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Main Story

RESEARCHING AND WRITING VOICES FROM THE UNDERWORLD

Special Feature

THE GRANT JOURNEY – INTERVIEW WITH EVEWARBURTON

Outreach Event

PILLARS OF THE FIELD

Main Story

RESEARCHING AND WRITING VOICES FROM THE UNDERWORLD

Special Feature

THE GRANT JOURNEY – INTERVIEW WITH EVEWARBURTON

Outreach Event

PILLARS OF THE FIELD

MICA(P)223/01/2006

Bhaba Pagla, immortalised in a temple in SodpurPhoto credit: Carola Lorea

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As I write (in mid-March), ARI has been impacted by

COVID-19 in terms of restrictions on inbound academic

visitors, a shifting geography of risk and access relating to

our own researchers’ international fieldwork and conference

destinations, and disruption to our local function as a

site of scholarly interaction and public engagement. I am

very grateful for the cooperation of ARI staff at all levels,

and particularly wish to commend Sharlene Anthony and

our administrative team for implementing the necessary

protocols with efficiency and sensitivity.

It is important that COVID-19 does not obscure noteworthy

developments and achievements at ARI. The semester

began with four members of our administrative team

adjusting to new roles in new clusters as part of NUS’s wider

Organisational Excellence transition. A retreat for cluster

leaders was also held in January, affording an opportunity for

deliberation of our communications strategy and research

priorities. The latter informed the call for Expressions of

Interest in establishing a new research cluster that was

disseminated across campus in early February (the outcome

of that important process — either to reinvent or replace

the existing Changing Family in Asia Cluster — will be

known by the time of my next Word this October). Later

in February, we learned of a competitive grant application

success for the research cluster that was established during

the previous round of new cluster formation, back in 2017.

Congratulations to Ted Hopf and Eve Warburton from the

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ARI was established in 2001 with the objective of becoming ‘a world-class focus and resource for research on the Asian region located at one of its communication hubs’. Singapore’s hub status has served ARI very well, bringing many researchers to and through the Institute, and contributing to the fact that we now boast a network of alumni, collaborators and partners that is truly global in scope. But this is a semester during which we have also been reminded of some of the downsides of regional interconnectedness and global linkages. At an anxious time of COVID-19 transmission around the world, I hope this Word — through whatever medium it finds you — finds you well.

WORD FROMTHE DIRECTORPROF TIM BUNNELL

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Identities Cluster for securing upwards of $900k from the

MOE’s Academic Research Fund (Tier 2) for their project

titled ‘Ideology, Identity and Representation: Comparing

Political Elites and Masses in Southeast Asia’.

Meanwhile, the Institute successfully ran three international

conference events in February. Although that kind of

schedule is not unusual by ARI’s own remarkable standards,

the effort that went into running those events in the

context of Disease Outbreak Response System Condition

(DORSCON) ‘Orange’ was extraordinary. My thanks both

to the academic organisers concerned, and to ARI’s Events

Team for their dedication and adaptability. With so many

international presenters unwilling or unable to attend

the events, they were able to proceed, in part, through

unprecedented rates of presentation and discussion by

Skype. I wonder whether this experience may allow ARI to

expand virtual participation in future events, even beyond

COVID-19. As a geographer, I am well attuned to the

value of ‘place’ and physical co-presence for many forms

of scholarly interaction. But selective expansion of the use

of Skype and similar technologies into ARI’s events would

Céline Coderey & Laurent Pordié (eds)Circulation and Governance of Asian MedicineNew York, Routledge, 2019

Wei-Jun Jean Yeung & Li Haibin (guest eds)Special Issue: Educational Resilience in Adversity among Asian Children Social Indicators Research 145(2), 2019

Kenneth Dean & Zheng ZhenmanEpigraphical Materials on the History of Religion in Fujian: Zhangzhou Prefecture, 4 vols. (in Chinese)Fuzhou, Fujian People’s Publishing House, 2019

Ravinder K. Sidhu, Ho Kong Chong & Brenda S.A. YeohStudent Mobilities and International Education in Asia: Emotional Geographies of Knowledge SpacesSwitzerland, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020

Sonia Lam-Knott, Creighton Connolly & Ho Kong Chong (eds) Post-Politics and Civil Society in Asian Cities: Spaces of DepoliticisationAbingdon, Oxon; New York, Routledge, 2019

Kishore MahbubaniHas China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American PrimacyNew York, PublicAffairs, 2020

reduce our institutional carbon footprint, and enable cost

savings that could be reinvested into other aspects of our

research and engagement.

Especially given that (under normal conditions) Singapore-

as-hub already brings so many scholars to or through

ARI, even beyond our conferences and workshops, I am

very keen to prioritise further investment in our online

presence. In February, we welcomed Clair Hurford whose

role as a Research Associate at ARI includes enhancing

dissemination of our research through the Internet and

social media channels. Relatedly, there has even been

discussion of whether it is time to dispense with hard copies

of the ARI Newsletter (the decision was in fact to retain

the paper version which remains popular with conference

attendees, but to cut down on the number that we print).

Ultimately, of course, the message is more important than

the medium of its dissemination. My thanks to Eric Kerr

and other members of the Newsletter Committee for their

continued commitment to high quality newsletter content

in the context of an otherwise highly unusual and unsettling

semester.

