Recently added articles from NIAS Nytt:
Changes at NIAS
Dec 01, 2008; ... NIAS turned 40 years on 16 September this year. We decided to celebrate the event through three initiatives: * A special issue of NIAS Nytt (no. 2/2008): Asia in the Nordic Mirror' * A joint international conference with Copenhagen University on 16 September: 'Asia in the 21st ...
Between and beyond mosques and malls in Malaysia
Dec 01, 2008; ... Exploring consumption practices in urban Malaysia, Proper Islamic Consumption (NIAS Press, 2008) shows how diverse forms of Malay middle-class consumption (of food, clothing and cars, for example) are understood, practised and contested as a particular mode of modern Islamic practice. The book ...
A cosmopolitan periphery
Dec 01, 2008; ... In this extract from the preface to his study of the Cham Muslims of the Mekong delta, Philip Taylor describes how the Cham protect their cultural distinctiveness at home by being markedly cosmopolitan outside. I first visited the Cham Muslim settlements in Vietnam's Mekong delta during ...
Putrajaya as Islamic assertion
Dec 01, 2008; ... Arguably Southeast Asia's most spectacular and architecturally distinguished city, Kuala Lumpur (KL to its denizens) in 2007 celebrated the 150th anniversary of its foundation and its 50th as capital of an independent Malay(si)a. The celebrations were fragmented, however, as KL now has a very ...
Islam in local contexts
Dec 01, 2008; ... Localised Islam in Northern Pakistan As Clifford Geertz remarked in his Islam Observed (1968), the idea of a 'changing' religion is a contradiction in terms, as religion is fundamentally concerned with what is permanent and eternal. Still, one way to come to terms with religious change ...
Women and Islam in urban Malaysia
Dec 01, 2008; ... Throughout Malaysia, religious educative activities have flourished and grown in popularity since the 1980s, developing out of the broad current of Islamization of Malaysian society. Women's roles in the Islamization movement have generally been described in terms of followers and supporters of ...
Towards a better understanding
Dec 01, 2008; ... In the West, Islam is often presented in a very simplified manner (much as the West is interpreted in simplified terms in many parts of the Islamic world). This is no surprise but in fact is typical in situations where there is tension between two parties. However, in this case, for the ...
Muslims in Singapore
Dec 01, 2008; ... A secular state recruiting Islam to its nation-building project Since the foundation of Singapore as an independent state in 1965, the People's Action Party government has not trusted the 15 per cent of its population who are Muslims. Until the mid-1980s they were routinely excluded from ...
In the field
Sep 01, 2008; ... While NIAS was being conceived 40 years ago, field based studies in rural South Asia had already matured into a recognised and accepted social science sub-discipline. This field-based approach to the study of South Asia had already been emerging from the time when the countries of the ...
The unsuccessful broker: A tale from fieldwork in a West Bengal village
Sep 01, 2008; ... In 2007, I travelled to West Bengal to work in villages where farmers had recently had their land expropriated by the government. In response several outraged farmers had organised a movement to 'Save the Farmland' and to have the expropriation reversed. Among other things I was ...
Sweden in Asia - challenges and opportunities for higher education and research
Sep 01, 2008; ... I have been visiting China and Chinese universities since the beginning of the 1990s, and have watched its exceptionally rapid transformation and development from close quarters. Today, seven Chinese companies are among the twenty-five largest in the world. And many more close behind them, both ...
NIAS in the feminist imagination: Situating an 'unconventional' scholarly life
Sep 01, 2008; ... Celebrations of the living and of the dead, the anniversary of a research institution, NIAS, and the commemoration of the life and work of a recently deceased sinologist and mentor, Elisabeth Croll, linked to NIAS in her capacity as member of the Advisory Board of the Gendering Asia NIAS book ...
Cutting edge global communities & provincial backwaters in higher education
Sep 01, 2008; ... Academic globalization is of growing importance. Universities, in extensive contact with each other, build on each others findings and increasingly share and combine resources. But while mainstream convergence is coming to be common and normal, there is growing emphasis as well on special ...
The thunder from Asia
Sep 01, 2008; ... The economic development in Asia over the last 25 years has simply been overwhelming. Many recall Gunnar Myrdal's classic Asian Drama that basically states that obstacles to growth were so strong in Asia that an economic take off was unlikely. Despite its erroneous prediction, Myrdal's book ...
Nordic Centre as a platform for Nordic universities in China
Sep 01, 2008; ... The Nordic Centre is a Nordic platform for cooperation within research and higher education between Nordic and Chinese universities and institutions. The Centre is located at Fudan University, ranked as the 3rd best university in China. Today, the Nordic Centre consists of 26 top universities, ...
40 more years for NIAS
Sep 01, 2008; ... NIAS turns 40 on 16 September 2008. For a human being, this is a mid-life point, and maybe for NIAS as well!? At least, we think that we have done well until now and would like to continue doing so for the next forty years. Hence, we talk about a NIAS "Vision 40:40": we look in the rearview ...
Changing China: a Swedish perspective
Sep 01, 2008; ... When I began to study Chinese and Chinese culture forty years ago, I wanted to broaden my understanding of the world to extend beyond the European or Western cultural sphere. This urge to break the confines of Western tradition was typical of many people of my generation in Sweden. As a ...
Asia in a Nordic nutshell
Sep 01, 2008; ... The work of Professor Niels Steensgaard (b. 1932) is probably the best Nordic contribution to the history of Asia, although his work is not widely known. His name has no more than two hits in the Library of Congress online catalogue, and he has published in strange places. You will search in ...
How realistic are China's high-tech ambitions?
Sep 01, 2008; ... The goal set by the Beijing government to transform China into an innovative society of technological excellence has implications for everyone, the Nordic countries included. But before one can assess the effects of China's technological prowess it is pertinent to ask, are China's goals ...
Asian Dynamics Initiative - a new Asia focus at the University of Copenhagen
Sep 01, 2008; ... There is no denying that Asia with its expanding economic markets, growing centres for science and technology, complex political systems, and rich religious and cultural diversity has become an increasingly important player on the global scene. After decades of dividing the world into the rich ...