The Gendering Asia Network provides a forum for exchange of knowledge and contacts among scholars and students working on gender and Asia. The Network aims to strengthen research and teaching on gender and Asia in the Nordic countries by facilitating contacts both internally among Nordic scholars and students, and also externally between academia in the Nordic countries and our counterparts in Asia and elsewhere in the world.
Meanings of Gendering Asia
The 2011 workshop will be hosted by The Centre for Women's and Gender Research and EDDA - Centre of Excellence, at the University of Iceland.
One of the great challenges for the Gendering Asia Network (GAN) is to make the importance of gender visible and to make it clear to the wider Asian studies community, as well as policy makers and the general public that applying a critical gender perspective makes a difference to the knowledge we construct of Asia.
At the workshop the groups that were established at the 2010 workshop will each develop their research themes and joint research projects.
To provide an overall framework for the research projects all participants will focus on what ‘Gendering Asia’ means. We will address questions such as:
Participation:
GAN Research Groups
Five groups in the Gendering Asia Network are working within a common framework consisting of two mainelements. Firstly, the overarching themes of globalization, Asian-European encounters and modernity. Secondly, the overarching approaches of applying various gender theories such as post-colonial feminist theory and agential realism, comparing different parts of the region and/or different parts of a single country, comparing Asia and the Nordic countries/Europe and combining the humanities and social sciences.
The groups are open to new participants. New groups are also welcome to join the Network as well as the 2011 workshop in Iceland.
The aim is that each group will develop one or more joint research projects.
The five research groups
1. Post-colonial cultural trauma and violence
Contact person: Monica Lindberg Falk (Sweden) Monica.Lindberg_Falk@ace.lu.se
“Post-colonial cultureal trauma and violence” is the tentative title of one of the projects that will be developed by this group. That project will address representations of gender, race and ethnicity in Europe and Asia and focus on cultural traumas of war and colonization in Indonesia, Japan, Finland and the Netherlands.
The group members have long experiences from gender research in: Japan, Nepal, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Pakistan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. Within the overarching theme Gendered ways to deal with continuity and rupture following sub-themes were identified at the workshop in Copenhagen:
The research group will use a comparative perspective. Data will be gathered by ethnographic methods, interviews, narratives, observations and analysing documents, novels and newspapers articles.
Participants
Karin Ask (M.A.) Karin.Ask@cmi.no
Wil Burghoorn (Ph.D) wil.burghoorn@globalstudies.gu.se
Hildur Fjóla Antonsdóttir hildurfa@hi.is
Mikako Iwatake (Ph.D) Mikako.iwatake@helsinki.fi
Suvi Keskinen (Ph.D) suvkes@utu.fi
Monica Lindberg Falk (Ph.D) Monica.lindberg_falk@ace.lu.se
Pauline Stoltz (Ph.D) pauline.stoltz@mah.se
Susanne Åsman (Ph.D student) susanne.asman@globalstudies.gu.se
The group is open to more participants.
Overview of plans
The group will use the Baha network and e-mail to communicate.
The group will try to meet before the workshop in Iceland. Place and date are not yet decided.
The group will organise a panel at the workshop in Iceland.
2. Mobile Livelihoods & Gendered Citizenship
Contact persons: Ása Guðný Ásgeirsdóttir(Iceland) aga13@hi.isand Ragnhild Madland (Norway) ragnhild.madland@uia.no
At the Gendering Asia Network-workshop in Copenhagen 8-11 November 2010, Ragnhild Lund presented ‘Mobile Livelihoods and Gendered Citizenship’ as a collaborative research project. Several workshop participants announced their particular interest in the project and the following sub-themes were identified as converging research interests:
Building on the empirical insights of the various participants, the focus will be different Asian contexts.
