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  • Iban Heritage and Culture in Malaysia

    Iban Heritage and Culture in Malaysia
    2025/08/12
    Every June, there is a significant cultural event in Malaysia, which is called the Gawai Dayak Festival, highly celebrated to mark the end of the harvest season and give thanks to the Iban agricultural God, Raja Simpulang Gana. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Julie Yu-Wen Chen from the University of Helsinki talks to Dr. Gregory anak Kiyai, an expert of indigenous ethnic heritage from the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Malaya, about the Iban indigenous people in Malaysia and the meaning of Gawai Dayak for them. In the photograph of this episode, listeners can see an image taken by Dr Gregory anak Kiyai during fieldwork with the Iban community in 2019. There is a group of Lemambang, revered ritual specialists and custodians of Iban customary law, seen here gathered in a longhouse setting. Typically, elderly Iban men, or Lemambang, are deeply knowledgeable in traditional Iban customs and serve as important cultural figures. They are often consulted for their wisdom and lead significant ceremonies and rituals in the longhouse, especially during Gawai Dayak. On the Nordic Asia Podcast website, Dr Gregory anak Kiyai provides an image of the Lemambang, dressed in traditional Iban ceremonial attire known as baju burung (Iban woven jacket), woven using kebat or sungkit techniques. These garments bear sacred motifs inherited from their ancestors. Their headdresses, called lelanjang, are adorned with feathers from the burung ruai (Argusianus Argus), symbolising reverence to the Iban war God, Aki Senggalang Burung. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Asian studies coordinator at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Chen is one of the Editors of the highly-ranked Journal of Chinese Political Science. Formerly, she was Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    20 分
  • Stuck at Home: Pandemic Immobilities in the Nation of Emigration

    Stuck at Home: Pandemic Immobilities in the Nation of Emigration
    2025/08/08
    In this episode, we are joined by Dr Yasmin Ortiga, Associate Professor of Sociology at Singapore Management University, to speak to us about her latest book, Stuck at Home: Pandemic Immobilities in the Nation of Emigration, published by Stanford University Press. Yasmin is mainly interested in how changing ideas about desirable “skill” shape where and why people migrate. This question has led her to study different groups of migrants - from international students to farm workers. She is best known for her research on migrant nurses, one of the most highly regulated professions in the world. She is the author of Emigration, Employability, and Higher Education in the Philippines (2018). Her latest book, Stuck at Home, is a little different in that Yasmin is now focused on the question of how do people NOT move. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    26 分
  • Preserving Traditional Rice and Rice Culture in the Philippines

    Preserving Traditional Rice and Rice Culture in the Philippines
    2025/08/05
    In the Philippines, rice serves as a fundamental component of the diet, typically accompanying most meals as either white or brown rice. It is also a key ingredient in various snacks and desserts. Consequently, the Philippines ranks among the top countries globally in rice per capita consumption, alongside nations like China and India. However, the majority of rice produced are modern varieties, which are intended for mass consumption, and differs from traditional varieties. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Julie Yu-Wen Chen, a Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Helsinki, engages in a discussion with Floper Gershwin Manuel about traditional rice in the Philippines and the initiatives aimed at its preservation. Floper Gershwin Manuel is currently a PhD student at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand taking up PhD in Sociology and Anthropology. His research interests include heritage and museum studies, rural and agricultural communities, cultural mapping, and gender and youth in agriculture and heritage work. Floper is also a Faculty at the Department of Social Sciences in Central Luzon State University (CLSU) in Nueva Ecija, Philippines. He has served as Head for the university’s Center for Central Luzon Studies, which also manages the CLSU Agricultural Museum. Prior to working at CLSU, Floper has worked at the Philippine Rice Research Institute, where he worked on projects related to the Rice Science Museum and other studies related to rice and culture. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Asian studies coordinator at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Chen is one of the Editors of the highly-ranked Journal of Chinese Political Science. Formerly, she was Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    24 分
  • Anne M. Blackburn, "Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties Across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena, 1200-1550" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

    Anne M. Blackburn, "Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties Across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena, 1200-1550" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
    2025/08/01
    From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries new kingdoms emerged in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia. Sovereignty in these new kingdoms was expressed in terms we understand today as coming from ‘Theravada Buddhism’. Crucial to this tradition was the Pali language. Anne Blackburn’s new book, Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena 1200-1550, examines the ‘intensification of connections’ between these polities in the region she calls, the ‘Bay of Bengal-Plus’: that is, the Bay of Bengal, the Coromandel Coast of India, Sri Lanka, the maritime and riverine areas of Burma, and the Mon and Tai territories of mainland Southeast Asia. The book highlights the importance of Pali textuality for the emerging Buddhist kingdoms of Dambadeniya, Sukhothai, Haripunjaya (present-day Lamphun in northern Thailand), Chiang Mai, Ayutthaya, and Hamsavati in lower Burma – Bago today. This was the heartland of what Blackburn calls, the ‘Pali arena’. This book is an important contribution to the emerging scholarship on the intellectual history of the early Theravada Buddhist kingdoms in South and Southeast Asia in the second millennium CE. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    56 分
  • Chiara Formichi, "Islam and Asia: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

