August 26, 2021

Lead Discussant(s): Patrick Quinton-Brown
North-South Identities and the Responsibility to Protect

June 24, 2021

Lead Discussant(s): Sabina Insebayeva
Power, Recognition and Japanese Development Cooperation: Seeking the Self, Encountering the Other

May 27, 2021

Lead Discussant(s): Patrick Quinton-Brown
The Asian-African Conference of 1955 and Third World conceptions of state-based intervention

April 22, 2021

Lead Discussant(s): Amit Julka
The Discursive Construction of National Identity

March 26, 2021

Lead Discussant(s): Sylvia Huwae
Social Motives of Excluded Singaporeans and Dutch to Approach or Avoid their Transgressors: A Cross-cultural Comparison
The paper discussed a cross-cultural study on people's social motives to approach or avoid those who excluded them. Specifically, the study examined to what extent people from individualistic and collectivistic cultures differed or were similar in self-focused motives (i.e., self-esteem, self-protection, self-reliance) and in relationship motives (i.e., relationship value) to approach or avoid their transgressor. It also investigated how interrelated these motives were in terms of relevance within these cultures. To this end, a recall survey was conducted among Singaporeans (considered collectivistic) and Dutch (considered individualistic). The findings of the study were discussed.

March 25-26, 2021

Lead Discussant(s): Patrick Quinton-Brown, Naoko Shimazu, Quỳnh N. Phạm & Robbie Shiliam
Conceptual Vocabularies and the Bandung Spirit 
The Asian-African Conference welcomed 29 states to discuss matters of common concern. Though the states gathered represented nations of different sizes, ethnicities, religions, languages, and political-bloc alignments, there certain principles and a particular sensibility upon which all could agree. What was this “sensibility,” what were these “principles upon which all could agree,” and what role now for a Bandung Spirit, including in our research projects? If a Bandung identity had to do with state-making---with forming nation-states out of the ruins of empire---then at the same time, and from the very beginning, it also had to do with other sorts of making: with making in political and normative ways, of course, but also by making legally, culturally, aesthetically, and spiritually. From this view: to what the conference amounted was not merely to an attempt to escape the obligations of a global order constructed by and for dominant powers of the West, but also a collective effort at re-constituting order, visions of order, how we go about ordering, and what we mean by “we.”  

In other words: if being constructed in 1955 was a particular international identity, on what values, practices, narratives, and problems did that identity rest, what of their relevance today, and what is the relationship of these ideas to more contemporary institutions and explanatory concepts? How to account for the Bandung Spirit in its own context? Is it enough to say, in the words of Carlos Romulo, that statespeople had gathered all those years ago because they shared “generally speaking, a common historical experience,” that they belonged to a “community of hurt, heartbreak, and deferred hopes?”

On the one hand, we might consider the role being played by particular principles or norms, which look different from what many might expect in a post-Cold War context. On the other hand, there are questions to be asked relating to how and why: about why a Bandung-inspired approach to justice or knowledge formation, for instance; about how to trace ‘Afro-Asia’ and its effects in world politics; about how and why to conceive of bottom-up orders and subjectivities.

In line with the ARI anniversary year’s theme of Leading Global Scholarship on Asia, this workshop will provide a space for experimentation with particular sorts of manuscripts in progress. In looking back on the past these papers also look forward, toward empirical innovations, conceptualisations, and theories that while Asia-based are global in scope and impact. To this end we intend to gather a small group of scholars who share significant interest in the Asia-Africa Conference and offer a few papers to that group to discuss.

February 25, 2021

Lead Discussant(s): Yuanhao Zhao
Identity in Stories: Of Reality and Narrative
Zhao shared his ethnographic fieldwork experience and discussed how narratives and/or life history could become a source for one individual’s identification as well as his/her way of understanding the world.

February 19, 2020

Lead Discussant(s): Sylvia Huwae
Identities under Threat Following Social Exclusion: A Cross-Cultural Study
Being excluded from others can be painful and people may experience this as a harm to their self-esteem that reflects their personal identity. It may also harm people’s sense of belonging with their group which is connected to their group identity. However, it remains unclear which of these two identities (personal, group) are threatened most following exclusion and how factors such as cultural background (individualistic vs. collectivistic), and source of exclusion (being excluded by same ethnic group versus other ethnic group) may influence people’s perception of identity threat when they are being ostracized. The current study examined whether people from individualistic cultures such as the Netherlands experienced a more personal identity threat following social exclusion, whereas those from collectivistic cultures such as Singapore experienced a more group identity threat. In doing so, it also examined whether it depended on whether people were being excluded by their ingroup (same ethnicity) or by an outgroup (other ethnicity). To this end, participants were being excluded during an online ball-tossing game (Cyberball) by other players with either the same or other ethnicity. In the beginning, they were thrown the ball twice and then never again. The sample consisted of Dutch students in the Netherlands and Singaporean students. The theoretical framework and the results of the study were discussed.