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Understanding the religious divergences between

Singapore and Malaysia through an analysis of socio-

political and historical events […] Graham’s innovative

approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person

dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld

deities […] Through its alternative ontological, methodological

and narrative stance, it contributes to anthropological

discourse on the interrelation between sociocultural and

spiritual worlds, and promotes the de-stigmatisation of spirits,

spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future

academic study of mystical and religious traditions’.

The book’s back cover quoted above informs prospective

readers about its content and intent, but not about the

author’s underlying assumptions, which are, at least from

the author’s perspective, highly relevant to the ethnographic

narration and research methodology. Incorporating notions

from the ontological turn, firstly, that if someone believes

something to exist, it does, at least for the believer, and

second, however something exists, that it is an imagined

construct does not detract from the reality of its existence,

and, combining these underlying concepts with a dialogic

approach allowing the deities themselves as channelled

through their spirit mediums to become key informants,

the book speculates on both the metaphysical and cultural

elements of the religious tradition.

While ‘history’ can stand alone as an academic field,

anthropology relies on an understanding of the past to

analyse present-day events. Therefore, on a cultural level,

in a process which Prof Peter van der Veer has broadly

labelled ‘historical sociology’, I have sought to link causal

relationships between past socio-political developments

to specific changes in Singapore and Malaysia’s religious

landscapes. From the civilian massacres and ‘purge through

purification’ during Japanese occupation (1941-45) and the

effects of post-war British colonial rule, to the founding of and

on-going political developments in Singapore and Malaysia’s

secular landscapes, the book argues that religion has evolved

in reaction to either opportunity, or in the face of political

adversity. Exploring the politics of syncretism in context of

the Darwinian evolutionary struggle for survival, these dual

processes have been labelled ‘self-perpetuating technologies

of religious synthesis’, and these have been employed to

analyse and explain why the Underworld tradition has become

popularised in Singapore and Malaysia, while the Underworld

and its denizens remain a taboo subject elsewhere in the

Chinese cultural universe.

The ethnographic research was undertaken over a period of

nine years starting with my PhD research in Singapore from

2010-11. Already familiar with Chinese religion in Taiwan,

China and Southeast Asia from my master’s degrees, it came

as quite a surprise when in 2010 I first encountered Hell deity

worship in Singapore. To draw a comparison, it would be

like a theologian studying Christianity in Europe and finding

that in one country, while Christians still believed in Jesus,

they preferred to worship Satan in darkened rooms behind

the main altar because ‘Satan is just easier to get along

with’. Recognising this as an element of Chinese religion not

previously researched, I allowed myself to be propelled into

a world of Guinness-swilling, cigarette-smoking Underworld

deities channelled through their spirit mediums complete

with night-time cemetery rituals, exorcisms, coffin rituals, and

deities which elsewhere remain unknown or largely taboo.

Barely a month into my PhD fieldwork I was invited to go

collect ‘graveyard medicines’ secretly at night in Choa Chu

Kang cemetery with a group of people that I had only met

once. It would have been impolite to refuse the invitation, but

RESEARCHING AND WRITING VOICES FROM THE UNDERWORLD

‘Voices from the Underworld offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple’s private spirit army.

DR FABIAN GRAHAM

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you won’t damage his body.

Could you please take mine with

you too!’ He laughed jovially,

gave me a rice bowl of tea to

drink, and within two minutes

the deity had left the spirit

medium’s body and returned

to the Underworld. I stood up,

and to my amazement, I found

myself to be stone cold sober.

Throughout my research I

participated in as many rituals

as possible from being sealed

inside a coffin in Malaysia by

five opium-puffing Hell deities

who then squatted, walked

and jumped on the locked

coffin lid, to attempting to be

possessed by a Chinese deity in

a Singapore temple, and being

taken on a subconscious journey

to the gates of the Underworld. But fun and games aside …

Returning to the academic analysis resulting from my

fieldwork, the book variously discusses the interrelationships

between night-time cemetery rituals, Foucault’s ‘heterotopias’

and everyday forms of resistance in Singapore; alcohol

consumption and community formation through extended

spiritual and guanxi networks in Malaysia; the influence

of historic memory on present-day transnational cultural

flows in Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan; the transference

of knowledge through digital media and the online

reconstruction of religious authority; and variously highlights

specific societal catalysts to the invention, reinterpretation

and inversion of tradition which the changing cosmological

emphasis from Heaven to Hell deity worship has entailed.

Over the lengthy processes of researching and sculpting

this book, I came to understand that my research had

traversed into unexpected territory addressing issues which

are perhaps more fundamental to the human condition than

I had initially intended. First, individuals' quests for well-

being, wealth, good fortune and belonging, and second,

the challenges of dealing with environmental destruction,

corruption, discrimination, social self-determination, self-

identity and ethnic and national identity. Concurrently, the

ethnography demonstrated the invention of a tradition which

has evolved to deal with many of life’s most emotionally

wrought uncertainties: the fear of death, disposing of corpses,

death itself, the possibility of life after death, the existence

of spiritual beings, and one ontological interpretation of the

nature and fate of the human soul.

