New book by A/P Konstadina Griva “Caregiving in the Illness Context”

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A/P Konstadina Griva’s book “Caregiving in the Illness Context”, which she co-authored with international colleagues,  has just been published by Palgrave Pivot. A description of the book is provided below; click on this link for more details.

With more and more people of all ages living with chronic illnesses, greater numbers of family and friends become caregivers. A major focus of health professionals and scientists is to maximize quality of life among those living with illness and those caring for them. As health care systems around the world become limited in what people can afford, informal supports – primarily family and close friends – are being called on to care for ill people. Yet, the task of providing care takes a toll on caregivers’ health and well-being, including depression, social and family strains, increased physical illness, and diminished quality of life. Caregiving in the Illness Context synthesizes current research and brings attention to how personal, social and structural factors affect caregivers and how the research literature has informed emerging interventions to help caregivers.

FASS Bookshare – November 24 2015

Bookshare-poster nov2015Date and Time: November 24 (Tuesday), 1-2pm

Venue: FASS Faculty Lounge

This edition of FASS Bookshare features three single-authored books focusing on Asia by political scientists at NUS. The Bookshare Catalogue is available here.

If you would like to attend Bookshare, RSVP with your full name and email, along with the subject line “Bookshare” to fassresearchevents @ nus . edu . sg.

More information about each book and author can be found here.

Public Talk: “Why Do We Need to Take Radicals Seriously?” by Dr Khairudin Aljunied, September 18 2015

Dr Khairudin Aljunied, Associate Professor at the NUS Department of Malay Studies, will give a public talk on his new book, Radicals: Resistance and Protest in Colonial Malaya, on Friday, September 18, 2015.

The talk, titled “Why Do We Need to Take Radicals Seriously?”, will be chaired by Associate Professor Timothy Barnard from the NUS Department of History.

Venue: Research Division Seminar Room, level 6, AS7, Shaw Foundation Building, 5 Arts Link, Singapore 117570

Time: 5-6:30 pm

Admission: free with registration (RSVP to fasbox42@nus.edu.sg)

For additional details, click here.

Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event for S$42, a 20% discount. Please email A/P Khairudin Aljunied at mlsasmk@nus.edu.sg to reserve your copy since stock is limited. Payment is in cash only ($42) at the event. You can also order the book here.

Seminar Cancellations: “Coup, King, Crisis” & “Diplomacy Under Seige”

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the seminars by A/P Pavin Chachavalpongpun, “Coup, King, Crisis” and “Diplomacy Under Siege”, have been postponed until further notice. Thank you for your understanding, and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.

The Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Initiative on Southeast Asia

14 Aug: Coup, King, Crisis: Anxiety over the Royal Succession

A Seminar by Assoc. Prof. Pavin Chachavalpongpun
Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia, AY2015/2016

Chaired by Prof. Lionel Wee
Vice-Dean (Research), Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Friday, 14 August 2015, 3PM
AS7 06-42, Research Division Seminar Room
The Shaw Foundation Building, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
National University of Singapore

The Thai military staged a coup on 22 May 2014, overthrowing the elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Outwardly, the military justified its political intervention with the classic claim that corruption was the rot of Thai politics and the coup was needed to purify the political domain. At a deeper level however, the military intervened at a time when a critical transition in Thai politics is on the horizon: the imminent royal succession. For decades, the traditional elites, of which the military is a part, have long dominated Thai politics. This changed with the arrival of the Shinawatras who set huge socio-economic changes in motion. They then took advantage to empower themselves politically, and in doing so, shook the old political structure. In today’s Thailand, the power struggle between elective and non-elective institutions is now reaching its peak because the era of King Bhumibol is closing. Haunted by anxiety over a future without the charismatic King, the traditional elites are vying to manage the royal succession and maintain their power position. The speaker argues that the military government led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha is seeking to reinforce the position of the palace to ensure that the monarchy will continue to be at the centre of power in the post-Bhumibol days. It is unlikely that these undertakings will stabilise Thai politics, and as voters become alienated in the political process à la Prayuth, large-scale violent protests may be seen as unavoidable in order to restore democracy. Email nusstanfordsea@nus.edu.sg to RSVP.

