N-SEA workshop

Photo: Uwe Schwarzbach @ Flickr

16 April 2015

The first of two workshops on "Demographic changes in Southeast Asia: Regional and international ramifications" organized by N-SEA – the Nordic Southeast Asia Network and sponsered by NOS-HS.

Demographic changes are imbued with, and impact on, gender and generational relations, urban-rural dynamics as well as societal hierarchies locally, regionally and globally. Because of flows of people, money, and goods new political and power constellations between women and men and between young and old are shaped and notions of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality redefined. This workshop will explore three inter-related themes. These are clientelist politics, politics of care and sexual politics, which all seem to be reconfigured by demographic change. The workshop will address several questions:

  • How and to which extent do patron-client networks transform in relation to migration, improvements in educational levels and gender and generational reconfigurations?
  • How do transforming family structures impact on generational relations and notions of care?
  •  How are sexual identities reconfigured and recognized, or misrecognized in particular Southeast Asian societies and how do such changes interact with larger demographic transformations?

Apart from these scholarly discussions, the workshop will also focus on methodology and fieldwork in South East Asia and invite papers and presentations from graduate students from across the Nordic countries (see Call for Participation).    

Invited keynote speakers:

  • Ian Wilson, Murdoch University, Perth
  • Sarah Turner, McGill University, Montreal

PhD workshop: 
Making sense of the field in Southeast Asia
17 April 2015

While the first day of the workshop will include presentations on demographic changes and gender in Southeast Asia from leading Scandinavian and international scholars in the field, the second day will be a graduate workshop oriented around fieldwork: that is, how to conduct fieldwork and how to interpret the data collected. Senior scholars with experience conducting research in Southeast Asia, including Sarah Turner, editor of Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013), and Ian Wilson, author of The Politics of Protection Rackets in Post-New Order Indonesia: coercive capital, authority and street politics (London: Routledge, 2015), will provide comments and feedback.

The second workshop "Security and migration" will take place in Helsinki on 23-24 October 2015
Organizers

These workshops are organized by the Nordic Network of Southeast Asian Studies with the generous financial support of the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS).

The organizing committee consists of Oscar Salemink (University of Copenhagen); Monica Lindberg Falk (Lund University); Steffen Jensen (DIGNITY-Danish Institute Against Torture); Isabelle Côté (University of Leiden); Helle Rydström (Lund University), Timo Kaartinen (University of Helsinki) and Marie Yoshida (University of Copenhagen).