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later when standing next to open graves dimly lit by moonlight

in a cemetery miles from the city with a Hell deity channelled

through his medium and his closest followers, I broke into a

cold sweat. The ‘medicines’ were being collected from graves

to cure a girl with leukaemia, and from the myriad of horror

movies I had watched where one soul or life was exchanged

for that of another, I momentarily considered the possibility

of myself as a well-fed human sacrifice. Unsurprisingly, my

fears were ungrounded, and amazingly, much to my and her

doctor’s mystification, the girl was cured within a month. This

was the first of many events that I witnessed for which I found

no satisfactory scientific explanation.

From 2014-16, I researched in Malaysia as a postdoctoral

fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and along with Guinness

and Cognac swilling, the Hell deities there puffed continually

on opium-laced cigarettes into the wee hours of the morning.

According to one Hell deity, opium allowed him to float

between dimensions in order to help his devotees while

the alcohol gave him the strength to do so. When out of a

trance possession state, this spirit medium was a shy and

unassuming gentleman, and in common with his Singaporean

counterparts, claimed to take all the intoxicants consumed

back to the Underworld when he left his spirit medium’s body.

Intrigued, during a return visit to Singapore, I put this to

the test one night by coaxing a Hell deity into getting me

extremely drunk just before he was due to return to the

Underworld. First, he gave me a tall can of Guinness and asked

me to taste it — it tasted bitter. He then placed an incense

stick on the can, murmured an incantation and asked me to try

it again — it tasted sweet. Thinking it must be my imagination,

when the can was finished, I asked him to demonstrate with

a second can which he did before insisting that I finish a third

can as he changed the flavour at will. This all occurred over a

fifteen-minute period and I could feel the alcohol fast entering

my bloodstream. He then ordered a helper to bring a bottle of

Cognac over to us and asked me to open it and drink some.

‘How does it taste?’ he asked, to which I replied with a smile

‘good’. He took the bottle, placed it on his throne, touched

it with his command flag and told me to taste it again. I have

never been good at mixing drinks and wasn’t keen, but

nonetheless continued. ‘How does it taste now?’ he asked, to

which I replied with a grimace ‘horrible’. He took the bottle,

placed it on his throne and touched it with his command flag

again and told me to drink more. ‘How does it taste now?’ he

asked, to which I replied with a drunken smile ‘delicious’. It was

around this time that I realised goading Hell deities into giving

me alcohol was not such a great idea, but the game continued

until I had drunk a quarter bottle of cognac and just wanted to

stagger in to a bathroom and vomit. Instead however, I said,

‘When you leave, you say that you take all of the alcohol your

spirit medium has consumed back to the Underworld so that

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Dr Céline Coderey received the Residential Colleges

Teaching Commendation Award, awarded by the Residential

College Teaching Excellence Committee, NUS. This

commendation recognises her work as a facilitator of high

quality learning in the NUS Residential Colleges for AY 2018-

2019.

Prof Kenneth Dean’s 4-volume work, Epigraphical Materials

on the History of Religion in Fujian: Zhangzhou Prefecture

(Fuzhou, Fujian Peoples’ Publishing House, 2019), co-written

with Zheng Zhenman, won the First Prize in the category of

Traditional Textual Publications for the Best 100 Publications

in the 2018 Classical Literature National. This is a collection

of over 1600 inscriptions gathered in temples, monasteries,

lineage halls, and Confucian temples in nine districts of

Southeast Fujian.

He also gave 2 keynotes speeches: ‘Digital Humanities

and the Study of Singaporean Cultural History’, Pacific

Neighbourhood Consortium Annual Conference, Nanyang

Technology University, Singapore, 16 October 2019; and ‘A

GIS for Southeast Asian Cultural History’, Conference on GIS

and Local History, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taiwan, 21

October 2019.

Dr Eric Kerr was appointed to the Scientific Committee of

the Society for Philosophy of Technology 2021 Conference,

in March 2020. He also gave a keynote speech on ‘The Other

AI: Automation, Innovation, and the Future of Work’, Social

Economic Policies Asia (SOPAS) Inception Workshop and

Programme Launch, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Capitol

Hotel, Tokyo, 11 December 2019.

Dr Natalie Lang received the Frobenius Research Award

2019 for an outstanding thesis in cultural anthropology

granted by the Frobenius Institute, Germany, for her PhD

thesis ‘Source of Pride: Hindu Religion in La Réunion’.

Dr Carola Lorea was appointed Judging Committee

Member for the International Convention of Asia Scholars

Book Prize (IBP) in February 2020. The aim of these Awards

is to create an international focus for academic works on

Asia and select the best works on Asia in the Humanities and

Social Sciences.

Dr Michelle Miller gave a keynote address on ‘Hybrid

Governance of Peatland Commons’, 2nd International

Conference on Geography and Education, State University of

Malang, Indonesia, 10 October 2019.

Dr Eve Warburton received the ANU’s J.G. Crawford Prize

2018 awarded for the best doctoral thesis in the social

sciences and humanities for her PhD thesis on political

economy of resource nationalism in Indonesia. https://

www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/2018-jg-crawford-prizes-

announced

She was also the runner up for the John Legge PhD Thesis

Prize 2019 for the best thesis in Asian Studies, awarded by

the Asian Studies Association of Australia.