November 19, 2019

Lead Discussant(s): Courtney Fu Rong
Topic: Negotiating Identities: Nyonya Fashion in Early Twentieth Century Singapore

September 21, 2019

Lead Discussant(s): Ted Hopf
Topic: How to Publish an Article

August 20, 2019

Lead Discussant(s): Eve Warburton
Reading: Polarization and Democratic Decline in Indonesia

July 23, 2019

Lead Discussant(s): Ted Hopf
Topic: Finding National Identity in a Focus Group

June 18, 2019

Lead Discussant(s): Amit Julka
Reading: Stability and Change: The Case of Indian Identity 1980-2010
This paper utilizes Raymond Williams framework of the residual, emergent and dominant to understand the interaction between ideational and material forces in bringing about India’s shift towards liberal economic policies in 1991. In the discussion, various schools of thought such as post-structuralism and Marxism and the base-superstructure debate was explored.

May 21, 2019

Lead Discussant(s): Ted Hopf and Srdjan Vucetic
Reading: The Distribution of Identity in Asia and China's Regional Hegemonic Prospects
This paper discussed the limits of Chinese hegemony across Asian countries, using various metrics such as UN voting patterns, military ties and expenditures, along with data obtained from the Making Identity Count Asia Project. The aim here was to discuss the draft and obtain feedback.

April 16, 2019

Lead Discussant(s): Natallia Khaniejo
The Conquest of America by Tzvetan Todorov
This book looks at the role of colonialism in forging identity discourses in North and South America. In doing so, the book also gives ideas about alternate ways of imagining identity, and also how historical processes of colonialism continue to shape the world today.

January 29, 2019

Lead Discussant(s): Alexander Svitych
Reading: Coffee Shop Gods by D.S. Farrer & Martial Arts, Transnationalism, and Embodied Knowledge by D. S. Farrer and John Whalen-Bridge
These chapters look at the role of local martial arts workshops in engendering and reproducing Chinese identity in Singapore. It interrogates what it means to be a Singaporean Chinese, and also attendant notions of embodiment and performance of identity. Furthermore, the ensuing discussion also looked at the limits of a particular identity.

December 18, 2018

Museum Visit to the exhibition ‘Surviving the Japanese Occupation: War and its Legacies’ at the Former Ford Factory, Singapore. 
The exhibit at the Ford Factory Museum gave a glimpse into the Japanese occupation of Singapore, and how everyday life was carried out during those times. Furthermore, the exhibit also shed light on the role of the Japanese occupation and British withdrawal in strengthening an anti-colonial consciousness in Singapore.

November 20, 2018

Lead Discussant(s): Deepak Nair and Siao Yuong Fong
Reading: Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century by Tey Meadow

October 23, 2018

Lead Discussant(s): Isabella Franchini and Amit Julka
Readings:
i. Courting Violence: Opportunistic Parties and the Politics of Religion by Syarifah Zahra
ii. Discourse and Content Analysis: Some Fundamental Incompatibilities by Ted Hopf

August 21, 2018

Lead Discussant(s): Namala Tialakaratn
Reading: The language of identity discourse: introducing a systemic functional framework for iconography' by Ken Tann

July 17, 2018

Lead Discussant(s): Ted Hopf, Tan Ern Ser and Matthew Matthews
Reading: From Discourse Analysis to Focus Groups

June 19, 2018

Lead Discussant(s): Manali
Reading: The Illusion of Wholeness: Culture, Self, and the Experience of Inconsistency by Katherine P Ewing

May 22, 2018

Lead Discussant(s): Ted Hopf
Reading: Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot by Tania Murray Li

April 24, 2018 12:00 to 1:30pm ARI AS8-07-61 (Resource Room).

Lead Discussant(s): Alexander Svitych (NUS Political Science)
Readings:
i.    Scheff, Thomas. "Shame in Self and Society." Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2003), pp. 239-262
ii.   Turner, Jonathan. "Self, Emotions, and Extreme Violence: Extending Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing." Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2007), pp. 501–530

March 27, 2018 12:00 to 1:30pm ARI AS8-07-61 (Resource Room)

Lead Discussant(s): Michele Ruth Gamburd (ARI Visiting Senior Research Fellow)
Readings:
i.    Kuper, Adam. "The Return of the Native." Current Anthropology, 44(3), pp. 389-402
ii.  Biolsi, Thomas. "Race Technologies." Ch. 25 in A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics (David Nugent and Joan Vincent, editors)

February 21, 2018 12:00 to 1:30pm ARI AS8-07-60 (Meeting Room).

Lead Discussant(s): Amit Julka (NUS Political Science)
Reading: Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983

January 19, 2018 2:00 to 3:30pm ARI AS8-07-61 (Resource Room)

Lead Discussant(s): Setoh Pei-pei (NTU Psychology)
Readings:
i.   Marcus, Hazel Rose and Shinobu Kitayama. 1991. “Culture and the self: Implications for cognition and emotion.” Psychological Review 98 (2): 224-253.
ii.   Nisbett, Richard. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently. Simon and Schuster, 2010. Chs 3-6, 47-163.

December 12, 2017 12:00 to 1:30pm ARI AS8-7-60 (Meeting Room)

Lead Discussant(s): Ted Hopf (NUS Political Science)
Reading: Brubaker, Rogers and Cooper, Frederick. “Beyond Identity.”. Theory and Society Vol. 29, No. 1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 1-47