List of participants:
Ragnhild Lund (Professor) Ragnhild.Lund@svt.ntnu.no
Lisa Eklund (Ph.D. student) Lisa.Eklund@soc.lu.se
Susanne Åsman (Ph.D. student) susanne.asman@globalstudies.gu.se
Anna Karlsdóttir (Associate Professor) annakar@hi.is
Supriya Samanta (Ph.D. student) supnu31@gmail.com
Ása Guðný Ásgeirsdóttir (Ph.D. student) aga13@hi.is
Yee Yee Swe (Ph.d. student) ye-swe@online.no
Fengshu Liu (Post.doc) liu.fengshu@ped.uio.no
Ragnhild Madland (Ph.D. student) ragnhild.madland@uia.no
Maria Tonini (Ph.D. student) Maria.Tonini@genus.lu.se
The group is open to more participants
Overview of plans:
3. Ideas in Transit/Somatic Engineering
Contact person: Katja Rangsivek (Denmark) katjar@hum.ku.dk
4. Communication and Intra-action
Contact person: Liu Xin (Finland) xinliu@utu.fi
The initial idea of the potential research group “Communication and Intra-action” was to explore the communication and intra-action between Nordic companies and their employees in the PRC. After the group discussion at the Gendering Asia Network workshop in Copenhagen November 2010, we felt that in order to apply Karen Barad’s notion of intra-action as an analytical tool we should first of all try to understand the posthumanist performative line of thinking. Moreover, since participants in this research group come from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, the current focus of this group is to build a common ground and shared vocabularies by sharing a reading list.
List of participants:
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Bu We |
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Helena Magnusson |
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Liu Xin |
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Sirpa Tenhunen |
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Ragnhild Madland |
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Lilja Hjartardóttir |
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Anna Karlsdóttir |
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Cecilia Milwertz |
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Marion Marmorat |
Overview of plans:
5. Experiencing Technology – intra-active constructions of identity andthe body
Contact person: Lisa Eklund (Sweden) Lisa.Eklund@soc.lu.se
With new types of technology becoming more affordable and accessible, the use and experience of these are important for understanding social and cultural change. This research group focuses on the use and experiences of technologies, including reproductive technologies, and how they contribute to constructing different identities and understandings of the body. It also explores linkages between technology, identity and the body in relation to the state, donors and civil society on the one hand and to the market and consumerism on the other.
The research group takes a comparative perspective and intends to explore similarities and difference between two Asian countries – China and Vietnam – and the Nordic countries, with special focus on Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Participants
Tine Gammeltoft, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
Merete Lie, Professor, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Fengshu Liu, Senior Lecturer, Department of Educational Research, University of Oslo
Lisa Eklund, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Lund University
The group is open for more participants
Overview of plans
The 2011 workshop will be hosted by RIKK – the Gender Research Institute, University of Island and EDDA - Center of Excellence, the University of Iceland.
One of the great challenges for the Gendering Asia Network is to make the importance of gender visible and to make it clear to the wider Asian studies community, as well as policy makers and the general public that applying a critical gender perspective makes a difference to the knowledge we construct of Asia.
The groups that were established at the 2010 workshop will each develop their research themes and joint research projects.
All participants will focus on what ‘Gendering Asia’ means. We will address questions such as:
Network members who did not participate in the 2010 workshop are welcome to join the existing groups or to establish new groups.
Conveners: Cecilia Milwertz, senior researcher, NIAS - Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and Katja Rangsivek, PhD fellow, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
The Gendering Asia Conference is open to students and scholars working primarily within the postdisciplinary field of gender studies, and also to those whose main focus is not gender, but who include a gender perspective in the study of Asia. We thus invite papers which either primarily address aspects of gender in Asia or which include a gender dimension in studies of other main topics.
Effects of gendered Asia. We invite papers that document and explore how social change influences gender relations and the lives of men and women according to the way in which their gendered positions intersect with class, ethnicity, age, education, urban/rural location and other factors.
Gendered processes constructing Asia. We invite papers that aim to understand gendered processes and the construction of gender in all spheres of life within Asia and the ways in which these are part of a globalizing world.
How does the application of gender theory make a difference to the knowledge we construct of Asia? We invite participants to reflect upon theoretical, epistemological and methodological implications of the gender studies approaches they have applied to studies of Asia.
The conference is the Fourth Gendering Asia Conference held by the Gendering Asia Network.
The conference will include keynote speeches by Thu-Huong Nguyen-vo and Anindita Datta and sessions of short paper presentations followed by discussions.
Abstracts (300 words) should be submitted to Katja Rangsivek (katjar@hum.ku.dk) and Cecilia Milwertz (milwertz@nias.ku.dk) by 1 March 2010. Please include your name, institution and position.
Note: For 'Gendering Asia' full papers should NOT be submitted prior to the conference.
Please cite the keynote speech as follows:
Thu-Huong Nguyen-vo (2010)‘The Feminine Coordinate: Staging Asian Modernity and Neoliberal Globality in Vietnam’, keynote speech, Gendering Asia Network Conference, Copenhagen University Asian Dynamics Initiative, 12-13 November.