Prof Brenda Yeoh gave two keynote speeches: ‘Plural

Diversities and the Limits of Hyphe-Nation: The View

from Singapore’, International Conference on Becoming

Taiwanese — Migration, Border Crossing and Diverse

Homeland, NCKU Research Center for Humanities and

Social Science and College of Liberal Arts, National Cheng

Kung University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 29-30 November 2019;

‘Migration-led Diversification and the Spatial Politics of

(Non)Integration’, International Symposium on New and

Old Migrations and Diversities in UK and Japan, Waseda

University, Tokyo, Japan, 2-6 December 2019.

She was also appointed, in December 2019, Migration

Research and Publishing High-Level Adviser, International

Organization of Migration (IOM); and Member, Board of

Trustees, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, November 2019-

October 2022.

Prof Jean Yeung gave two keynote speeches: ‘Singapore’s

Inclusive Family-oriented Population Policies and SDGs’,

Qatar Population Day Conference — Population Policies

between Reality and Hope, Doha, Qatar, 22 October

2019; ‘Pathways of Intergenerational Transmission of (Dis)

advantages: The Case of China’, Intergenerational Paths to

Self-sufficiency Conference, Melbourne Institute of Applied

Economic and Social Research, Australia, 28-29 November

2019.

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Ms Grace Chong En Ting joined as Research Assistant in the Science, Technology, and Society Cluster on 2 January 2020. She was previously Research Assistant in the Asian Urbanisms Cluster in a project which explored the natural and cultural heritage of St. John’s and Lazarus Islands, Singapore. She enjoys doing cross-disciplinary research work and has special interest in environmental issues.

Dr Doreen Allasiw Ingosan commenced her NUS Fellowship appointment in the Asian Urbanisms Cluster on 2 January 2020. She is a recipient of the inaugural NUS Fellowship Programme (Southeast Asia). Her primary research interest revolves around the sustainable governance of resources, especially focusing on the role of community-based institutions.

Dr Matthew Wade joined as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asian Urbanisms Cluster on 13 January

2020. He received his PhD from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of

California, Berkeley. At ARI he will work on the rise of new logics of planning and intervention in

Southeast Asia cities, specifically through the rise of new data platforms and the management and

design of nature in the city.

Dr Gerard McCarthy joined as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Inter-Asia Engagements Cluster on 20

January 2020. He received his PhD from the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian

National University. At ARI he will examine how multi-decade processes of economic liberalisation

in Myanmar and Sri Lanka have shaped social cleavages and intensified civil conflict in both

contexts.

Ms Clair Elizabeth Hurford joined as Institute Research Associate on 3 February 2020. Previously

she worked as a communications coordinator for Asialink Arts at the University of Melbourne.

She has lived and travelled extensively in Southeast Asia and Japan where she was the volunteer

website manager for Kyoto Journal. Her role at ARI includes highlighting the work of ARI’s

researchers through ARI’s communications channels.

Dr Yoonhee Jung joined as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Cluster

on 12 February 2020. She received her PhD in geography and urban studies from Temple

University. Her research focuses on urban politics around urban sustainability planning in Asian

megacities. At ARI, she will work in the multi-disciplinary project ‘Heat in Urban Asia: Past, Present

and Future’, and develop her dissertation into publishable journal articles.

Dr Varigonda Kesava Chandra joined as Research Associate on 17 February 2020. He received his

PhD from the NUS South Asian Studies Programme. His primary research interests include state-

society relations, South Asian studies, geopolitics, and energy studies. At ARI, he will be working

with Prof Kishore Mahbubani on a range of projects related to global geopolitics and the prospect

for peace in Asia.

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THE GRANT JOURNEY – INTERVIEW WITH EVE WARBURTON

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DR FONG SIAO YUONG

Prof Ted Hopf and Dr Eve Warburton of the Identities Cluster recently secured a Tier 2 Grant for SGD 926,220 from the Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Council for their project ‘Ideology, Identity and Representation: Comparing Political Elites and Masses in Southeast Asia’. While the project has now culminated in this Tier 2 grant, its life began long before Eve initiated the grant process or joined ARI as a postdoctoral fellow. I asked Eve to share more about her grant journey.

First of all, what is the project about?

The project is all about political representation. Most

of the existing political science research suggests

representation in Southeast Asia is limited — our region

is home to few full, liberal democracies, and even in

countries that do hold competitive elections, like Indonesia

and the Philippines, political parties are weak, clientelism

underpins voter-politician linkages, and socio-economic

inequalities constrain popular participation. All of this makes

representation much more difficult.

But there’s a lot we still don’t know about political

representation in Southeast Asia. A rich comparative

literature on Europe, North America and Latin America uses

surveys to compare the policy positions and attitudes of

elected elites and the people they represent. In this body of

work, the more congruent those preferences and attitudes

are, the better the quality of representation.

No one has done this sort of work in our region — until

now. Our project is driven by questions like: Do elected

officials’ social and political preferences reflect those of their

constituents? Are voters in Southeast Asia choosing candidates

whose socio-cultural identities, ideological orientations, or

material interests cohere with theirs? Is there a dominant

cleavage along which Southeast Asian politics is structured?

