Asian Studies Centre

Dr Lorraine Paterson gives a talk at the Southeast Asia Seminar on June 10th, 2015. Under French colonialism in Indochina, approximately ten thousand prisoners from Vietnam and Cambodia were deported to penal or exile sites within the wider French colonial world. From Gabon in Africa to French Guiana, these prisoners were transported for sentences ranging from five years to a lifetime. Many of these prisoners had committed common-law crimes but others were anti-colonial nationalists who occupied a grey area between political crimes and those considered to be piracy or banditry.

Out of this group there was one prisoner who was exiled for longer and further than any other prisoner from any background. Indeed, given that he suffered his first exile at the age of twelve, and was only at liberty for another eleven months thereafter, he was the longest political prisoner in French colonial history. Born Nguyen Van Cam in the north of Vietnam, by the age of eight his prodigious powers of fortune telling and poetry writing had become renowned throughout northern Vietnam. At the age of twelve, he became the figurehead of an anti-French uprising in the town of Nam Dinh which led to a life of forced exile spanning the French colonial empire from Algeria to French Polynesia.

This talk will explore how such an extraordinary personal life story can provide a lens through which to examine larger colonial and exilic contexts. As well as examine the possibilities and constraints of a new form of historical biography.

Lorraine Paterson is a cultural historian whose work focuses on the lives of exiles from Indochina, and their cultural production throughout the wider French empire. She has a Ph.D. in History from Yale University and an M.A. in Asian Studies from Cornell University. Her forthcoming book, Exiles from Indochina in the Transcolonial World (Oxford University Press) will examine political exiles from French Indochina in various global geographic contexts throughout the French empire. She has also written various articles on Southeast Asian history including, a chapter, "Prisoners from Indochina in the Nineteenth Century French Colonial World," in a forthcoming volume Exile in Colonial Asia: Kings, Convicts, Commemoration edited by Ronit Ricci and published by University of Hawaii Press.

She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life Writing completing the biography of the Vietnamese political prisoner, Nguyen Van Cam.

Southeast Asia Seminar Trinity Term 2015 In early July 2014, Myanmar's second largest city became the site of anti-Muslim riots, extending a pattern of violence that has developed in the shadow of a much-heralded transition away from military rule. State authorities responded by blocking access to Facebook, locating the riot’s cause in rumours circulating on social media. This explanation for the violence -- riots as the result of rumours and new technology -- has been echoed in journalistic and academic treatments of the issue. This emphasis on technology is understandable. The dissolution of authoritarian ordering of everyday life has been strikingly abrupt, felt daily in the relaxation of censorship and the arrival of telecommunications infrastructure. Mobile phones, Internet, and media technologies previously inaccessible to all but less than 10% of the population are becoming commonplace, and contemporary Myanmar cannot be understood without accounting for their significance. Yet any project to understand events such as the July riots that prefigures the centrality of these technologies risks replicating the deterministic or apolitical explanations offered by state authorities. Accordingly, this talk will argue for attentiveness to those sedimented histories of embodied practice through which cultural and political mobilization is enacted: How are the discourses and affective fields that constitute the mobilization of mass violence such as the July riots being produced, circulated, and received? And how are these cultural and political processes mutating to incorporate new technological infrastructure? This talk will consider these questions, drawing on long-term participant observation in Myanmar and initial findings from the Myanmar Media and Society Research Project, under the Programme in Modern Burmese Studies at St Antony's College.

Matt Schissler has lived and worked in Myanmar and Thailand since 2007. He is based in Yangon, where he manages the Myanmar Media and Society Research Project for St Antony's College, Oxford University. From 2012-2014 he was the Advisor to Paung Ku, a local organization that provides mentoring, financial, and technical assistance to strengthen civil society across Myanmar. Prior to joining Paung Ku in early 2012, Mr Schissler spent nearly five years working with ethnic human rights and media organizations, where he focused on strengthening local capacities to document human rights violations, advocate for human rights, and work as independent journalists in Myanmar. He holds an MSt in International Human Rights Law from Oxford (New College), and earned distinction for a dissertation on the relationship between responses to forced labour demands in villages across eastern Myanmar and transnational efforts to enforce the ILO Forced Labour Convention. He graduated magna cum laude from Whitman College (USA), where he earned BAs in Politics and in Rhetoric/Film Studies. He speaks Burmese.