Pavin Chachavalpongpun is Associate Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. Earning his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, Pavin is the author of two books: “A Plastic Nation: The Curse of Thainess in Thai-Burmese Relations” and “Reinventing Thailand: Thaksin and His Foreign Policy”. Read more about Dr Chachavalpongpun here.

Diplomacy Under Siege: The 2014 Coup and Thailand’s Foreign Relations

Seminar by Assoc. Prof. Pavin Chachavalpongpun
Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia, AY2015/2016

Chaired by Dr. Terence Lee
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science

Thursday, 3 September 2015, 10AM
AS7 06-42, Research Division Seminar Room
The Shaw Foundation Building, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
National University of Singapore

Thailand’s coup of May 2014 has not only generated significant impacts on domestic politics, but also on the country’s foreign policy. Facing international sanctions, mostly imposed by Western governments, the military government of Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha has attempted to diversify Thai foreign policy options in order to quench the intensity of outside pressure. For Thailand, in the post-coup period, there has been a strengthening of relations with neighbouring countries, ranging from Myanmar and Cambodia to China and Japan. And meanwhile, Thailand’s ties with Western nations, in particular the United States, which called for the Thai junta to return power to the Thai people, have continued to chill. The visit of the US Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Daniel R. Russel, to Thailand in January 2015, emerged as a diplomatic hiccup that pushed Thailand further into the warm embrace of China. The speaker will discuss the current state of Thai foreign policy in relation to the domestic political crisis in Thailand.

Email nusstanfordsea@nus.edu.sg to RSVP.

Pavin Chachavalpongpun is Associate Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. Earning his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, Pavin is the author of two books: “A Plastic Nation: The Curse of Thainess in Thai-Burmese Relations” and “Reinventing Thailand: Thaksin and His Foreign Policy”. Read more about Dr Chachavalpongpun here.

GPN@NUS Leading in Global Production Network Research

“It’s not just about ‘Made in China’! Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and so on are all heavily involved in global production networks in different industries, such as automobiles, electronics, shipbuilding, agro-food, banking and finance, transportation and so on,” says Dr Henry Yeung, Co-Director of the Global Production Networks Centre (GPN@NUS) and Professor of Economic Geography. Read the complete interview in the latest issue of The Alumnus (page 18) here: http://alumnet.nus.edu.sg/magazine/2015July.pdf
Visit the GPN@NUS website: http://gpn.nus.edu.sg/

Authored Books by FASS Faculty Members (Jan-June 2015)

Interested in the Cold War or where and when consciousness exists? Want to learn about resistance activists in colonial Malaya or the politics of infrastructure investment in Indonesia? FASS faculty write about these and many more fascinating topics in this collection of 13 authored books published during the first half of 2015: http://blog.nus.edu.sg/fassresearch/2015/06/16/authored-books-by-fass-faculty-members-jan-june-2015/

Labor Migration and Global Labor History: The Case of the Javanese

FASS and ARI Migration Clusters are holding a seminar on 25 March titled “Labor Migration and Global Labor History: The Case of the Javanese”
Time: 11am-12:30pm
RSVP by 25 March to: fastxr@nus.edu.sg
More details below and on the Migration Cluster website at http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/…/migrati…/newsevents/e_labor.html

Labor Migration and Global Labor History: The Case of the Javanese

Date: 25 March 2015 (Wednesday)
Location: Executive Seminar Room, AS7/01-07, The Shaw Foundation Building, 5 Arts Link, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS Kent Ridge Campus

Jointly organized by the Migration Clusters of Asia Research Institute, and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore

Abstract:

In the wake of  increasing interest in contemporary human mobilities, including in migration, a resurgence of global labor history is underway. The basis for labor mobilization and non-free labor regimes under conditions of globalization was laid during colonialism. In this talk, I review the migration history of Javanese indentured labor beyond the borders of current Indonesia into Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Scrutinizing archival data on the Javanese allows for the drafting of a transnational history of connective labor mobility that highlights entanglements and comparabilities.