With the Tier 2 grant, we’re going to answer these questions

by running surveys of politicians and voters in several

Southeast Asian countries. Our objective is to measure mass-

elite congruence across several key issue-areas: ideology

and identity; policy and issue salience; and conceptions

and understandings of political representation. In doing so,

not only are we going to produce a rich new dataset on the

region’s elite (which will eventually be made public), we are

also going to bring Asian case studies into conversation with

the international literature on representation, and contribute

new empirical and theoretical insights.

How did the project first get conceptualised?

The process has been very collaborative. The idea first came

about while I was working on an Indonesia-focused project

led by Prof Edward Aspinall at the Australian National

University. Back in 2018, together with Edward, Dr Deigo

Fossati (City University of Hong Kong) and Dr Burhanuddin

Muhtadi (State Islamic University-Jakarta), we conducted a

survey of provincial-level politicians in Indonesia, and used

that data to study mass-elite linkages and congruence across

a range of issue-areas.

We wanted to expand the project, both empirically and

conceptually. I explained the idea to Prof Ted Hopf, and

given the synergies with his own work on elite and mass

national identity in Asia, he suggested we apply for an

HSS Seed Grant, and use that money to build a team of

collaborators who could help develop and conceptualise a

bigger study on representation in Southeast Asia.

So that’s what I did! We won the HSS Seed Grant, and I

brought an amazing group of scholars from around the

region to ARI in January 2019, and we held a workshop to

plan the Tier 2 Grant.

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While I initiated the Tier 2 grant proposal, the process has

been very collaborative from the start. This grant brings

together a big team of Southeast Asia scholars with a range

of country expertise and diverse methodological skills, and

they all contributed in important ways to the grant proposal.

Aside from Ted and myself, the grant includes

• Colm Fox (Singapore Management University and Co-PI

on the project)

• Diego Fossati (City University of Hong Kong)

• Edward Aspinall (Australian National University)

• Meredith Weiss (University of Albany, NY)

• Nicole Curato (Centre for Deliberative Democracy and

Global Governance)

• Burhanuddin Muhtadi (Indikator Politik Indonesia; the

Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI); and the State Islamic

University in Jakarta)

• Ibrahim Suffian (Merdeka Center for Opinion Research)

• Chan-Hoong Leong (Singapore University of Social

Sciences)

• Ronnie Holmes (Pulse Asia Research; De La Salle

University)

We all know that there are certain challenges to applying for big grants, especially as a postdoctoral fellow at ARI. Could you share with us some of the challenges you faced and how you overcame them?

The grant environment in Singapore — based on my limited

time here — is great in the sense that there are LOTS of

opportunities to fund research projects. But information

on grants is pretty fragmented, and even getting details

on submission deadlines can be tough. My advice would

be to closely watch grant calls, familiarise yourself with

timelines and deadlines, and definitely go to all of the

information sessions where you can ask direct questions to

knowledgeable NUS staff that will help cut through what

can often feel like a bureaucratic maze. It’s also a good

idea to ask to see other scholars’ successful proposals.

Basically, do what you can to make sure you have plenty of

time to develop your proposal and, hopefully, get a team of

collaborators together.

What advice would you give to other postdoctoral fellows on a transitory contract with ARI to get started on this grant application journey?

Think big, think comparative, and build a team.

Ultimately we need to have a good idea that is going to

make a solid contribution to whatever field we’re working

in. That’s what matters most with any grant. But it’s also

important, I think, to involve good people we enjoy working

with, and who are excited about the project. Given we are

only here for a year or two years, we need to build a team

of collaborators pretty quickly — but don’t forget, that team

can come from all over the world, not just NUS. Networks

that I built during my PhD and especially through my

supervisor, Ed Aspinall, were crucial for this Tier 2 grant.

On a more practical level, other scholars, including the PI

here at NUS, will be more likely to get involved in a grant

led by a postdoctoral fellow if we make it clear from the

beginning that we’re passionate about the project and will

take the lead. I’ve done that from the start.

Photo credit: Minna Valjakka

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DIGITALLY ARCHIVING THE SONGS OF OLD MADMENDR BENNY TONG

Dr Carola Lorea is currently working on a digital archiving project titled ‘Songs of the Old Madmen: Recovering Baul Songs from the Note-Books of 19th and 20th Century Bengali Saint-Composers’ (British Library Endangered Archives Programme EAP1247). She recently returned from a workshop in India organised as part of the project in December 2019, and I sat down to chat about her experience and the project.

I was very intrigued by the title of the project. Could you introduce us to what these ‘songs of the old madmen’ are?

The term ‘madmen’ is quite literal here. We’re talking

about gurus, or murshids in Islamic contexts, who are

enlightened and self-realised, which are the pre-conditions

for them to compose and perform esoteric songs. They are

given the honorific title in Bengali of ‘Pagal’, or ‘Khyepa’

which literally means ‘madmen’. This title is reflected in the

etymology of ‘Baul’, which since the 17th century has been

used to address someone who is ‘ecstatically mad in divine

love’. So, they’re not your ordinary madmen, but there is a

specifically religious, esoteric aspect to it. Their songs are

a way of disseminating their knowledge, about cosmology,

ethics, the body and so on.

How did you come to start this project on building a digital archive for these songs?

