EUROSEAS International Conference: 12-15 September 2007, Italy

From Indopedia

PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE ARE DIFFERENT CALLS FOR PANEL PARTICIPATION LISTED BELOW...

-- University of Naples, Italy

• Call for papers for Panel on "Transnational Activism in Southeast Asia"

-- Convenors (please contact us both if you are interested in participating): Edward Aspinall, Australian National University (edward.aspinall@anu.edu.au) and Michele Ford, University of Sydney (michele.ford@arts.usyd.edu.au)

-- This panel focuses on the new modes of transnational activism which are transforming the landscape of social and political engagement in Southeast Asia, as in other parts of the world. The panel has four main aims. Firstly, we hope to encourage broad participation from scholars looking at different forms and sites of transnational activism, different countries, borderlands and geographic regions, and with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. The goal is to allow for preliminary mapping of the nature, extent, and pathways of transnational activism in Southeast Asia. Second, we aim to situate the new transnational activism within broader process of economic and cultural globalization, elucidating the connections the new activism has with other phenomena (such as migration flows and the spread of new communication technologies and media). Third, we will view transnational activism critically. Much literature on global civil society? adopts a celebratory tone because it examines only the emancipatory potential of the new activism, as well as its capacity to enable and facilitate local initiatives. In this panel, we hope also to focus on how the new transnational activism can entrench domination and inequality, and how it can limit and constrain choices by local actors. Fourthly, and following from this observation, the panel will examine efforts by activists in Southeast Asia to resist new forms of hegemony in international activist networks and to set or at least negotiate their own agendas.

-- Contact: Dr. Michele Ford, Indonesian Studies, Brennan-McCallum, A18, The University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia / Phone: +61 2 9351 7797 / Fax: +61 2 9351 2319

• SESSION TITLE: NEW INTERACTIONS, EXCHANGES AND EXPERIMENTATION OF GENETIC RESOURCES AMONGST SMALL SCALE SOCIETIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

-- Co-organizers: NOVELLINO Dario and PLATTEN J. Simon *Department of Anthropology, University of Kent, UK.

-- In Southeast Asia, population pressure and environmental transformations continue to represent an important factor of change for small-scale societies. By and large, semi-nomadic groups are diversifying their livelihood options with an emphasis towards more stable forms of agriculture and various strategies for livestock rearing. On other occasions, due to progressive desertification and the recurrence of environmental disasters, communities of farmers have increased their use of non-domestic resources, often engaging in food procurement activities (e.g. honey gathering) that are not customary to their groups. As niches of specializations become more permeable to diversification, social relations, traditional institutions, mobility patterns and ethnobiological relations are also subject to re-organization. On the one hand, modernization followed by globalization, has altered traditional endogenous movements, exchanges and transmission of plant and animal resources. On the other, the introduction and exchanges of imported genetic resources has also created new conditions for local populations to open to the global flow and negotiate freely with outside forces. Often, the knowledge of introduced breeds and landraces has ingeniously been transformed by local communities, or added as an overlay to pre-existing ways of managing and interacting with the environment. In some cases, this has been orchestrated by cultivators themselves and has resulted in a strengthened expression of local identity and community cohesion within the market economy.

-- However, where socio-political circumstances were unfavorable, the introduction of commercial breeds of animals (e.g. imported pigs and cows) and plants (e.g. rubber, oil palm) have created a distinctive cultural space controlled by lobbies and elites. As a result, imported breeds, bearing no relationship to the local ecology, have contributed to plundering peoples¹ territories, undermining the corporate basis of community life. Overall, experimentation of plant and animal related knowledge has co-evolved within the context of complementary modes of food procurement. More importantly, through the movement of people, plants and animals, cosmological views, socio-economic and political organizations, ecological knowledge, representations of land and identity, forms of ownership and land management systems have been extended well beyond the medium of their local environment and engage with ever widening circles of knowledge that are, eventually, global. Generally speaking, the introduction of new species and breeds respond to both global and locally situated dynamics, and its localization via peoples¹ exchanges makes it the subject of constant re-working. Today, many indigenous plants and animal breeds are at risk due to national agricultural policies. So called improved breeds bring with them ideas and strategies for the accumulation of wealth and prestige, hence fostering patterns of inequality. On a parallel level, international treaties such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity push for the conservation of genetic resources in ³the surroundings where they have developed their distinct properties (article 8). Overlapping agenda, and new political and economic developments occurring across the region provides a rich context in which to examine emerging patterns of peoples/plants and animal interactions. We seek to explore the many facets of this process, by bringing together a collection of case studies focusing on the exchange, experimentation and transmission of plant/animal resources and knowledge by indigenous societies and rural communities in contemporary Southeast Asia.

-- Timeline: Interested authors should send a title and abstract for consideration to the panel¹s co-organizers no later than December 1, 2006. Deadline for completed paper: April 1, 2007.