About the speaker:

Vincent J.H. Houben has been professor of Southeast Asian History and Society at Humboldt University Berlin since 2001. He was trained in history and Southeast Asian languages at Leiden University. There he obtained his Ph.D. in 1987 on the basis of a study of indirect rule in Central Java in the nineteenth century. After ten years of lecturing in Indonesian history at the same university, he moved to Germany to become a professor of Southeast Asian studies in Passau (1997-2001). Vincent Houben was  director of the Institute of Asian and African studies at Humboldt University from 2004 until 2011 and has written extensively on different themes in Southeast Asian history, society, economy and culture.

Selected Forthcoming Authored Books by FASS Faculty in 2015

FASS professors have authored a number of intriguing books set for release in 2015. Read on to learn about some of them, and do attend our launch events for The Crisis of Gl0bal Modernity and Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities if you can.

The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Cambridge UP, January 2015) by Prasenjit Duara, Professor in the Department of History, is available here. A panel discussion and presentation will be held as a launch event at Seminar Rooms A and B at the Shaw Foundation Building on Friday, January 30th. More information can be found here.

Radicals: Resistance and Mobilization in Colonial Malaya by Syed Aljunied, Associate Professor in the Department of Malay Studies, will be published by Northern Illinois UP in June 2015.

Global Production Networks: Theorizing Economic Development  in an Interconnected World by Neil Coe and Henry Yeung, Professors in the Department of Geography, will be published by Oxford UP in June 2015.

Neoliberal Health Organizing: Communication, Meaning, and Politics by Mohan Dutta, Professor and Head of the Department of Communications and New Media, will be published by Left Coast Press in April 2015.

Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World by Masuda Hajimu, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, will be published by Harvard UP in February 2015.

The Bengal Diaspora: Muslim Migrants in Britain, India and Bangladesh by Annu Jalais, Assistant Professor in the South Asian Studies Programme, with Claire Alexander and Joya Chatterji, will be published by Routledge in March 2015.

Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities: Creating New Urban Landscapes in Asia by Lily Kong, Professor in the Department of Geography and Vice-Provost, with Chia-ho Ching and Tsu-Lung Chou, will be published by Edward Elgar in January 2015. A public lecture and launch will be held at the Pod, NLB on Wednesday, February 25th, from 4-6pm, in collaboration with the Singapore Research Nexus and the Centre for Liveable Cities. Details are available here.

Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor by Douglas Kammen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, will be published by Rutgers UP in August 2015.

Sensorama: A Phenomenalist Analysis of Spacetime and Its Contents by Michael Pelczar, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy, will be published by Oxford UP in March 2015.

Quest for Political Power: Communist Subversion and Militancy in Singapore by Bilveer Singh, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, will be published by Marshall Cavendish in February 2015

Public talk and book launch: “Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities: Creating New Urban Landscapes in Asia”

Public Lecture by Professor Lily Kong on the occasion of the launch of her new book, Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities: Creating New Urban Landscapes in Asia

Organizers: The Singapore Research Nexus at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS and the Centre for Liveable Cities

Date: Wednesday, 25 February, 2015

Time: 4:30-6pm, registration from 4-4:30pm

Venue: The Pod, L16, National Library, 100 Victoria Street #14-01, Singapore 188064

Speaker: Prof Lily Kong, Geography Dept, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS

Chair: Prof Chua Beng Huat, Sociology Dept, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS

Welcome Remarks by: Mr Khoo Teng Chye, Centre for Liveable Cities

Presentation abstract: While global cities have mostly been characterized as sites of intensive and extensive economic activity, the quest for global city status also increasingly rests on the creative production and consumption of culture and the arts. Arts, Culture and the Making of Global Cities examines the cultural ambitions and projects in five major cities in Asia: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Singapore.  The book provides a thorough comparison of their urban imaging strategies and attempts to harness arts and culture, as well as more organically evolved arts activities and spaces, and analyses the relative successes and failures. Offering rich ethnographic detail drawn from extensive fieldwork, the authors challenge city strategies and existing urban theories about cultural and creative clusters and reveal the many complexities in the art of city-making. The talk will draw on select case studies examined in the book.