The project’s origins are from about 12 years ago, as I was/

am a singer/practitioner of Baul songs. I decided to do a

PhD on this tradition, focusing on one particular lineage

of songs from the influential composer Bhaba Pagla. The

other collection of Baul songs that we are digitising comes

from a quite serendipitous meeting in Delhi with my main

collaborator Siddharth Gomez, and his impressive website

called The Baul Archive. In his work, Siddharth got to know

the family of Nabani Das Khyepa Baul, whose repertoire

became the other focus of the digital archiving project.

Siddharth told me about these trunks of notes and song

manuscripts in severely endangered conditions: bitten by

termites, missing pages, and being generally exposed to

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the heat and humidity of the Bengali climate without any

knowledgeable care taken to preserve them. So Siddharth

and I sought to connect the two repertoires that we each had

direct access to, and preserve them in digital format before

they get irreversibly damaged.

Are other partners involved in the project?

Yes. The funding for the project comes from the Endangered

Archives Programme (EAP1247) of the British Library. Our

formal archival partners in India are the team from the School

of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University in

Kolkata, which I have a long-standing partnership with. They

are pioneers of the field of digital humanities in India, and

the absolute best place to do such work there.

Could you tell us more about the activities involved in the digital archiving project?

I just returned from a training workshop we organised at

Jadavpur in November 2019. The aim was to allow my

archival team, and also local faculty and students, to get

a clear understanding of the international standards of

excellence for digital archiving. In our theoretical and

conceptual sessions in the mornings, we discussed the most

updated procedures and processes we needed to follow,

and debated the epistemological and ethical problems

associated with digital archiving. In the hands-on sessions

in the afternoons and evenings, we learnt how to preserve

old paper, and digitise old photos and manuscripts using

different techniques and standards. We also had a session on

how to digitise sound archives although it was not part of this

EAP project, because we wanted to have the full spectrum

of digital archives, and to allow ourselves to move in that

direction possibly in the future.

What was the most interesting or enlightening episode that you experienced throughout the workshop, or the wider project?

What I really liked from the workshop was learning from

other people’s experiences. Digital archiving sounds very

cool, but it is actually very tedious work that involves lots

of mundane issues. We do on-site remote capturing at the

Baul families’ houses, because the manuscripts could not

be transported due to their fragile condition and symbolic

importance for the families and the devotees. Project

members talked about not having the right set-up for their

cameras, and having to use t-shirts or random clothes

creatively to achieve the right lighting environment. Or

encountering big holes in notebooks that affected the view

of the pages in front, and having to cover them up with

acid-free paper that did not harm the frail items. These are

problems that inevitably pop up during the on-site work, so

it was good to learn about them at the workshop to save us

from encountering the same issues later.

Another thing I really appreciated from the workshop was

the great amount of collaboration and inter-dependency

between the partners. This was a departure from my previous

academic life, which I always found a bit monastic and

individualistic.

Moving forward, what are the future plans for the project?

The hot season is coming soon in April, and it will be very

difficult to do remote-capturing once it starts. We are

aiming to finish all the digitisation before then. The next

phase will be cataloguing, listing and creating metadata,

which is a massive operation as we have to provide detailed

information for everything at the collection, folder, file and

item levels. For this phase, I have research assistants at

Jadavpur who are very experienced in such cataloguing

work. After this is done, we can move on to the more

enjoyable part of thinking about dissemination. For singers

and practitioners, we want to show how they can use this

material once it’s open-access and online. For researchers

and scholars, we want to show the great new primary sources

that they can now access digitally, which has not been

possible thus far.

We wish Carola and her collaborators every success in their

project!

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DR SHIORI SHAKUTO

SEMI-VIRTUAL WORKSHOP IN THE TIME OF COVID-19: GENDER, MIGRATION AND DIGITAL NETWORKS IN ASIA

At this time, it was our workshop’s thematic focus on

migrant digital networks that gave us inspiration. We

felt that in such times of uncertainty, those of us who are

researchers interested in how ‘digital networks’ sustain migrant

populations could put the idea of virtual connectivity to the

test. Thus, we proceeded to hold a ‘semi-virtual’ workshop.

Nine out of 15 participants presented their papers via Skype.

A few stayed online beyond their panels to attend the rest of

the workshop virtually. Turning off their videos to reduce the

bandwidth, they had to resort to typing out their questions

and contributing comments on screen. Still, the result

was a vibrant, and most strikingly, inclusive virtual form of

conferencing. As one of the virtual participants commented,

On 20-21 February 2020, the Asian Migration Cluster held a workshop Gender, Migration and Digital Networks in Asia under extraordinary circumstances triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak. In the two weeks leading up to the workshop, Singapore’s Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) had been raised to orange, and various mechanisms were put in place including temperature screening and travel restrictions for travellers from affected areas. Our international participants from nine countries were increasingly concerned and several were intending to pull out.

‘The technology held up really well, and I almost felt like I

was there.’ The presence of a virtual audience gave all of us

a comforting feeling of solidarity and connection even as the

spectre of a global epidemic loomed large.

The experience of the semi-virtual workshop also allows us

to reflect on the relationship between researchers’ mobility

and the ways in which knowledge is produced. The quality of

discussion was excellent despite the majority of presenters

participating online, thereby minimising our carbon footprint.

