CFP (1 Mar 2013): Friendship and the Convival City (5-6 Sep 2013)

This workshop is jointly organised by Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity; Cities Research Cluster at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore.

The study of diverse and multicultural cities has gained considerable interest in recent years, reflecting a growing concern with migrant populations and the implications of ‘strangers’ in crowded urban societies. In this literature, one of the key considerations centers around understanding how ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse peoples “rub along” and live together in tight and dense metropolises. One strand of this research is interested in the quotidian encounter – ranging from the fleeting non-verbal to more sustained engagements over longer periods of time. In this research however, friendship as a form of social relation and interaction has been largely unexamined.

While research on friendship as a social phenomenon has been limited, our intention in this workshop is not to urge a general resurgence in the literature. Instead, we posit that friendship ties interrogated in conjunction with understandings of the diverse city, offer innovative ways to understand the urban politics of co-existence. Following Amin’s (2012) recent work in Land of Strangers, we conceive of friendship networks as social ties that make possible a functioning, yet convivial, society of strangers. Friendships, in this sense, are seen as tangible ways in which the larger “urban unconscious” can be felt, linking the intimate sphere of private lives and relationships with a public urban commons.

We seek in this workshop to bring the geographical literature around the politics and spatiality of quotidian encounter together with more sociological understandings of relationships, networks and ties built on trust, respect and reciprocity. We do so in order to initiate a research agenda around the social and spatial configurations of friendship, which have implications for urban dwellers’ experiences of city life, and in opening up potentialities for new ways of living together with diversity. We intend for the papers from this workshop to make contributions to contemporary understandings of everyday encounters in the diverse city, as well as further debates on the potential convivialities of dense urban spaces.

While we are most interested in friendship networks between migrant, ‘strange’ and marginalized Others, we are also open to readings of more traditional friendship affiliations. We are also particularly seeking papers based on empirical research on friendships in cities of the Global South. We urge contributions from scholars who have been working on issues raised here but have not explicitly articulated their work within the frames of friendship relations. All material submitted must not have been previously published as the papers will be collated for an intended publication. We seek paper submissions based on original unpublished research that reinvigorates the discussion around the social relations and spaces of friendship in cities, and their relationship to a larger urban commons.

Papers can address (but are not limited to) one or more of the following areas:

  • How do ties of friendship and convivial relations characterize rapidly changing urban zones, especially in the ‘Global South’?
  • How do different migration and governmental regimes shape the formation and functioning of friendship networks?
  • How does friendship across lines of ethnicity, class, religion and language populate the city and leave a mark on the ‘urban unconscious’?
  • How is ‘convivial habituation’ learned and communicated through friendship networks?
  • When does friendship break down and how is the work of ‘repair’ carried out, and by whom?
  • When and how do convivial relations generated through friendship networks provide possibilities to challenge dominant values and structures of power, and transcend differences in a city?
  • Which types of spaces/ ‘third places’ in the city facilitate the formation and ongoing sustenance of onvivial friendship relations?
  • What are the various technologies and everyday geographies that enable and encourage the formation and maintenance of friendships and convivial relations between strangers?
  • What are the affective registers, emotions and ‘atmospheres’ of place that characterize the spaces of conviviality and friendship?

 

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Abstracts of 200 words, together with names, email addresses and affiliations of presenters, are to be submitted to kathiravelu@mmg.mpg.de no later than 1 March 2013.

Selected participants will be notified by the end of March 2013. Short papers of between 3,000-4,000 words are expected by mid-August 2013. Revised full papers incorporating insights from the workshop are expected by December 2013, as a condition of being funded to attend.

Workshop organizers aim to fund all travel for participants from the Asian region, and partial travel expenses for other participants. Accommodation for the duration of the workshop in Singapore will be provided for all workshop participants.

 

CONTACT DETAILS

 

Workshop Convenors:

Dr Laavanya Kathiravelu
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
kathiravelu@mmg.mpg.de

 

Assoc Prof Tim Bunnell
Department of Geography and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
geotgb@nus.edu.sg

The Theravada Civilizations workshop at Arizona State University, Tempe/Phoenix, Arizona, March 6, 2013

The Theravada Civilizations Project announces:

A Dissertation Workshop

To be held at Arizona State University, Tempe/Phoenix, Arizona, March 6, 2013

DEADLINE for proposals: November 30th, 2012. 
The Theravada Civilizations Project is pleased to announce plans for an intensive dissertation workshop, which will be held in conjunction with the international meeting of the Theravada Civilizations Project in March 2013 in Arizona.

