cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Reflections on Critical New Area Studies – in Conversation with Prof. Dr. Peter Jackson
Creators: name: Jackson, Peter A.
name: Fleschenberg, Andrea
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: Prof. Dr. Peter A. Jackson (Australian National University) has written extensively on modern Thai cultural history with special interests in religion, sexuality, and critical theoretical approaches to mainland Southeast Asian cultural history. He currently holds an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant for the project “Religion, Ritual and Health in Thai Gay and Transgender Communities”. His article “South East Asian Area Studies beyond Anglo-America: Geopolitical Transitions, the Neoliberal Academy and Spatialized Regimes of Knowledge”, published 2019 in South East Asia Research 27(1), pp. 49–73, was the starting point for this interview on his reflections on New Area Studies.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 3-4 (2020): New Area Studies and Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia as a Litmus Test for Grounded Area Studies
Creators: name: Antweiler, Christoph
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: Using Southeast Asia as an example, this paper is a plea for a reconciliation of diverging epistemologies in Area Studies. The argument is for a moderate realism that conceptualises areas as socially constructed but based on empirical research. The southeastern part of Asia, being extremely diverse – historically a mixing zone with no hegemonic dominant civilisation and currently lacking a truly regional power – provides us with a litmus test for area methodology. In reclaiming a spatial reality this contribution systematically develops steps towards a realist approach to Area Studies. This is done by demonstrating that the core of Area Studies should be seen in a theory and methodology of socio-spatial relations. With regard to theoretical approaches and methods it is argued that the notion of family resemblance and the method of social network analysis are especially fruitful by allowing for a critically reflected and yet empirically oriented study of areas in Asia.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 3-4 (2020): New Area Studies and Southeast Asia
New Area Studies, Scientific Communities and Knowledge Production
Creators: name: Rehbein, Boike
name: Kamal, Ahsan
name: Asif, Manan Ahmed
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: In his commentary, Boike Rehbein questions the hegemony that the Global North maintains over the theory and philosophy of science and calls for an epistemological and disciplinary reinvention. The scientific discourse needs to move away from binaries such as global–national and universalism–relativism, as they are misleading in their exclusivity. Rather, Rehbein calls for a multicentric epistemology informed by local sources, perspectives and theories. Area Studies is identified as a key arena of such an epistemological shift, reinventing itself by becoming increasingly comparative and translocal in scope, as well as inter-/trans- or multidisciplinary. In this context, the values and challenges of cooperation in Area Studies are highlighted. Ahsan Kamal praises Rehbein’s approach as a concrete contribution to decolonising Area Studies and knowledge production, but urges a constant questioning of the location of the North and South, the authenticity of what is deemed the “local”, and the beneficiaries of this new form of knowledge production. Manan Ahmed Asif considers that despite progress being made and Rehbein’s approach having important ethical value, colonialism is still deeply inscribed in Area Studies, as the Global North continues to control the material, financial and organisational resources.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 3-4 (2020): New Area Studies and Southeast Asia
New Area Studies as an Emerging Discipline. The Way Ahead for Southeast Asian Studies
Creators: name: Houben, Vincent
name: Guillermo, Ramon
name: Macamo, Elísio
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: Southeast Asian Studies and Area Studies have a rather weak position in German academia, according to Vincent Houben, due to internal, but especially external institutional factors, with universities being part of a neoliberal machinery. As a field of study, Area Studies is more financially vulnerable than a discipline, and constantly has to prove itself academically, which is why Houben calls for a disciplinary reinvention as a singular New Area Studies. Area Studies already has most of the important characteristics that make a discipline, but lacks the necessary coherence. Houben proposes the advancement of middle-range theories and Situational Analysis as a meta-methodology to solve this issue and draws attention to the importance of cooperation among scholars. Ramon Guillermo and Elísio Macamo offer different perspectives on this proposal. Guillermo criticises Houben’s piece as being too rooted in an internal Western conversation that reflects power relations in Southeast Asian Studies. Similarly, Macamo warns against exerting Western dominance through an approach such as Houben’s, while also arguing that the interdisciplinary integration of Area Studies has actually given it significant symbolic capital.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 3-4 (2020): New Area Studies and Southeast Asia
Fabrication and characterisation of cobalt ferrite nanoparticles and SPPS-deposited cobalt ferrite splats prepared by sol-gel methods
Creators: name: Sanpo, Noppakun
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: Sol-gel techniques offer enhanced control over homogeneity, elemental composition and powder morphology. As well, uniformly nano-sized metal clusters can be achieved, which are crucial for enhancing the properties of the nanoparticles. These advantages make the sol-gel route a favourable alternative to other conventional methods for the preparation of ceramic oxide composites. The aim of this work is to develop novel multifunctional magnetic iron-based nanoparticles. It is intended that these so-formed nanomaterials will demonstrate antibacterial properties to fulfil the requirements of a drug delivery system so that the antibiotic concentration that is normally required may be minimized. For this purpose, cobalt ferrite nanoparticles have been synthesized by the sol-gel process using citric acid (CA) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as chelating agents, and the effect of chelating agents on surface morphology, size distribution and antibacterial properties of the synthesized cobalt ferrite nanoparticles have been investigated. In addition, transition metal-substituted spinel ferrite nanoparticles (X0.5Y0.5Fe2O4 with X = Co, Mg, Mn, Zn; Y = Cu, Zn, Mn, and Ni) have been synthesized by the sol-gel process using citric acid as the chelating agent. The effect of substitution of these transition metals on surface morphology, size distribution, biocompatibility and antibacterial properties of the synthesized transition metals-substituted spinel ferrite nanoparticles have been investigated.
