23. Dec 2022 / 25 min

Fragrant Frontier: Global Spice Entanglements from the Sino-Vietnamese Uplands

A conversation with Annuska Derks, Jean-François Rousseau and Sarah Turner. Hosted by Julia Heinle.

Where do the spices we find in our kitchen cabinets come from? What can we learn from tracing spices and their commodities and how does their trade impact the livelihoods of ethnic minority farmers in the Sino-Vietnamese uplands?

Annuska Derks and Jean-Francois Rousseau, co- editors with Sarah Turner of the book Fragrant Frontier Global Spice Entanglements in the Sino Vietnamese Uplandsjoined Julia Heinle discussing their recently published NIAS Press edited volume.

Fragrant Frontier demystifies the contemporary spice trade originating from the Sino-Vietnamese uplands and is available as an Open Access Book on the NIAS Press Website here.

Purchase a hardcopy of the book here.

& check out the visual story maps here.

Annuska Derks is an associate professor and departmental co-director at the University of Zurich. She is a social anthropologist interested in social transformation processes in Southeast Asia, in particular in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. Her research focuses on migration, labor, gender, as well as the social lives of things, and interrogates discourses of development and innovation.

Jean-François Rousseau is an associate professor at the University of Ottawa. He is a development geographer with research focusing on the relationships between agrarian change, infrastructure development – especially hydropower dams and sand-mining – and ethnic minority livelihood diversification in Southwest China.

Sarah Turner is Professor of Geography at McGill University. She is a development geographer specializing in ethnic minority livelihoods, agrarian change, and everyday resistance in upland northern Vietnam and southwest China. She also works with street vendors and other members of the mobile informal economy, as well as small-scale entrepreneurs in urban Southeast Asia. Widely published, she is also an editor of the journals Geoforum and Journal of Vietnamese Studies.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, the University of Helsinki and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk

Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast

podcast icon

Other Nordic Asia Podcasts

All podcasts
21. Oct 2022 / 21 min

Reflections on Chinese Sexuality

A conversation with Weiyi Hu. Hosted by Joanne Kuai.

How is sexuality experienced in contemporary China? What are the connections and tensions between China and the West in producing knowledges of sexuality? Dr Weiyi Hu notes that most of the seminal writings on sexuality are produced in the West, and that the definition of sexuality is largely theorised by Western scholars. In a conversation […]

Go listen
7. Oct 2022 / 28 min

U.S. Determinization of Genocide in Myanmar: Part One, Roots

A discussion with Kyaw Zeyar Win. Hosted by Terese Gagnon.

In March of 2022 the U.S. government announced its determination that genocide was committed by the Myanmar military against Rohingya communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in 2017. What will this mean for the roughly one million Rohingya refugees living in neighboring countries, for Rohingya IDPs in Rakhine State, and for post-coup Myanmar? In this episode […]

Go listen