On this page, we have gathered a number of Nordic Institutions and their recordings of webinars on Asia-related topics. To learn more about a specific webinar, please click on the link directing you to the youtube channel of the host institution. So far, the institutions include Asian Dynamics Initiative,  Fudan-European Centre for China Studies, the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and Swedish South Asian Studies Network.

NIAS’ Webinars

NIAS Nordic Institute of Asian Studies

NIAS Nordic Institute of Asian Studies
This is the recording of the online book launch "South Asian Sovereignty: The Conundrum of Wordly Power", arranged by NIAS and Asianettverket and recorded September 3, 2020. The book is edited by David Gilmartin, Pamela Price, Arild Engelsen Ruud and published by Routledge India. Participating in the book launch are: Editor David Gilmartin, North Carolina State University, Comments by Duncan McCargo, NIAS and Alp Eren Topal, University of Oslo Q&A session chaired by Editor Pamela Price, University of Oslo South Asia’s history and especially India’s twentieth-century emergence as the world’s largest democracy have made the subcontinent a critical arena for thinking about how transformations and continuities in conceptions of sovereignty provide a vital frame for tracking shifts in political order. This edited volume deals with themes such as sovereignty, kingship, ideas of popular sovereignty, democracy, rule of law, courts, and political authority in the context of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. From the publisher’s website: This book brings ethnographies of everyday power and ritual into dialogue with intellectual studies of theology and political theory. It underscores the importance of academic collaboration between scholars of religion, anthropology, and history in uncovering the structures of thinking and action that make politics work. The volume weaves important discussions around sovereignty in modern South Asian history with debates elsewhere on the world map.
Book Launch of 'South Asian Sovereignty: The Conundrum of Wordly Power'
YouTube Video UC_1AvS6mLEk2speP0oieECA_b8aiDgn_np4
This is the recording of the online book launch "Fighting for Virtue: Justice and Politics in Thailand", written by NIAS Director and NYSEAN Co-founder Duncan McCargo and recently published by Cornell University Press. In this online book launch, the author engaged in a conversation with two US-based scholars – Tyrell Haberkorn of the University of Wisconsin Madison, and Frank Munger of New York Law School – both of whom have done extensive research on the Thai justice system. At the end of the event, a few questions from the audience were discussed too. "Fighting for Virtue" investigates how Thailand’s judges were tasked by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) in 2006 with helping to solve the country’s intractable political problems—and what happened next. Across the last decade of Rama IX’s rule, Duncan McCargo examines the world of Thai judges: how they were recruited, trained, and promoted, and how they were socialized into a conservative world-view that emphasized the proximity between the judiciary and the monarchy. Drawing on a year of ethnographic fieldwork, McCargo delves into three pivotal freedom of expression cases that illuminate Thai legal and cultural understandings of sedition and treason, before examining the ways in which accusations of disloyalty made against controversial former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra came to occupy a central place in the political life of a deeply polarized nation. The author navigates the highly contentious role of the Constitutional Court as a key player in overseeing and regulating Thailand’s political order before concluding with reflections on the significance of the Bhumibol era of “judicialization” in Thailand. Ultimately, he argues, states and societies need to put greater trust in politicians, rather than creating ever more elaborate mechanisms that allow courts and judges to regulate politics. You can find more about the book here: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801449994/fighting-for-virtue/ Stay up to date for future NIAS events: http://nias.asia/events And listen to our newly launched 'The Nordic Asia Podcast' in Spotify, or any other podcast platform: https://open.spotify.com/show/3fYldQJBJ5ejGEYqpX63Fe
Book Launch of 'Fighting for Virtue' with Duncan McCargo, Tyrell Haberkorn and Frank Munger
YouTube Video UC_1AvS6mLEk2speP0oieECA_I_Unig9u0e0
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Held on April 23, 2020

Co-hosted with NYSEAN – New York Southeast Asia Network
Recording of the online book launch “Fighting for Virtue: Justice and Politics in Thailand”, written by NIAS Director and NYSEAN Co-founder Duncan McCargo and recently published by Cornell University Press.