The Theravada Civilizations Project  is comprised of scholars from Arizona State University, Bowdoin College, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, the École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Harvard University, the University of Leeds, the University of London,  the University of Louisville, Missouri State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Toronto, the University of Vermont, the University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin, and in consultation with scholars from a range of other Asian, Australian, and European institutions.  A description of the larger project can be found in Juliane Schober and Steven Collins, “The Theravāda Civilizations Project: future directions in the study of Buddhism in Southeast Asia,” in The Journal of Contemporary Buddhism, vol. 13 (1), May 2012. Since project members and other scholars in the field are based at many different locations, graduate students preparing their dissertations often do not have the opportunity to present and gain detailed feedback on their work from several experts in the field.

This workshop is intended to bring together doctoral students and/or post-doctoral academics in the humanities and social sciences who are (1) developing dissertation proposals or are in early phases of research, dissertation writing, or revising dissertations for publications; and who are (2) engaging some aspects of Theravada classical and/or vernacular literature and/or researching aspects of Theravada history and cultural practice among South or Southeast Asian communities.

source: http://theravadaciv.org/announcements/2013-dissertation-workshop-announced/

new Theravada Studies Group affiliated to the Association for Asian Studies

Dear Colleagues,
I write to invite you to join a newly formed group affiliated with the Association for Asian Studies, the Theravada Studies Group (TSG). It provides a new academic forum dedicated to the thematic, transdisciplinary, transnational and comparative study of Theravada Buddhist practices, cultures, histories and texts. Our purpose is to facilitate scholarly exchanges among social scientists and humanists who work on aspects of Theravada Buddhism in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Southwest China and globally though pilgrimage and diaspora networks.
The Theravada Studies Group will hold an initial planning meeting at the AAS in San Diego at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, Del Mar A/B room, 1- 2:30 pm, on Saturday, March 23, 2013. The TSG will meet annually in conjunction with the AAS in order to promote comparative work on the religious, cultural and historical aspects and encourage the submission of proposals for AAS panels. Please plan to attend and share this announcement with interested colleagues.
Scholars interested in Theravada Studies may subscribe to a new web-based repository for Theravada Studies athttp://theravadaciv.org . Your log-in will give you access to additional information. You can build your own profile and upload your publications which other members will be able to read.  Selecting the RRS feature will allow you to receive periodic updates on new posts, blogs and features. Membership is free and password protected. You can write to me at J.Schober@asu.edu for further information.
Thanking you for your interest and with all best wishes for the New Year,
Juliane Schober
Professor of Religious Studies and
Director, Center for Asian Research
Arizona State University
source: AISLS

FFAST- journée d’étude sur les cinémas d’Asie du Sud

Vous trouverez en pièce-jointe de ce message le programme d’une journée d’étude sur les cinémas d’Asie du Sud, en lien avec le Festival du Film d’Asie du Sud Transgressif (FFAST). La journée aura lieu le 16 janvier. L’Association des Jeunes Etudiants Indianistes (AJEI) est partenaire de cet évènement.

FFAST-journée d’étude

Rizana Nafeek,a Sri Lankan domestic worker, has just been executed in Saudi Arabia (Lanka Solidarity)

Rizana Nafeek has just been wrongfully executed in Saudi Arabia. She was a Sri Lankan domestic worker who was sent to Saudi Arabia when she was still a minor. Assurances for her release were made as late as November 2011, and despite the Sri Lankan Government’s and Amnesty’s pleas for clemency made this week, the Saudi government has shown that it does not protect or value the rights of domestic workers and children.

In January 2012, Colombo High Court sentenced the two foreign employment sub-agents in Sri Lanka for sending Rizana to work as a minor in 2005. The agents were sentenced to two years imprisonment and ordered to pay her family 60,000 Rs each. Less than a year later on January 9, 2013, Rizana was executed.

From the Lanka Solidarity petition on her case: “We note especially that per the Convention on Domestic Workers and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Rizana cannot legally be sentenced to death; Saudi Arabia is a party to both the former document, which protects domestic workers, and the latter document, which forbids the death penalty and life sentences for crimes committed by those under the age of 18….

On May 22, 2005, Rizana Nafeek was arrested for the alleged murder of a four-month-old child under her care in Saudi Arabia. In June 2007, the High Court in Dawadmi sentenced Rizana to death. Her execution order was stayed pending an appeal to the Supreme Court. However, in October 2010, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence. Rizana remains in prison to this day, and as soon as King ‘Abdullah Bin ‘Abdul ‘Aziz of Saudi Arabia ratifies her sentence, she may be executed.

Rizana was 17 years old at the time of the incident. After training with Sri Lanka’s Bureau of Foreign Employment, she began working for a family in Saudi Arabia. Her training did not include child care, and she was not informed in advance that child care would be among her duties. Nevertheless, her employers instructed her to look after a four-month-old infant. Tragically, on May 22, 2005, the child died while under Rizana’s care.