Resource Requirements of Food Demand
Creators: name: Canning, Patrick
name: Rehkamp, Sarah
name: Hitaj, Claudia
name: Peters, Christian
name: Canning, Patrick
name: Rehkamp, Sarah
name: Hitaj, Claudia
name: Peters, Christian
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 2020
Subjects: Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety

description: Natural resources facilitate production of an adequate daily food supply for Americans. Food consumption in the United States, measured in total calories per day, increased about 50 percent over a recent 25-year span. Understanding how changes in food consumption impact the U.S. food system’s use of the country’s natural resources requires consideration of many factors. We find that diets, or food choices, are likely to be an important factor. For example, had the diets of Americans who met all the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans back in 2007 become the typical American diet of that time, then per capita consumption of the fruits, vegetables, legumes/nuts/seeds, eggs, and dairy categories would have increased, while per capita consumption in the sugars/sweets/beverages, fats/oils/salad dressings, grain products, and meat/poultry/fish/mixtures food groups would have declined. In such a scenario, under the production and marketing practices in 2007, nutrition and resource conservation goals would have been mostly complementary, or synergistic. As one notable exception, water conservation in particular may have required tradeoffs between competing goals, especially for production of fruits, vegetables, and dairy. This report combines empirical evidence of resource use in the system in 2007 with the presentation of a framework for a broader empirical study of sustainable pathways to producing a healthy and adequate food supply.
“Small Places, Large Issues” Revisited: Reflections on an Ethnographically Founded Vision of New Area Studies
Creators: name: Baumann, Benjamin
name: Kretschmer, Danny
name: Von Plato, Johannes
name: Pomerance, Jona
name: Rössig, Tim
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: This contribution outlines the didactic potentials and possible limitations of an ethnographically founded vision of New Area Studies. The authors reflect upon their experiences as teacher and students in an Area Studies research project in Thailand’s lower Northeast that has attempted to implement an ethnographically founded New Area Studies research methodology in practice. While this methodology draws on ethnography, it additionally engages with theoretical questions raised in sociology and philosophy with the goal of approaching emplaced orders of knowledge that unfold as everyday practice in local lifeworlds. The outlined methodology is rooted in a particular understanding of emplacement that is explicitly spatial, so that the situatedness of knowledge that is emphasised in various attempts to rethink Area Studies remains not limited to hegemonic discourses, social milieus or moving bodies, but is located in concrete places. These places can be situated on different scales, ranging from “the local” to “the global”, producing a spatial continuum to be addressed by New Area Studies research. In this particular research project, we have focused on the “local” end of this broad continuum in Thailand. We argue that ethnographic methods in combination with social phenomenology allow us to gain particular insights into the meaningfulness of local lifeworlds and highlight the continuing relevance of this form of emplaced situatedness for New Area Studies.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 3-4 (2020): New Area Studies and Southeast Asia
Ethical Extensionism under Uncertainty of Sentience: Duties to Non-Human Organisms without Drawing a Line
Creators: name: Chan, Kai Ming Adam, 1975-
Publisher: name: The White Horse Press
Year: 2013

description: Ethical extensionism generally involves drawing one or more lines of moral standing. I argue (i) for all living organisms, there is a non-zero probability of sentience and consciousness, and (ii) we cannot justify excluding beings from consideration on the basis of uncertainty of their sentience, etc., and rather we should incorporate this uncertainty into the strength of our moral responsibilities. This use of probabilities differs critically from multi-criteria theories of moral standing and those that assign benefit of the doubt, which involve unjustified exclusions and dilutions of duties. From uncertainty rises certainty: we have duties to non-human organisms, although they may often be minor. This modification of extensionist ethics provides foundation for an environmental ethic that parallels interpersonal and animal welfare ethics, and it suggests that we owe much greater concern to ‘lower’ organisms than they are typically given. Copyright statement: This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted following peer review for publication in Environmental Values, 20: 323-346.