-- Contacts: If interested, please contact Dr. Dario Novellino (darionovellino@alice.it) and Dr. Simon Platten (S.J.Platten@kent.ac.uk)

• Panel: The Politics of Post-Conflict Aceh: In-depth Analysis and Comparative Perspectives; Panel convenors: Antje Missbach, Australian National University (antje.missbach@anu.edu.au) and Paul Zeccola, Australian National University (paul.zeccola@anu.edu.au)

-- Panel description: History indicates that transformations from war to peace carry inherent risks for igniting old and new conflicts. Post-conflict situations often face problems of elite power struggles, reintegrating former combatants, rebuilding state and civic institutions, economic and social development, and dealing with truth and reconciliation at the grass-roots level. The international community, the state, local civil society and business groups are all crucial players in consolidating the peace. This panel focuses on the post-conflict dynamics in Aceh and draws attention to regional conflicts and other forms of power struggle for comparative purposes.

-- There are a range of new and old challenges to deal with in Aceh since the signing of the peace deal in August 2005. They include transforming former guerrillas into formal politics, reintegrating guerrillas into civilian life, the role of Shariah Law in the province, electoral politics and revenue sharing with Jakarta, ongoing tsunami reconstruction and peace-building, state, international and local civil society relations in development, and issues of reconciliation, compensation and justice. The panel aims to explore implications of the political transformation in Aceh for other parts of Indonesia in the context of democratisation and decentralisation, as well as regional comparisons of (post-) conflict situations such as East Timor, southern Philippines, Cambodia, southern Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka.

-- We invite interested participants to send abstracts (200 words) of their papers to the panel convenors (see above) by 1 March 2007.

• CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE ASEAN REGION

7th EuroSEAS CONFERENCE University of Naples, Italy, 12-15 September 2007

Convenor: Felicia Hughes-Freeland (Dept of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Wales Swansea, United Kingdom) and Nora Taylor (Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, USA)

This panel invites papers that present original case materials from particular ASEAN states to explain and analyse how globally originated policies on cultural diversity and cultural management affect national and local practices. In particular we are interested in UNESCO’s policies associated with world heritage sites and intangible heritage, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which aims to protect Traditional Knowledge, Traditional Cultural Expression, and Genetic Resources. We particularly welcome papers that address different aspects of cultural production, including the plastic and performing arts, ‘folk’ performance, musical composition, and film, but papers about intellectual property and genetic resources which consider the uses of plants and medical traditions would also be welcome.

The object of the panel is to consider the issues from the perspective of particular situated practices and cases, and not just from the macro, top-down perspective.

Questions to be addressed are as follows:

1. How do cultural property, intellectual, and artistic creations contribute to cultural identity?

2. What aspects of social practice and creation should count as intellectual property?

3. What problem does the concept of individual authorship present for Asian societies and/or individual artists?

4. What problem does the concept of legal ownership present for Asian societies?

5. Is intellectual property a Western concept? If so, how might it be amended to fit cultural patterns in ASEAN, and what might these patterns be?

6. How are specific governments in ASEAN states using these kinds of policy to strengthen their control of national identity?

7. What kind of contestation arises when the state attempts to implement such policies? This refers to issues of indigeneity, ethnicity, and minority statuses.

8. Are there any discernible patterns emerging within ASEAN that might develop into future lines of fracture?

We intend to produce an edited book from our discussions that will contribute to cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary debates about cultural property, and provide case materials that will be helpful for furthering the debate, in both theoretical and practical terms.

Please send abstracts of 200-300 words to both F.Hughes-Freeland@swansea.ac.uk and nthanoi04@yahoo.com by 1 March 2007 at the very latest.

• PANEL: Why cultivate? Understandings of past and present adoption, abandonment and commitment to agriculture in South East Asia

7th EUROSEAS Conference University of Naples, 12-15 September 2007

CONVENORS: Dr. Monica Janowski (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, UK) and Prof. Graeme Barker (McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge, UK)

There has been debate about the origins of agriculture in Southeast Asia in recent years, relating to the history of rice, the role of root and tree crops and of minor grains, and the management/'cultivation' of 'wild' resources such as the sago palm.

In this panel we want to focus on reasons for cultivating (or not cultivating) different crops, focusing on such factors as their role as items of trade, their role in structuring local social and political relations and/or their cultural/cosmological significance.

We welcome papers which draw on data from current and recent studies within all relevant disciplines including anthropology, economics, archaeology, history, politics, sociology and botany. Our intended focus is on evidence and reasons for present-day and recent dynamics of change as well as historical change.

We plan to produce an edited book deriving from the panel.

Please submit abstracts as soon as possible, and by 1 March at the latest, sending them to both Monica Janowski (m.r.janowski@gre.ac.uk) and Graeme Barker (graeme.barker@mcdonald.cam.ac.uk).