From the time of her arrest to the order for her execution, Rizana’s case has been subject to multiple irregularities and injustices….”

Rizana went to Saudi Arabia as a child in order to help her family generate income, and she never returned to Sri Lanka before her execution. May her family in Sri Lanka find peace in time and with the support of those who are willing to speak up against this grave injustice.

Lanka Solidarity hopes that this tragic case will prompt meaningful action to improve procedures for sending Sri Lankan migrant workers to the Middle East, as well as their working conditions and assurances once they are there.

Issue of South Asian Review on Sri Lankan Anglophone Literature

The December 2012 issue of the South Asian Review is a special issue on Sri Lankan Anglophone literature and it is now available.  This special issue of the South Asian Review was edited by Maryse Jayasuriya and Aparna Halpe.

The Table of Contents is attached and also pasted in below.

Those who wish to order a copy (for $15) can do so by emailing Lindsay Dankmyer, editorial assistant at SAR, at:

upjsar@pitt.edu.  For more information on SAR subscriptions, see http://www.upj.pitt.edu/1955/;  there are also order instructions at this website.

SOUTH ASIAN REVIEW, Volume 33, Number 3, December 2012

Table of Contents

Editor’s Column                                            9

Guest Editors’ Column                                 13

Essays

Contestation, Marginality, and (Trans)nationalism:
Considering Sri Lankan Anglophone Literature

Maryse Jayasuriya and Aparna Halpé                       17

 

Romancing the Environment: Romesh Gunesekera’s
Reef 
and Heaven’s Edge

Shalini Jain                                                              29

 

Michael Ondaatje’s Sri Lanka in
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

Marilena Zackheos                                                  51

 

History as a “Well-Told Lie” in Michael Ondaatje’s
Running in the Family

Saradha Balasubramanian                                      71

 

Indigenous Development in Sri Lankan Literature:
Punyakante Wijenaike’s The Waiting Earth

Nicola Anne Robinson                                              89

 

“No Place Called Home?”: Representations of Home
in Chandani Lokugé’s If the Moon Smiled and
Roshi Fernando’s Homesick

Neluka Silva                                                          109

 

“Enormous Cracks, Towering Mountains”:
The Displacement of Migration as Intimate Violence
in Sri Lanka-Australia Migration Narratives

Isabel Alonso-Breto                                               125

 

Betting on Fiction: Nation, Diaspora, Technology,
and Anglophone Literary Networks in
Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

Brian Yothers                                                         139

 

Uncertainty and the Future: A Reading of V.V.
Ganeshananthan’s Love Marriage

Grant Hamilton                                                      155

 

The Queer “Outsider”: Family and Sexuality in Shyam
Selvadurai’s Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

Kaustav Bakshi                                                      171

 

I Have Not Painted the War: Art and Abiding in
Roma Tearne’s Mosquito

J Edward Mallot                                                    193

 

Devotees, Dissidents, Sceptics, and Romantics in the
Sri Lankan Campus Novel in English: A Study of
The Days We Wished Would Never EndAn English Education
 and The Ginirälla Conspiracy

Walter Perera                                                        217

 

Rebirth of a Nation or The Incomparable Toothbrush:
The Origin Story and Narrative Regeneration in Sri Lanka

Minoli Salgado                                                      239

 

Fear of Ethnic Reconciliation the Reason for Post-War
Media Censorship in Sri Lanka

J. S. Tissainayagam                                                 257

 

The Factory is Like the Paddy-field: Gam Udawa
Performances, Ethnicity and Neoliberalism in Sri Lanka

Nimanthi Perera-Rajasingham                                275

 

A Fox’s Wedding: Sitting Down with Michael Ondaatje

Aparna Halpé                                                          295

 

Drawing Maps of Pain: An Interview with
V.V. Ganeshananthan

Dashini Jeyathurai                                                 305

 

“Writing is not a unilateral act”: An Interview with
Vivimarie VanderPoorten

Maryse Jayasuriya                                                 315

 

The Novelist and Censorship:
A Sri Lankan-Australian Perspective

Chandani Lokugé                                                   327

 

“my teacher talks of a sri lankan English”: questing the literary

Sivamohan Sumathy                                               339

 

Rethinking Translations from a Postcolonial Perspective

Chelva Kanaganayakam                                        349

 

Book Reviews                                                  

R. Cheran. You Cannot Turn Away.

Reviewed by Indran Amirthanayagam                    363

 

Nayomi Munaweera. Island of A Thousand Mirrors.

Reviewed by Stephanie K. Dunning                          367

 

Chandani Lokugé. Softly, As I Leave You.