RSVP to: nexus@nus.edu.sg with your full name, title, email address, and affiliation.

Programme

4-4:30pm: Registration and refreshments

4:30-4:35: Welcome Remarks by Mr Khoo Teng Chye, Executive Director, Centre for Liveable Cities

4:35-5:30: Presentation by Prof Lily Kong, chaired by Prof Chua Beng Huat

5:30-6: Q and A

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Discussion of The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future

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A Crisis of Global Modernity

—A discussion of Prasenjit Duara’s “The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future”—

 

ARI and FASS are pleased to present a launch event for the latest book by Professor Prasenjit Duara, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future.

The book, published by Cambridge University Press, will be available for purchase at the event at a special discounted price. It can also be ordered here.

If you would like to pre-order a copy of the book to pick up at the event, please contact fasbox42@nus.edu.sg.

About the book

In this major new study, Prasenjit Duara expands his influential theoretical framework to present circulatory, transnational histories as an alternative to nationalist history. Duara argues that the present day is defined by the intersection of three global changes: the rise of non-western powers, the crisis of environmental sustainability and the loss of authoritative sources of what he terms transcendence – the ideals, principles and ethics once found in religions or political ideologies. The physical salvation of the world is becoming – and must become – the transcendent goal of our times, but this goal must transcend national sovereignty if it is to succeed. Duara suggests that a viable foundation for sustainability might be found in the traditions of Asia, which offer different ways of understanding the relationship between the personal, ecological and universal. These traditions must be understood through the ways they have circulated and converged with contemporary developments. More information on The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future is available here.

Date and time: Friday, January 30th, from 3-5:30pm

Venue: Seminar Room AB on level 1 of AS7 (FASS, NUS Kent Ridge Campus).

Programme

3-3:30pm: Registration

3:30-3:55pm: Presentation by Prasenjit Duara, chaired by Kishore Mahbubani

3:45-4:45pm: Panel discussion by Daniel Goh, John Kelly, Kenneth Dean, and Ted Hopf, moderated by Kishore Mahbubani

4:45pm: Q and A session

5:15pm: Tea reception

About the Speakers

Prasenjit Duara is the Raffles Professor of Humanities at the FASS Department of History at the National University of Singapore, where he is also the Director of the Asia Research Institute. He is the author of several books on Chinese and East Asian history, including Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 (Stanford, 1988), which won the Fairbank Prize of the AHA and the Levenson Prize of the AAS. His other books are Sovereignty and AuthenticityManchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), Rescuing History from the Nation (U Chicago, 1995), The Global and the Regional in China’s Nation-Formation, (Routledge, 2009) and an edited volume on Decolonization (Routledge, 2004). In addition to Chinese history, he works more broadly on Asia in the twentieth century, and on historical thought and historiography. Professor Duara spent a major part of his career teaching at the Department of History in the University of Chicago, where he was also chairman of the department from 2004-2007. His Ph.D was obtained in 1983 from Harvard University, where his doctoral thesis was Power in Rural Society: North China Villages, 1900-1940.

Kishore Mahbubani is Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Concurrently, Prof Mahbubani continues to serve in Boards and Councils of several institutions in Singapore, Europe and North America, including the Yale President’s Council on International Activities, Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, University of Bocconi International Advisory Committee and Chairman of the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize Nominating Committee. He previously served for 33 years in Singapore’s diplomatic service and is recognised as an expert on Asian and world affairs. Prof Mahbubani was also listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines in September 2005, and included in the March 2009 Financial Times list of Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism. Professor Mahbubani was selected as one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers in 2010 and 2011. In 2011, he was described as “the muse of the Asian century”. He was also selected by Prospect magazine as one of the top 50 world thinkers in 2014.