Yet, it also became apparent that knowledge produced

outside formal workshop settings — such as during breaks

and mealtimes — was difficult to replicate virtually. The

semi-virtual workshop not only offered us an opportunity to

Group photo with physical and virtual participants

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SThe Cluster co-organised the workshop Water and the

City, 6 – 7 February 2020, with the Institute of Water Policy’s Leong Chin and Corinne Ong. The workshop focused on people’s relationship with water in the city, including the institutions of governance, public narratives and the policy and social implications of dependence on large, centralised hydraulic infrastructures. We used a governance lens to interrogate the permutations which water infrastructure can take, and the way in which people interact with this artificial yet vital part of the hydrological landscape. The workshop was anchored by Peter Gleick who delivered the keynote address, Sara Ahmed and Henning Bjornlund. The organisers are working on the selection of papers for a special journal issue.

Yun Hae Young, Ho Kong Chong and Kim Jeehun (Inha University, South Korea, former ARI Visiting Senior Research

ASIAN URBANISMSASSOC PROF HO KONG CHONGDR YUN HAE YOUNG

Hae Young (left) pictured with ‘red hat’, a term of endearment given to a friendly and helpful fruit seller at My Dinh (Hanoi) and Sandra, our Vietnamese research assistant.

Virtual presenters. Note the two virtual participants in round icons at the top of the screen.

reflect on the efficacy of technologies in times of uncertainty,

but also to rethink more equitable and sustainable platforms

of knowledge production in a hi-tech, digitally connected

world. It also became obvious that the success of the semi-

virtual workshop relied heavily on the human effort and

creativity of people on the ground — the ARI events team —

who played an integral part in the success of the workshop

during this challenging time.

Fellow) conducted research on Korean investments and Korean expatriate’s lifestyle and neighbourhood experiences in Hanoi. Data was collected during August and October 2019. They will share their research findings in an ARI-SEANETT workshop, Building City Knowledge from Neighborhoods, and in publications.

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An under-investigated aspect is how migration affects

different types of migrants’ marriages, one of the major

markers of transitioning into adulthood that has profound

implications for one’s emotional well-being, lifestyles, as well

as their socioeconomic prospects. The Changing Family in

Asia Cluster convened an international conference, Migration

and Marriage in Asia, in July 2016 to address this research

gap. Selected papers presented in that conference were

recently published in a special issue titled Migration and

Marriage in Asian Contexts (guest eds., Wei-Jun Jean Yeung

and Zheng Mu) in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

These studies use high-quality data and rigorous

methodologies to advance our knowledge about the

motivations, patterns, and consequences of timing and partners

of marriage and related policies that affect migrants’ family

formation behaviour in Asia. The special issue contributes to the

field of migration and marriage in the following ways:

Contextualising the migration and marriage experience in Asia

The papers have moved beyond the ‘marriage-scapes’

perspective and the classic assimilation theory to enrich

understanding by showing migrants’ complex strategising

processes between difficulties and opportunities in specific

social, legal, and cultural contexts in Asia. This focus on the

heterogeneities in Asian marriage migrants’ assimilation

trajectories challenge the classic assimilation theory which

assumes a unilinear integration trajectory in all relevant aspects.

For example, Tuen Yi Chiu and Susanne Choi show that

female marriage migrants from mainland China to Hong

Kong have decoupled legal and spatial migration into

various combinations to strike a balance between their

marriage lives, social adaptation, and career development.

Hsin-Chieh Chang studies the Vietnamese foreign spouses

in Taiwan and Korea and finds that they have adjusted

their social and cultural integration process based on the

perceived differences of gender systems in the sending and

the receiving societies. Esha Chatterjee and Sonalde Desai

show how India’s internal female marriage migrants pursue

autonomy in the public sphere by constructing their sense

of community based on both the geographical communities

and the mindset of the communities where their natal

families belong. Sharon Quah demonstrates that divorced

low-income foreign spouses in Singapore use diverse

strategies to cope with challenges both during and after

divorce.

Diversifying the academic discourses in migration and marriage

Papers in this collection examine how different types of

migration, other than marriage migration, influence the

family formation process, from entry into marriage, marriage

partners, to marital dissolution and remarriage.

Specifically, Zhenchao Qian and Yue Qian investigate

how different generations of Asian immigrants in the

United States marry across generations of immigrants and

The migration experience greatly shapes migrants’ economic and social lives since migration often occurs around the life stage of ‘emerging adulthood’ and could last for an extended period of time. Marriage migrants comprise an increasing share of the population in Asia and the trajectories of such migration have become more diverse as the duration has become longer, potentially spanning multiple life stages. Apart from marriage migration, other types of migration in Asia have also become more heterogeneous in terms of migrants’ socio-demographic profiles and their motivations. Although some labour migrants return home, an increasing number of them choose to stay longer in the receiving community to seek new lives beyond economic improvement, including finding a spouse, starting a family, and settling permanently.

PROF JEAN YEUNG

MIGRATION AND MARRIAGE IN ASIAN CONTEXTS

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Ranking vision over other senses in Western cultures, at

the expense of the auditory and other sensory realms,

has produced a kind of ‘disciplinary deafness’ in the study of

religions. This conference proposed ‘a sonic turn’ to bring

SOUNDS, BODIES AND POWER: POLITICS AND POETICS OF RELIGIOUS SOUNDSDR CAROLA LOREA

forth understudied connections between bodies, sounds and

media in the private and public life of religions in Asia.

