The Channel: A Podcast from the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)

Dr. Alicia Izharuddin is a sociologist of gender and religion, and she has held research and teaching positions at Harvard Divinity School and at the University of Malaya. Broadly, her work explores the intersection of emotion, affect, and Muslim publics in Malaysia. Currently a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Alicia is working on a book manuscript entitled The Work of Romance: Love in Affective Muslim Publics. This presentation – “From the factory floor to the page: Space and mobility in modern Malay print romance" – was recorded during a live webinar event that occurred on March 30, 2022. Drawing on ethnographic material, Alicia considers the significance of space and place for modern Malay print romance, a popular literary sub-genre in Malaysia with connective roots to social and anti-colonial consciousness.

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Based in Toronto, Marty Gross has spent decades in the film industry as a producer and director. With a special focus on Japan, Marty’s films include Potters at Work, As We Are, and The Lovers’ Exile. For our purposes, Marty also founded and manages a project to restore, enhance, and preserve recordings that document the history of the Mingei Movement and its ongoing legacy in the world of contemporary ceramics. Established in the 1920s in Japan, the Mingei Movement championed the beauty of everyday, homemade objects. Over the past few years, Marty has been supervising the restoration and remastering of a vast collection of films from Japan, Korea, England, and the United States, covering the period from 1925-1976. In this conversation, he discusses pottery, filmmaking, the Mingei Movement, and the archive he is building at the intersection of these interests.

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Olivier Arifon is a professor at Université Catholique de Lille, and he has held visiting professorships at universities around the world. He also works as a communications consultant and trainer for diverse clients in academic, diplomatic, and other spheres. His new book, Le Récit Politique Chinois: Soft Power, Communication, Influence, was published in 2021 by L’Harmattan. The book examines China’s changing reputation in the world. It explores how China is viewed globally and also how Chinese officials work in many domains to cultivate a particular image. In the course of an email exchange about his new book, Olivier mentioned the relevance of China for the ongoing war in Ukraine. This seemed like a topic worth exploring, and one which would not feel out-of-place on a platform – like this one – primarily concerned with Asian Studies. After the initial shock of the invasion of Ukraine itself, recent days have seen more attention paid by the media to other geopolitical dimensions to the conflict. One of the big question marks, as Olivier and I sat down to record, was precisely what steps or actions China might take with respect to the conflict, and what geopolitical consequences those might entail.

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This episode was originally recorded during a live webinar event that occurred on February 23, 2022. In the presentation, Simanti Dasgupta discusses her research with Durbar, a grassroots sex workers’ collective in Sonagachi, the iconic red-light district in Kolkata. Simanti offers an overview of her broader project about the emergence of sex work subjectivity, followed by a critical examination of anti-trafficking work and its tendency to frame sex workers in terms of “rehabilitation” and “victimhood.” Currently a Research Fellow at IIAS, Simanti Dasgupta is associate professor of anthropology and director of the International Studies Program at the University of Dayton, USA. You can view video recordings of IIAS webinars on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/asianstudies.

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This episode was originally recorded during a live webinar event on February 9, 2022. In the presentation, Rafael Abrão discusses the multiple geopolitical dynamics shaping Brazil's engagement with China and the United States. Rafael is a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, where he is part of the joint research agenda “Energy Program Asia: The Political Economy of the Belt and Road Initiative and its Reflections.” He is also a PhD candidate at the Federal University of ABC in Brazil. His research explores the implications of the Belt and Road Initiative in Latin America. You can view video recordings of IIAS webinars on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/asianstudies.

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Dr. Caroline Grillot, a social anthropologist and independent scholar affiliated with the Lyon Institute of East Asian Studies, and Prof. Nelcya Delanoë, an ethnohistorian and formerly professor of American history at the Université Paris Nanterre, are the authors of the book Casablanca-Hanoi: une porte dérobée sur des histoires postcoloniales (“Casablanca-Hanoi, an historical side-door onto postcolonial stories”). Published in 2021 by Editions L’Harmattan, with a preface by François Guillemot, Casablanca-Hanoi is a story that spans decades and takes place across nations. It traces the history of Moroccan-Vietnamese families in mid 20th-century Vietnam, and their descendants in the 21st century across the planet. Through these individuals’ lives’ trajectories, it is also an exploration of questions of postcolonialism, citizenship, globalization and Asia-Africa relations. Equally, the book is the story of the process of conducting research itself: of how two researchers meet and connect, and of circumstances and coincidences that shape investigation and inquiry.

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Michael Herzfeld is the Ernest E. Monrad Research Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He also holds academic appointments at Leiden University, Shanghai International Studies University, the University of Rome-Tor Vergata, and the University of Melbourne. Herzfeld has authored numerous books and articles on a wide array of ethnographic, geographical, and theoretical topics. His latest book, Subversive Archaism, explores the politics of culture and national heritage through a comparative analysis of two sites: (1) Zoniana in Crete, Greece, and (2) Pom Mahakan in Bangkok, Thailand. In the following discussion, Herzfeld describes subversive archaism and some related concepts to explore their utility for contemporary cultural theory.

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