Area Studies and Disciplines: What Disciplines and What Areas?
Creators: name: Derichs, Claudia
name: Heryanto, Ariel
name: Abraham, Itty
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: In her piece, Claudia Derichs offers critical thoughts on how the scientific and academic landscape is organised according to disciplines, methods, areas and such. She questions the refusal to recognise Area Studies as a (sub-)discipline, drawing attention to the fluidity and dynamics of disciplines and their categorisation. Regarding the definition of areas, an argument is made about their constructedness, which makes a transversal perspective all the more important. To achieve this, language proficiency and academic cooperation are deemed crucial. The lack of South–North theory transfer in Area Studies is furthermore questioned. Ariel Heryanto and Itty Abraham further expand on the debate of Area Studies vs. disciplines by arguing that Area Studies in the respective areas is homologous to disciplines in the metropolises, which are centred on the nation-state as an area. However, doubts are cast that the recognition of Area Studies as a discipline would resolve the issue of a global division of intellectual labour, which results in unequal privileges regarding knowledge production.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 3-4 (2020): New Area Studies and Southeast Asia
Crisis and Self-Sufficiency: The Left and Its Challenges During the Long 1960s in Sri Lanka
Creators: name: Gunawardena, Devaka
name: Kadirgamar, Ahilan
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2021

description: This paper argues that Sri Lanka’s leftist movement encountered structural challenges while attempting to transform Sri Lanka’s dependent economy during the long 1960s. This process culminated in the global economic crisis of the 1970s. The predominantly Trotskyite left initially championed import substitution industrialisation in the period after Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948. Eventually, during the crisis of the 1970s, it was forced to radicalise its approach. It began to focus more on achieving self-sufficiency in key agricultural products. The left’s reflexive bias toward industrialisation, however, undermined its attempt to reconceive development from an agrarian perspective. The left experienced an enduring setback during the elections of 1977, which ushered in the neoliberal transformation of Sri Lanka. The article explores the consequences of the left’s historical neglect of the agrarian question during the long 1960s and the fateful implications of its delayed engagement with rural communities.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 52 Nr. 3-4 (2021): The Long 1960s in Asia
The Cultural Politics of “Spring Thunder”: The Naxalbari Movement and the Re-framing of Bengali Culture in the 1960s
Creators: name: Sengupta, Samrat
name: Maitra, Saikat
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2021

description: This article tracks the radical turn in Bengali politics and culture and from the late 1960s, ushered in by the ultra-leftist Naxalbari Movement in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. The movement initiated a search for a Maoist revolutionary praxis that could decisively liberate the dominant Bengali cultural sphere from its moorings in colonial and semi-feudal bourgeois class interests. The counter-hegemonic cultural praxis of the Naxalbari Movement repeatedly evaded its confinement within the diktats of a hardened party line (of the Communist Party of India – Marxist Leninist, which led the movement) but remained rich with multifarious possibilities, openings and narratives. The transgressive vision of this movement led to iconoclastic acts of destroying statues of deified cultural figures, publicly burning canonical books and assaulting higher academic institutions as sites of the propagation of a repressive culture. This article foregrounds the Naxalbari cultural debates along two distinct axes – the received tradition of Bengali culture from the colonial era and the internal schisms among intellectuals and cultural workers sympathetic to the broader objectives of the revolutionary culture articulated through the Naxalbari movement.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 52 Nr. 3-4 (2021): The Long 1960s in Asia
3 books + 1
Creators: name: Podgorny, Irina
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022

