The School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London

Teaching

 

Students supervised

• Nattaka Chaisinthop
• Pei-chien Wu

Programmes Convened

• BA Social Anthropology
• BA Social Anthropology and ...

Courses Taught

• Comparative Study of Islam: Anthropological Perspectives B
• Comparative Study of Islam: Anthropological Perspectives B (Masters)
• Culture and Society of South East Asia
• Ethnography of a Selected Region - South East Asia
• Principles of Social Investigation
• Theory in Anthropology

Research

For my doctoral research, I conducted fieldwork in East Java, Indonesia where I worked with Madurese and Javanese migrants and their descendants on issues of ethnicity, personhood and sociality. My research focuses on a process of ethnogenesis and is primarily concerned with the oral history of a series of demographic movements and an array of cultural practices that have made possible for the emergence of a new, hybrid category of persons. My interest is on the everyday construction of homogeneity out of diversity and I have sought to explain this process through paying due attention to discourses and practices that posit the body as the locus of difference while highlighting its fluidity and transformability. Currently, I am working towards completing a monograph on these issues. I have also been working on issues of spectral violence in relation to the politics of the post-Soeharto era and its entanglements with figures of authority both in the local and the national context. I am also interested in issues of methodology and epistemology in the discipline, arguing for the centrality of the fieldworker’s bodily experience in the construction of anthropological knowledge. My next research project involves an investigation of recent shifts in the political culture of Indonesia in its post-1998 era. Its primary objective is to better understand issues of rights and democracy through an examination of the politics of factory labour relations, trade unions and the state in the context of globalisation. I currently teach ‘Ethnography of a Selected Region: South East Asia’ and ‘The Culture and Society of South East Asia’, for BA and MA students respectively. I am also involved in teaching ‘Theory in Anthropology’ at the BA level. The course focuses on significant shifts in the discipline with the demise of grand theory, looking specifically at the ways that key theorists have conceptualised the social. ‘Principles of Social Investigation’, a BA options course, aims at equipping students with the basics of carrying out research. For the spring and summer terms of 2006-2007, I will act as the department’s Undergraduate Tutor. Additionally, I serve on the editorial board of the journal Indonesia and the Malay World.

Expertise

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Available for

Regional Expertise

• South East Asia

Country Expertise

• Indonesia

Languages

Publications