Daniel Goh is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2005, and his core specialisation is in comparative-historical sociology. His research interests include ethnography and state formation, race and multiculturalism, religion and society, and the cultural politics of global city making. He is currently writing a book on History, Heritage and Reurbanization in Hong Kong, Penang, and Singapore. His published papers can be accessed at www.danielpsgoh.com.

John D Kelly is a Visiting Professor in Social Science at Yale-NUS College. He holds a concurrent appointment as Professor in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Professor Kelly’s research focuses on capitalism, colonialism, diaspora, decolonization, and Pax Americana. His books include A Politics of Virtue: Hinduism and Countercolonial Discourse in Fiji, which was published in 1991, and Represented Communities: Fiji and world decolonization, co-authored with Martha Kaplan in 2001. Professor Kelly also co-edited the book Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, which was published in 2010. Professor Kelly has also written encyclopedia entries on Postcoloniality, Cultural Relativism and Neo-imperialism. Most of his work concerns the political anthropology of the decolonization era. More recently; Professor Kelly has chaired discussions at the 2013 meetings of the American Anthropological Association. Professor Kelly was formerly the director of the University of Chicago’s Human Rights Program. He is also the co-editor of Corporate Social Responsibility: Human Rights in the New Global Economy, a forthcoming book that attempts to bring lawyers and anthropologists into dialogue. While he is in Singapore, Professor Kelly is writing a book on the political struggles in highland Asia. The book’s working title is Highland Asiaand the Paradoxes of Self-Determination in Practice. It will cover topics ranging from World War II, decolonization, and the Bandung Conference to the era of permanent counterinsurgency occupations.

Kenneth Dean is the head of the Chinese Studies Department at FASS. He was previously James McGill Professor and Drs. Richard Charles and Esther Yewpick Lee Chair of Chinese Cultural Studies in the Department of East Asian Studies of McGill University. He recently completed Bored in Heaven, an 80 minute documentary film on ritual celebrations around Chinese New Year’s in Putian, Fujian, China. He is the author of several books on Daoism and Chinese popular religion, including Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plains: Vol. 1: Historical Introduction to the Return of the Gods, Vol. 2: A survey of village temples and ritual activities, Leiden: Brill, 2010 (with Zheng Zhenman);  Lord of the Three in One: The spread of a cult in Southeast China, Princeton: 1998  Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China, Princeton 1993; as well as  First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot (with Brian Massumi), Autonomedia, New York. 1992. He gathered and edited (with Zheng Zhenman) Epigraphical Materials on the History of Religion in Fujian: Xinghua Region (1 vol. 1995); Quanzhou Region (3 vols, 2004).

Ted Hopf is Professor at the FASS Department of Political Science. Professor Hopf has been appointed by NUS as a Provost’s Chair at FASS in recognition of his outstanding and internationally acknowledged scholarly accomplishments. His main fields of interest are international relations theory, qualitative research methods, and identity, with special reference to the Soviet Union and the former Soviet space. He is the author or editor of five books, including Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999 (Cornell University Press, 2002), which won the 2003 Marshall D. Shulman Award, presented by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies for the best book published that year on the international politics of the former Soviet Union and Central Europe, Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945-1958, was published in April 2012 by Oxford University Press. Professor Hopf received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1983 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1989. He was a Fulbright Professor in the autumn of 2001 at the European University at St. Petersburg and a former vice-chairperson of the Board of Directors of the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. His research has been supported by the Mershon Center, the Ford Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Olin and Davis Centers at Harvard University. He is a member of the international advisory board of the Annals of the University of Bucharest: Political Science Series.

Registration is required. Please register by emailing fasbox42@nus.edu.sg with your full name and email. We hope to see you there!