description: Jungle laboratories: Mexican peasants, national projects, and the making of the pill, by Gabriel Soto Laveaga, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2009, 352 pp., $104.95 (hardback), 28.95 (paperback) ISBN: 978-0-8223-4605-0, Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-4587-9The experiential Caribbean: creating knowledge and healing in the early modern Atlantic, by Pablo F. Gómez, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017, 314 pp., $29.95 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-4696-3087-8, $90.00 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-4696-3086-1, $19.99 (eBook) ISBN: 978-1-4696-3088-5Fascist pigs: technoscientific organisms and the history of fascism, by Tiago Saraiva, 2018, Print, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 344 pp., $50.00 (hardcover), ISBN 9780262035033; $19.95 (paperback), ISBN: 9780262536158El Instituto Médico Nacional: La política de las plantas y los laboratorios a fines del siglo XIX, by Nina Hinke and Laura Cházaro, México, DF, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados, 2012, 228 pp., $19.00 (paperback), ISBN: 978-607-02-2603-8
Sambey's Law: Refined Information-Causal Unified Framework (ICUF)
Creators: name: Sambey, Stanley Everett
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025

description: Sambey’s Law (ICUF) models the quantum-to-gravitational transition as N quantumevents increase entropy and mass, driving decoherence and shrinking the minimum lengthscale. The observer, as a wave tuning coherence, integrates consciousness, complexity, andbiological replication across scales—from primordial soup to cosmic systems. This refinedframework, updated on March 3, 2025, incorporates empirical findings—integrated informa-tion (Φ, I), complexity (C), and energy gaps (∆E)—enhancing the original model publishedon March 2, 2025, at zenodo.org/records/14956617 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14956617). Vali-dated via nanoscale experiments, it offers a unified theory for physics, biology, and AI.
Between the Local and the Global there Lies the Nation: Selected Stories of the 1960s in Lahore
Creators: name: Anushay
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2021

description: Labour and student activists in Pakistan were part of the global movement of the 1960s with its sense of expanded possibilities. This article explores how this political imagination was expressed in Pakistan, focusing on local stories oriented around Lahore. Using the 1960s as one particular window to look at the aspirations of ordinary people, this essay shows that even though students and workers alike hoped for a change in the status quo, there was no one typical national experience of this decade. Any historical narrative that assumes that there is a Pakistan with one imagi­nation in any decade necessarily imposes erasures in order to construct a neat story of what the 1960s in Pakistan “truly” was. Through newspaper articles and police reports, some everyday stories of that time are selected and used to differentiate the common picture of experiences of the 1960s in Pakistan.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 52 Nr. 3-4 (2021): The Long 1960s in Asia
Unpacking Cultural Heritage in Mongolia: The Image of the Mongolian Yurt (ger)
Creators: name: Altangerel, Ganchimeg
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: Mongolians have lived and socialised in the Mongolian ger (yurt) for hundreds of years, leading a life closely connected to nature and exploring vast areas as nomads. But in present-day Mongolia the ger is associated with air and environmental pollution and has been scapegoated as the source of failures in urban development. The negative images of the ger in Mongolian society pertain to ideals of socialist modernism and current pollution, while positive images relate to cultural heritage and ethnicity, considering the ger as an intangible heritage, as the traditional dwelling of Mongolian nomads. Such a view tacitly turns it into an object for marketing, which exoticises its inhabitants. It seems that the ger has experienced a loss of value in the current debate. This article presents the specifics of the Mongolian ger and examines the different, diverging images of this traditional dwelling by examining the recent history of Mongolia.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 1-2 (2020): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part II
A numerical study of JKR-type adhesive contact of ellipsoids
Creators: name: Li, Qiang
name: Popov, Valentin L.
Publisher: name: Technische Universität Berlin
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: 530 Physik
subject: adhesion
subject: elliptical contact
subject: JKR approximation
subject: Boundary Element Method

description: Approximate solution by Johnson and Greenwood (2005) for an adhesive contact of an ellipsoid and an elastic half-space is revisited numerically using the FFT-based Boundary Element Method. While for moderate values of the ratio of principal radii of the ellipsoid, R1/R2, predictions of the Johnson-Greenwood approximate theory are very good, they become increasingly inaccurate for large values of this parameter. On the basis of numerical simulations, we provide analytical approximations for the dependencies between load, approach and contact area and compare the exact shape of the contact area with the elliptical one assumed in the Johnson-Greenwood-theory.
