvenir) that developed alongside domestic tourism. Dr. Cwiertka's recent publications, discussed in the episode, include Branding Japanese Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku (with Miho Yasuhara, University of Hawai’i Press, 2020) and Too Pretty to Throw Away: Packaging Design from Japan (with Ewa Machotka, Museum of Japanese Art and Technology Press, 2016, available for download from her website https://www.cwiertka.com/).
In this episode, Hermann Aubié joins Outi Luova to discuss what’s actually at stake with TikTok. While the political storm in the US failed to address the actual concerns with TikTok, this episode looks beyond the headlines and identifies issues that are also highly relevant in the European context.
In this episode Paul Midford joins Henrik Hiim for a conversation about his new book "Overcoming Isolationism: Japan's Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism." Based on thousands of pages of declassified documents from Japan's Foreign Ministry and Cabinet Office, and on a quarter of a century of interviews, this book introduces Japan's often overlooked leadership in promoting East Asian Security Multilateralism, starting with its role in helping to establish the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1993, and its consistent leadership ever since. This book challenges stereotypes of Japan as passive and reactive in regional security. You can read more about Overcoming Isolationism here.
In this episode, Hermann Aubié talks with Outi Luova about the methods of information control that have been applied by China's party-state since the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. What were the possible reasons that enabled the party-state's politics to prevent China's infectious disease surveillance and reporting system from working? How does the Communist Party of China try to manage the flow of information about the pandemic not only in China, but globally?
In this podcast, Martin Seeger from the University of Leeds joins Petra Desatova to talk about his recent book Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism jointly published by Silkworm Books and NIAS Press. Martin shares his insights into how he researched this fascinating topic and how he discovered that an unknown female Buddhist practitioner was the true author of well-known Thai Buddhist texts that had been wrongly attributed to a prominent male monk.
In this episode, Kristin Eggeling talks to Petra Desatova about her recently published book ‘Nation-Branding in Practice: The Politics of Promoting Sports, Cities and Universities in Kazakhstan and Qatar.’ How do Kazakstan and Qatar brand themselves to the outside world and their own citizens? What lies behind Kazakstan’s re-branding of its capital city Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana)? And how does one even research this elusive concept of nation branding?
In this episode, Lucrezia Canzutti talks to Petra Desatova about the lives of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia: who are these people? How did they end up living in Cambodia? What is their relationship with the Cambodian state? And why are their lives so precarious? Join us for this fascinating talk about ethnicity, citizenship and Cambodian politics.
Since becoming a constitutional monarchy in 1932, Thailand has been governed by twenty different constitutions. Although they all had their own unique features, constitutions from 1997 onwards placed much emphasis on judiciary and elite watchdog agencies as the righteous arbiters of Thai political life. In this podcast, Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang talks to Petra Desatova about this constitutional change and its roots in traditional Buddhist notions of power and karma.
In this episode, Helene Maria Kyed joins Duncan McCargo for a conversation about her upcoming book 'Everyday Justice in Myanmar'. Kyed shares her insights on the project behind the book, and justice and informal resolutions in Myanmar. Based on a unique collection of ethnographic studies, 'Everyday Justice in Myanmar: Informal Resolutions and State Evasion in a Time of Contested Transition' is the first book to explore how ordinary people in Myanmar access justice and resolve disputes, and will be published in August2020 by NIAS Press. You can read more about it here: http://niaspress.dk/book/everyday-justice-in-myanmar/
For more than 60 years, Malaysian politics was extremely predictable - the same dominant party, UMNO, had remained in power since independence. All that changed in 2018, and with the latest change of government this March, all bets are off. In this podcast, leading Malaysia expert Bridget Welsh of the University of Nottingham's Malaysia campus discusses these fascinating developments with Duncan McCargo.
In this episode, Jyrki Kallio from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs joins Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS to talk about Finnish-Chinese relations, which are officially guided by the so-called ‘future-oriented new-type cooperative partnership’. Their wide-ranging conversation covers Chinese investments in Finland, Huawei and 5G technology, the Belt & Road Initiative, and Finland’s position in the EU with respect to China-related issues.
In this episode Björn Jerdén from the Swedish Institute of International Affairs joins Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS to talk about Sweden-China relations which have taken a significant downward turn over the past couple of years. The conversation revolves around a number of specific topics that have recently dominated bilateral relations, including the “Gui Minhai” case, the assertive role played by the Chinese embassy in Stockholm, Chinese economic investments in Sweden, the Covid-19 pandemic and the US-China great power rivalry.
In this COVID-19 episode that is recorded in India and enlivened with Indian soundscapes, Marjaana Jauhola and Shyam Gadhavi talk about the lockdown in Kachchh district, Gujarat and give voices to farmers and urban poor on their concerns of the impact of COVID-19 on their daily life. A longer video version of the episode is available here https://youtu.be/T0ADjM2avf4
In this episode, Henrik Stålhane Hiim from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs joins Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS to discuss recent developments between Norway and China since the normalization of their bilateral relations in late 2016 (after a six years freeze). The conversation addresses topics such as the recent spike in Chinese investments in Norway, the Covid-19 pandemic, the role played by Europe/the EU and the specific implications for Norway of the burgeoning US-China great power rivalry.