    Chiara Formichi, "Islam and Asia: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
    2025/07/27
    Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi’s new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2020), helps us to rethink how we tell the story of Islam and the lived expressions of Muslims without privileging certain linguistic, cultural, and geographic realities. Focusing on themes of reform, political Islamism, Sufism, gender, as well as a rich array of material culture (such as sacred spaces and art), the book maps the development of Islam in Asia, such as in Kashmir, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China. It considers both transnational and transregional ebbs and flows that have defined the expansion and institutionalization of Islam in Asia, while attending to factors such as ethnicity, linguistic identity and even food cultures as important realities that have informed the translation of Islam into new regions. It is the “convergence and conversation” between the “local” and “foreign” or better yet between the theoretical notions of “centre” and “periphery” of Islam and Muslim societies that are dismantled in the book, defying any notions of Asian expressions of Islam as a “derivative reality.” The book is accessibly written and will be extremely useful in any undergraduate or graduate courses on Islam, Islam in Asia, or political Islam. The book will also be of interest to those who work on Islamic Studies and Asia Studies. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Queen’s University. Her research areas are on contemporary Sufism in North America and South Asia. She is the author of Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism (Bloombsury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2017). More details about her research and scholarship may be found here and here. She may be reached at shobhana.xavier@queensu.ca . You can follow her on Twitter via @shobhanaxavier Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    1 時間 11 分
  • Childhood malnutrition and pneumonia in Timor-Leste

    Childhood malnutrition and pneumonia in Timor-Leste
    2025/07/25
    Dr Nick Fancourt is a Horizon Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Sydney Medical School. He also works as a paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead. Nick researches childhood pneumonia, particularly in low and middle income countries. He lived in Timor-Leste from 2018-2020, working with local partners on intitiatives to strengthen communicable disease surveillance. As this episodes guest he will discuss child health issues and outcomes in Timor-Leste. Timor-Leste has made significant progress in child survival, with deaths among young children reduced by 50% in the 20+ years since independence. Further progress is needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal targets and meet strategic health priorities of the Timor-Leste government. Prevention and treatment of pneumonia and malnutrition are essential to these efforts, given the high burden of these conditions. Novel approaches will be needed, especially to reach high-risk groups, and will have global significance. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    32 分
  • Gary Kulik, "Conscientious Objectors at War: The Vietnam War's Forgotten Medics" (Texas Tech UP, 2025)

    Gary Kulik, "Conscientious Objectors at War: The Vietnam War's Forgotten Medics" (Texas Tech UP, 2025)
    2025/07/19
    During the war in Vietnam, thousands of young men served as conscientious objector medics. They had been certified by their local draft boards as noncombatants, but many would know intense combat nonetheless. Without weapons training, they ran through the infantry lines, answering the desperate call, "Medic!" Many displayed exemplary heroism even at the cost of their lives. With the end of the draft, we will never see their like again. Conscientious Objectors at War: The Vietnam War's Forgotten Medics (Texas Tech University Press, 2025) tells their stories within the background context of pacifist churches in America. It is the first book exclusively devoted to such men, who emerged initially from the historic peace churches--Quakers, Brethren, Mennonites--and from Seventh-day Adventists, who would comprise roughly half of all conscientious objector medics serving in the Vietnam War. From World War II on, growing numbers of men from mainstream churches made the same choices, and after a Supreme Court decision in 1965, so too would men who claimed humanist and secular justification. The pages contain the stories of pantheists and Catholics, among others from the peace traditions. Gary Kulik, who also served as a conscientious-objector medic, interweaves his own story into those he recounts, stories of fierce combat, stumbling accidents, moments of fleeting honor and ever-present death. Gary Kulik served as a deputy director of the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, near Wilmington, Delaware. Previously, he was a department head and assistant director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and the editor of American Quarterly. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    55 分
  • Phyu Phyu Oo, "Conflict-related Sexual Violence in Myanmar: The Role of the State" (De Gruyter, 2025)

    Phyu Phyu Oo, "Conflict-related Sexual Violence in Myanmar: The Role of the State" (De Gruyter, 2025)
    2025/07/17
    Systemic sexual violence by the Myanmar army and proxies began to be widely reported in the 2010s, in the course of genocidal violence against Rohingya in the country’s west. At the same time, the Myanmar government, which was then a military-civilian hybrid, negotiated with international organisations to set up a mechanism to monitor and deal with the violence. In this episode of New Books in Southeast Asian Studies, Phyu Phyu Oo discusses her research on this violence, and attempts to deal with it through the United Nations system, published as Conflict-related Sexual Violence in Myanmar: The Role of the State (De Gruyter, 2025). In the course of the interview she explains what Conflict-Related Sexual Violence is, efforts to address it through international agreements and law, and the conditions in Myanmar, where CRSV has a long history, and has been documented by women’s and right’s groups since the 1990s. She also reflects on the current conditions and future prospects for addressing CRSV in Myanmar. For more on the work of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in which Phyu Phyu is a research fellow, visit the CEVAW website. Like this interview? You might also be interested in Elliot Prasse-Freeman discussing Rights Refused, Ken MacLean on Crimes in Archival Form, and Lynette Chua talking about The Politics of Love in Myanmar This interview summary was not synthesised by a machine. Unlike that machinery, the author gave thought to its contents. And unlike the makers and owners of those machines, he accepts responsibility for those contents. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
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    45 分