Innovation and firm performance of australian manufacturing organisations: an empirical analysis of determinants and complementary effects
Creators: name: Vranic, Vedran
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: The manufacturing industry is considered as one of the most important economic sectors in developed countries. This is because manufactured materials are used by every other industry, directly stimulating economic growth and improvements in our standard of living. However, Australia's manufacturing industry has lost over 100 000 jobs in the last 15 years. To help improve the industry and the Australian economy, my empirical research contributes ten successful drivers of organisational performance to managers of Australian manufacturing organisations.
Om å kartleggja mørk materie med maskinlæring
Creators: name: Schaathun, Hans Georg
name: Normann, Ben David
name: Solevåg-Hoti, Kenny
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Gravitational lensing occurs as the path of light from distant celestial bodies is distorted due to gravitational attraction by other celestial bodies, whose mass is partly invisible, being so-called dark matter. When observed through a gravitational lens, distant galaxies appear distorted. A lot of research activity goes into mapping the dark matter in the universe through graviational lensing. However, the mathematical models are complicated, and calculations both time consuming and tideous, if manual. In this paper we discuss how we may combine the Roulette formalism due to Clarkson with machine learning for automatic, local estimation of the lense potential in strong lenses. We also present a framework of open source software for generating datasets and validating results.
 --
 Gravitasjonslinsing er fenomenet der ljos frå fjerne himmellegeme vert avbøygd av tyngdekraften frå andre himmellegeme, som ofte ikkje er fullt synlege fordi mykje av massen er mørk materie. Observert gjennom ei gravitasjonslinse, framstår fjerne galaksar som forvrengde. Der er mykje forskingsaktivitet som freistar å karleggja mørk materie ved å studera linseeffektar, men dei matematiske modellane er kompliserte og utrekningane krev i dag mykje manuelt arbeide som er svært tidkrevjande. I denne artikkelen drøftar me korleis me kan kombinera rouletteformalismen åt Chris Clarkson med maskinlæring for automatisk, lokal estimering av linsepotentialet i sterke linser, og me presenterer eit rammeverk med programvare i open kjeldekode for å generera datasett og validera resultat.
description: 14 pages, in Norwegian language, 6 figures
ขอบเขตบนสำหรับการกระจายตัวของเมทริกซ์เซอร์คูแลนท์และเมทริกซ์อา-เซอร์คูแลนท์ที่มีสมาชิกเป็นลำดับฟีโบนักชีและลำดับลูคัส
Creators: name: อัจฉรา ปาจีนบูรวรรณ์
Publisher: name: กองบริหารการวิจัย
Year: 2563
Subjects: กระจายตัวของเมทริกซ์
ขอบเขตบน
เมทริกซ์เซอร์คูแลนท์
เมทริกซ์อา-เซอร์คูแลนท์

description: วารสารวิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี, 28, 6, 950-956
Behavioral and neurocomputational investigations of human recognition memory and cognition
Creators: name: Kane William Elfman, Kane William Elfman
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: Behavioural and computational methodologies were combined to explore human recognition memory and perception. The research explores how the ability to differentiate between past events breaks down when the events are highly similar, and as scene complexity is varied. Also, the progression of memory performance is examined as the perceptual similarity between current and past faces is systematically varied. Finally, theoretical work explores the boundary between memory and perception, showing how a single neural structure can support both cognitive faculties. Together, the findings further our understanding of the limits of memory and perception, helping to predict when these processes might fail.
Entrepreneurial pursuit in academic-industry collaboration: an exploratory study of factors influencing financial success in private universities in Malaysia
Creators: name: Nyeko, Kizito Emmanuel
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: The study is a pioneering attempt to explore multi-level factors that influence the performance of industry engagements by academicians in private universities in Malaysia. Using multiple regression modelling, the study found significant, but varying relations between academic proactiveness, readiness to collaborate, universities' learning orientation, strong collaborative purpose, strong collaborative environment, performance variable enhanced reputations and resources, and performance variable effective knowledge transfer with academics' involvement in teaching, research and company-creation related collaborations. The study findings have practical and theoretical implications for policy makers from government agencies, industry and universities to design more effective policies and management practices by proposing a set of guidelines that universities should follow to optimise collaboration outcomes.