The provocative discussions that arose during the conference

challenged mainstream modalities of knowledge production

based on text. The auditory field of chanting, preaching,

mourning, dancing, and singing, emerged as a site for broader

social negotiations, sectarian contestations and trans-territorial

identity formations, ultimately unsettling and multiplying the

discussion on religion, the senses and the media.

The Religion and Globalisation Cluster held this two-day conference on 27-28 February 2020, featuring 21interdisciplinary speakers from variouscorners of the globe, includingdistinguished scholars such as Profs GuyBeck, Rosalind Hackett and ThomasCsordas, who have initiated pioneeringwork in the field of sonic theology,embodiment, and the sensory study ofreligions.

across racial groups. Ariane Utomo discusses how internal

migration has added to the complexities in the patterns of

ethnic intermarriages in Jakarta. Zheng Mu and Jean Yeung

demonstrate how migration, interacting with gender and

socioeconomic status, influences individuals’ marriage timing

and who they marry.

This collection also expands on the existing literature by

examining the various phases of family formation, including

marital dissolution by Yool Choi et al. and Sharon Quah, and

remarriage by Mengni Chen and Paul Yip.

Widening methodological repertoires in the field of marriage and migration

The multiple research methods used in papers in this issue

go beyond the predominantly qualitative methods used in

existing studies to include quantitative and mixed-methods

approaches. As such, this collection provides readers with

both a systematic overview of the patterns and determinants

of migrants’ well-being and marital outcomes and an in-

depth understanding of the underlying decision-making

mechanisms.

For example, Chun-Hao Li and Wen-Shan Yang provide

statistical analysis of female marriage migrants’ life

satisfaction and its potential determinants in Taiwan

controlling for other confounding factors to provide more

accurate estimates of how the foreign brides’ experiences

have affected individuals’ subjective well-being and what

the most significant determinants of marriage migrants’

integration process in the receiving societies are. Choi et

al. and Chen and Yip, rely respectively on representative

and longitudinal marriage and divorce registration data in

Korea and Hong Kong, to disentangle the prevalence and

mechanisms through which marriage migrants are subject

to marital instabilities. Mu and Yeung use both national

survey data and in-depth interviews to provide a more

comprehensive view of Chinese migrants’ marriage timing

and partners.

Jointly, the papers show that Asian marriage migrants’

experiences of integration and assimilation are

complex, nuanced, and heterogeneous across migrants’

sociodemographic backgrounds, ethnic profiles, and political

contexts. For details of each paper, visit: https://www.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1585005.

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PILLARS OF THE FIELD

This issue of the ARI Newsletter was compiled by Eric Kerr, Saharah Abubakar, Céline Coderey,

Fong Siao Yuong, Fabian Graham, Nisha Mathew, Chand Somaiah, Benny Tong, and Sharon Ong.

Asia Research InstituteKent Ridge Campus, AS8 #07-01, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260https://ari.nus.edu.sg/

ASSOC PROF MAITRII AUNG-THWINASSOC PROF TITIMA SUTHIWAN

On 11 February 2020, the Mainland

Southeast Asia Study Group

launched the inaugural Pillars of

the Field talk series to a full house.

Colleagues, students, and members

of the public queued to hear Prof

Emeritus Thongchai Winichakul,

eminent scholar of Thai and Southeast

Asian history, speak about intellectual

life in Thailand and the US.

Designed to explore the lives, careers,

and epistemological contexts of key

scholars in Southeast Asian Studies,

Pillars of the Field highlights the

contributions in research, teaching,

and service these colleagues have

left upon the field and for the public,

drawing attention to the contexts

and settings in which they worked.

The talk series seeks to uncover the

‘stories’ behind the scholar, their

research, and their ideas, delving into

the narratives and experiences that

are often not apparent in footnotes or

bibliographies.

A former visiting professor at ARI and

NUS, Prof Winichakul spoke on his

formative years as a student activist

in the 1970s and the impact that that

experience had upon his development

as a scholar of Southeast Asian history

and a public intellectual. He related

that as a result of his commitment to

public engagement in Thailand via

media interviews and Thai-language

publications (seven books), he is

better known as a public intellectual

in Thailand. In the US, however,

his English-language scholarship

overshadowed his activist concerns.

His experience serves as an apt

reminder of the multiple audiences

and communities within which

scholars of the region live and work.

A recording of his talk is available

here: https://www.youtube.com/

playlist?list=PL9AE861F55A74B403

It was also a timely occasion for him

to return to ARI, for his visit coincided

with the news that his much-anticipated

book, Moments of Silence: The

Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976

Massacre in Bangkok (University of

Hawai’i Press, 2020) would soon be

released. During his two-week visit,

Prof Winichakul also delivered a

presentation about his new book to

an intimate gathering of students,

postdoctoral fellows, and colleagues

at Yale-NUS College, organised by

ARI associate Dr Anthony D. Medrano.

In his presentation, Prof Winichakul

gave a personal account of the events

surrounding the massacre of students

at Thammasat University in 1976, its

aftermath, and the process he went

through to come to terms with that past,

both as a scholar and as a participant.