Reviewed by Chelva Kanaganayakam                    370

 

Ru Freeman. A Disobedient Girl.

Reviewed by Poornima Ranawana                          373

 

Sumith Ganguly and William Thompson, eds. Asian Rivalries: Conflict, Escalation and Limitations on Two-Level Games.

Reviewed by Ann Rea                                              376

 

Malcolm Lyall Darling. At Freedom’s Door.

Reviewed by Michael T. Williamson                       379

 

Biographical Notes                                   385

source: AISLS

online resources on human rights and politics in Sri Lanka

We provide below few references to some online resources on human rights and politics in Sri Lanka.

Amnesty International  http://www.amnesty.org/en/sri-lanka

Asian Human Rights Commission  http://www.humanrights.asia/countries/sri-lanka

Government of Sri Lanka   http://www.priu.gov.lk/

Groundviews   http://groundviews.org/

Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka   http://hrcsl.lk/english/

Human Rights Watch  http://www.hrw.org/asia/sri-lanka

Statement on judgements by Court of Appeal and Supreme Court on impeachment process of Chief Justice (CPA)

8 January 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka: The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) welcomes the judgment of the Court of Appeal quashing the decision of the majority of members of the Select Committee of Parliament delivered on 7th January 2011, and the determination of the Supreme Court issued last week in respect of the question of constitutional interpretation referred to it by the Court of Appeal. The determination of the Supreme Court held that the investigation and proof of charges brought against a judge in an impeachment motion must be exercised by a body established by an Act of Parliament, and not by one established by Standing Orders of Parliament. The Court further held that matters concerning the mode of proof, burden of proof and standard of proof relating to the charges in an impeachment motion must also be specified by legislation.

The Court’s robust defence of the “immutable Republican principle of the independence of the judiciary,” and its reiteration of the fundamental importance of the rule of law underpin its interpretive arguments.  For this reason, the determination represents an important precedent for the supremacy of constitutional values over claims of parliamentary immunity. Moreover, by asserting the jurisdiction to review the legality of Standing Orders that affect the rights of citizens, the determination decisively rejects the notion that Parliament is supreme. The idea of parliamentary supremacy is as much colonial – being a feature of English constitutional law – as it is obsolete. The Court’s determination, which emphasizes the sovereignty of the people and the supremacy of the constitution, is an important judicial reminder that the plausibility of constitutional arguments must be judged by reference to first principles of constitutionalism, and not inappropriate invocations of unconstitutional values and outdated doctrines.

Of more immediate relevance, given that questions over the legality of the impeachment process against the Chief Justice have now been settled definitively by the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, it is imperative that all parties concerned comply with the law. Failure to do so will not only be in open contempt of court, but will also precipitate a dangerous constitutional crisis that the country can ill afford. In this respect, we are deeply concerned that the government has taken steps to hold a debate on the Resolution against the Chief Justice. We express our sincere hope that the rule of law will prevail, and that judicial determinations will be fully complied with.

Download this press release as a PDF from here or view on the web here.

source: CPA

An explanatory note on the Divineguma Bill (CPA)

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) has produced a note on the Divineguma Bill, examining key provisions of the Bill and implications if enacted in its present form. The Bill was first tabled in Parliament in August 2012 and subsequently challenged in the Supreme Court. Media reports indicate the Bill is to be taken for a debate and vote in Parliament in January 2013. The note is presently being translated to Sinhala and Tamil and translations will be available shortly.

Download the full document as a PDF from here or view on the web here.

source: Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA)

Call for papers: UW/UBC Graduate Student Asian Studies Conference University of Washington Campus, Seattle, April 12th-14th, 2013

The Jackson School of International Studies China Studies Program at the University of Washington invites current graduate students working in all disciplines to submit papers for its annual conference co-hosted with the University of British Columbia. Research which explores modern political, social, linguistic, religious, economic and security developments in Asia is welcomed. Papers that focus on a broad Asian context and consider cultural, historical and political connections will be prioritized.Alongside the traditional presentation of publication-level scholarship, the UW/UBC conference will also conduct a discussion roundtable for working papers with the goal of allowing for collaboration on methodological, research, and thematic challenges inherent to the writing process. Graduate students may submit proper research papers to the traditional presentation forum as well as the working paper roundtable if they so choose.

Application Guidelines:
a. Applicants must be currently engaged in graduate study (“postgraduate” in British degree classification systems).
b. Papers must be related to East, Central, South, Southeast and/or Southwest Asia.
c. Applicants must submit abstracts of no more than 300 words, and a short bio of no more than 100 words, by January 31st, 2013.

contact: Email: uwubcasianstudies@gmail.com