In this online book launch, the author engaged in a conversation with two US-based scholars – Tyrell Haberkorn of the University of Wisconsin Madison, and Frank Munger of New York Law School – both of whom have done extensive research on the Thai justice system. At the end of the event, a few questions from the audience were discussed too.

You can find more on the book here and more on NIAS’ upcoming events here.

Held on September 3, 2020

Co-hosted with Asianettverket.
Recording of the online book launch “South Asian Sovereignty: The Conundrum of Wordly Power”, edited by David Gilmartin, Pamela Price and Arild Engelsen Ruud and published by Routledge India.

Participating in this online book launch are: editor David Gilmartin, North Caroline State University, comments by Duncan McCargo, NIAS, and Alp Eren Topal, University of Oslo. The Q&A session was chaired by editor Pamela Price, University of Oslo.

You can find more on the book here and more on NIAS’ upcoming events here.

Held on August 27, 2020

Virtual Book Talk and of Brand New Nation – Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India (Stanford University Press, 2020), by Ravinder Kaur, Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Speakers participating in the discussion are: Satish Deshpande (Delhi), Thomas Blom Hansen (Stanford), Ravinder Kaur (Copenhagen), Saloni Mathur (UCLA), William Mazzarella (Chicago), Sumathi Ramaswamy (Duke) and Srirupa Roy (Göttingen).

Grounded in the history of modern India, Brand New Nation reveals the close kinship among identity economy and identity politics, publicity and populism, and violence and economic growth rapidly rearranging the liberal political order the world over.  Read more about the book here.

Held on May 6, 2020

Virtual Book Talk on Disenfranchised: The Rise and Fall of Industrial Citizenship in China by Joel Andreas, Professor at the Department of Sociology, John Hopkins University.

In the decades following World War II, factories in many countries not only provided secure employment and a range of economic entitlements, but also recognized workers as legitimate stakeholders, enabling them to claim rights to participate in decision making and hold factory leaders accountable. Drawing on a decade of field research, including interviews with both factory workers and managers, Joel Andreas traces the changing political status of workers inside Chinese factories from 1949 to the present, carefully analyzing how much power they have actually had to shape their working conditions. Read more about the book here.

Held on May 29, 2020

Webinar entitled Combating COVID-19: The Chinese and the Danish Perspectives. The global outbreak of COVID-19 has been shocking in every sense of the word. An enormous challenge to global health, its consequences on economy and political order, at both the national and international level, have been deeply felt and will continue to evolve in the years to come. Strategic responses to health crisis vary significantly among countries.

Why and how have the approaches of response been introduced the way they have? This dialogue aims to put these issues in perspectives by comparing the Chinese and Danish experiences. It seeks to promote an informed debate and nuanced understanding about the variety of strategic choices in the struggling for survival and solidarity.

Held on May 27, 2020

Virtual book talk on the book Just Hierarchy – Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World by Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei, moderated by Chunrong Liu and commentated by Wang Zhengxu.

All complex and large-scale societies are organized along certain hierarchies, but the concept of hierarchy has become almost taboo in the modern world. Drawing their arguments from Chinese thought and culture, Bell and Wang ask which forms of hierarchy are justified and how these can serve morally desirable goals. They look at ways of promoting just forms of hierarchy while minimizing the influence of unjust ones. Just Hierarchy examines how hierarchical social relations can have a useful purpose, not only in personal domains but also in larger political realms.

Held on October 7, 2020

Panel discussion on class, caste and religion in South Asia, cohosted with UF Malmö and inviting these panelists:

  • Dr. Isha Dubey – graduated with a PhD in History from Aarhus University. During her time as a post-doctoral researcher at SASNET, Isha has been working on her project “Memory, Memorialization and the Politics of Forgetting: ‘Difficult Heritage’ and the construction and contestation of ‘national memory’ in India and Bangladesh”.
  • Ashaq Hussain Parray – hails from Kashmir and is currently a junior research fellow in the department of English Aligarh Muslim University India. His area of research is the intersection of postcolonial and translation studies.
  • Dr. Amrita Ghosh – has a postdoc from Linnaeus University Sweden, where she worked on two books on Kashmir and Tagore-Yeats, which are currently under contract. Presently, Ghosh is a visiting researcher at SASNET, Lund University and a visiting lecturer at the Department of Humanities, Linnaeus University.