A talk as part of the Southeast Asia Seminar Series Since the collapse of the authoritarian New Order regime in 1998, hundreds of Islamic laws have been adopted across Indonesia. Over the past years, scholars have examined both the causes and the consequences of these shari'a laws. Yet, existing research has yet to explain why and how these shari'a laws have actually spread across the country. For instance, why have some shari'a laws been adopted in many provinces and districts, while other shari'a laws can be found in a small number of provinces and districts only. Why is the diffusion of certain shari'a laws triggered by national political dynamics while other shari'a laws diffuse through local channels? Who are the political players that facilitate the spread of Islamic law from one locality to another?

Based on several years of fieldwork in Indonesia, Michael Buehler's talk will examine the concrete mechanisms through which Islamic law has spread across the largest Muslim country in the world and draw parallels to other countries, including the diffusion of morality policies across the United States in recent decades.

Zhiyuan Cui (Tsinghua University) gives the Chun-tu Hsueh Distinguished Lecture 2014. This is an annual lecture held in St Antony's College, the topic of which involves some aspect of Modern China.

Dr Burak Akcapar talks on his book 'People's Mission: Dr. Ansari and the Indian Medical Mission to the Ottoman Empire, 1912-13' published by Oxford University Press. The talk was given in Michaelmas term 2014 as part of the South Asia Seminar Series.

Dr. Burak Akcapar, Author of 'People's Mission: Dr. Ansari and the Indian Medical Mission to the Ottoman Empire, 1912-13' (Oxford University Press).

As Burma (Myanmar) opens up to the world during a period of rapid change, Matthew J Walton, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, explores the effects on Buddhist identities. Matthew Walton examines how Buddhists in the country are defining and redefining themselves, with reference to other religious groups, their own histories and a global Buddhist community, and how these identities are disseminated and contested through new communication technologies, new religious practices, and reimagined notions of what it means to be 'Buddhist' in Burma.

The above gallery talk takes place in he British Museum, alongside an exhibition entitled "Pilgrims, healers and wizards Buddhism and religious practices in Burma and Thailand."

The first talk given as part of the Southeast Asia Seminar, St Antony's College during MT14 In 1999 Timor-Leste was given the opportunity to vote on a self-determination referendum that put an end to centuries of Portuguese colonial and Indonesian neo-colonial rule. Two and a half year later, Timor-Leste proclaimed its Independence, and set off on a road to create a modern, democratic state. Fifteen years have elapsed, and today most observers consider that Timor-Leste has been successful in upholding its own democracy and the rule of law. However, the road along which the country has travelled is full of hurdles and several challenges were met with varying degrees of success. In this talk, I shall start by assessing the odds faced by Timor-Leste in its endeavour to create a democratic state, and will then consider four areas of political relevance: the process of constitution-making; the role of elections and the behaviour of the electoral administration; the choice of the government system; and finally the much protracted decentralization reform. I will conclude with some notes on the challenges to democracy in the near future

A talk given as part of the Southeast Asia Seminar Series The session will be focussing on Thai politics following the 2006 coup and how the protesters, the care taking government, the courts and military establishment and different classes in Thai society are currently dealing with the political struggles while relying on some form of legal arguments. The current political battle is not fought by mere physical power like in the past, but rather some form of legitimacy power claimed by all sides, each interpreting the constitution differently. As the struggles push closer to the critical point, the dynamic of power politics in an emerging Democracy such as Thailand is being illustrated clearer than before.

Public lecture and discussion organised by the Middle East and Asian Studies Centres, St Antony's College, in collaboration with Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and the Sultan Omar 'Ali Saifuddien Centre for Islamic Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

A co-sponsored event from the Asian Studies Centre, the Dahrendorf programme for the Study of Freedom, the Middle East Centre and North American Studies Programme from the world renowned from the author of the award-winning book a Secular Age