In this podcast, Allen Hicken of the University of Michigan tells Duncan McCargo all about an exciting comparative exploration of money and machine politics in Southeast Asia. This large Australian-funded project has involved extensive fieldwork over several years in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, looking at everything from village-level vote-buying, to massive government pork-barrel schemes like Malaysia’s 1MBD. Their forthcoming co-authored monograph will offer new insights into how money fuels Southeast Asia’s politics.
In this episode, Sirpa Tenhunen and Jelena Salmi talk to Xenia Zeiler about fieldwork experiences, journalistic reporting, and social media debates around the COVID-19 situation in India. With fresh stories from their fieldwork and reviews of journalistic reporting in India, they discuss whether the pandemic might contribute to social and political changes, particularly in favor of migrants, and influence the policies of India's present Government led by Prime Minister Modi.
In this episode of Covid-19 podcasts, Silja Keva talks to Kamila Szczepanska and Yoko Demelius about the impacts of the pandemic in Japan. While the state of emergency has now been lifted, the societal impacts of the pandemic are surfacing: gender inequalities and the vulnerability of homeless and illegal immigrants have been amplified. Tensions between municipal and national administration emerged in a lack of an overall strategy to handle the pandemic. In the time of crisis local level actors have stepped up to present much-needed leadership.
In this episode, anthropologist Dr Megha Amrith joins Adela Brianso to discuss her research in migrant labour and care in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amrith shares her insights on the current migration regimes in Asia and around the world, the undervalued work of nurses and carers and the heritage of colonialism still present today.
In this wide-ranging podcast conversation, Mikael Mattlin talks to Outi Luova about the impact of COVID-19 on China and the global economy. The COVID-19 crisis may help restructure societies to become more environmentally friendly, but is also boosting the economic role of the state, so seemingly validating China's ways of organising state-economy relations.
In this podcast Saowanee Alexander talks to Petra Desatova about Thailand’s politically less privileged people: who are they and why do they matter? How do they fight against the state elites? And why did they appropriate derogatory names, such as serfs and red buffaloes, used by the elites? Join us for a fascinating talk about ordinary Thai people, language and politics.
In this podcast, Arild Ruud talks to Duncan McCargo about the humanitarian crisis facing the Rohingya: why did around a million displaced people end up fleeing from Burma to Bangladesh in 2017? What kind of lives are they having in refugee camps in Bangladesh? How come the international community seems largely powerless to address this desperate situation? And what does the future hold for these Rohingya refugees?
In the first of our COVID-19 podcasts, Lauri Paltemaa joins Outi Luova for a conversation on China's efforts to manage the COVID-19 epidemic, which he argues come straight from socialist China’s disaster management campaign playbook. Maoist era methods have simply been upgraded using the latest surveillance and communication technologies. Lauri Paltemaa discusses why this legacy could be very worrisome if China faces a second wave of the epidemic.
In the latest Nordic Asia podcast, Aim Sinpeng from the University of Sydney joins Duncan McCargo to talk about the Future Forward Party - a progressive new party that took third place in the March 2019 Thai elections, only to be banned less than a year later by the Constitutional Court. Aim shares insights from her many interviews with Future Forward MPs and candidates to explain how the new party performed so well electorally, despite rejecting traditional campaigning methods in local areas. This is a fascinating conversation about one of the hottest issues affecting Thai politics in recent years.
In this episode of The Nordic Asia Podcast, Tine Walravens joins Petra Desatova for a conversation on the global sushi hype. Although often thought of as the quintessential symbol of Japanese culture, a quick dive into the history of this iconic food item suggests it is a rather recent and even hybrid addition to the nation's cuisine. Furthermore, the sushi history reveals how these questions of authenticity and origin are rarely innocent, but often tied up in political and ideological ideas.
In the third episode of The Nordic Asia podcast, Petra Desatova joins Duncan McCargo to discuss nation branding in the context of post-coup Thailand. Often perceived as a superficial approach to national reputation management, nation branding has so far avoided the much-needed scrutiny from political scientists. Petra Desatova and Duncan McCargo delve deep beyond the seemingly superficial nature of nation branding to reveal a fascinating world of politics, legitimacy and elite interests that underlined many of Thailand’s post-coup nation-branding campaigns.
In this episode of The Nordic Asia podcast, Andreas Bøje Forsby joins Duncan McCargo for a conversation on China-Denmark relations. While relations appear to be excellent between China and Denmark, recent development trends, including the US-China great power rivalry and the politicization of China’s influence activities in Denmark, suggest that the relationship is becoming increasingly contested. Andreas Bøje Forsby and Duncan McCargo discuss these and other developments, including how Denmark compares to other European countries’ relations with Beijing.
On 17th April Sabine Burghart joined Duncan McCargo for the first episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, a podcast series co-hosted by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based in Copenhagen and the Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at the University of Turku. Sabine Burghart shared with us her insights on the recently held South Korean elections, ranging from the organisation of parliamentary elections under a global pandemic to the representation of women in the new legislature.