Carmen Schmidt / Ralf Kleinfeld (eds): The Crisis of Democracy? Chances, Risks and Challenges in Japan (Asia) and Germany (Europe)
Creators: name: Széll, György
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 1-2 (2020): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part II
Girls are not commodities
Creators: name: Kane, June
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: When is a woman not a woman? In some traditions, a female human being is considered to be a woman when she marries, regardless of her age. In certain communities, first menstruation is taken as a sign of womanhood. In other societies, the age when childhood ends shifts with changes in fashion, pop culture, and sexual imagery. There are other thresholds too, enshrined in national laws relating to the age of marriage, of sexual consent, and of legal responsibility. These differ among countries and within countries, so that a 17-year-old in some countries may be old enough to marry, but not old enough to buy alcohol or take out a mortgage. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) gives us a benchmark for when childhood ends: all people under the age of 18 are children. This is not to deny 17- year-old females their right to be considered and to be called 'women' if they wish. It does not suggest that the group often labelled 'adolescents' or 'teenagers' or 'young people' is immature. It is a way to remind ourselves that anyone under the age of 18, regardless of other thresholds and labels, has a right to special protection. This is particularly important in relation to children and sexual activity.
Gender and the Urban Commons in India: An Overview of Scientific Literature and the Relevance of a Feminist Political Ecology Perspective
Creators: name: Rao, Manisha
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: Traditionally, the concept of the commons implied a rural commons, an area of common usage for agricultural or pastoral purposes. As increasing numbers of people migrate to cities, however, sociological studies have focused on urban issues, of which the urban commons is one area of emerging research. In crowded, underdeveloped cities, residents must often rely on these shared public areas for their livelihoods or basic needs. This paper provides an overview of the literature on the urban commons in India, illustrating the relevance of a feminist political ecology perspective to sharpen its critical edge. The article begins with an overview of the commons debate and then moves on to analyse the question of the urban commons. After mapping the research on the urban commons in India, it analyses the issue of the urban commons within the context of the gender and environment debate that emerged in the 1980s. This is followed by alternative conceptualisations of gender and the environment as put forward by feminists in the Global South. Finally, a plea is made to engage in the study of the urban commons through the lens of feminist political ecology.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 1-2 (2020): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part II
title: Exiting Happyland
Creators: name: Gasser, Thomas
Year: 2025

description: Rassismus ist tief in sozialen und kulturellen Strukturen verankert und beeinflusst Denk- und Handlungsmuster, auch bei Menschen, die glauben, gut über das Thema informiert zu sein. Diese Arbeit behandelt die Diskrepanz zwischen theoretischem Wissen über Rassismus und der Verinnerlichung anti-rassistischer Praktiken. Die zentrale Forschungsfrage lautet: Wie können die Effekte von Rassismus und Whiteness auf persönlicher und gesellschaftlicher Ebene verstanden und über rein theoretische Diskurse hinaus nachvollziehbar gemacht werden? Mithilfe der Methode der Autoethnographie untersucht die Arbeit die Konfrontation mit anti-schwarzem Rassismus, wobei Aspekte wie Sozialisation, Abwehrmechanismen und Prozesse der Selbstreflexion im Fokus stehen. Diese persönlichen Erfahrungen werden durch kritische Perspektiven auf die Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie ergänzt, insbesondere im Hinblick auf systemische Blind Spots und die Konstruktion von Whiteness. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Auseinandersetzung mit Rassismus mehr als ein intellektuelles Verständnis erfordert. Es bedarf aktiver Selbstreflexion, der Interaktion mit Betroffenen und der Bereitschaft, tief verankerte Muster von Privilegien und Vorurteilen zu hinterfragen. Diese Arbeit bietet ein narratives Gerüst, um diese Prozesse zu verstehen, und zeigt, wie theoretisches Wissen in gelebte anti-rassistische Praxis umgesetzt werden kann.
description: Racism is deeply rooted in social and cultural structures and influences patterns of thought and action, even among people who believe they are well informed on the subject. This thesis deals with the discrepancy between theoretical knowledge about racism and the internalization of anti-racist practices. The central research question is: How can the effects of racism and whiteness be under-stood on a personal and social level and made comprehensible beyond purely theoretical discourses? Using the method of autoethnography, the work exam-ines the confrontation with anti-black racism, focusing on aspects such as social-ization, defence mechanisms and processes of self-reflection. These personal experiences are complemented by critical perspectives on cultural and social an-thropology, particularly with regard to systemic blind spots and the construction of whiteness. The results show that dealing with racism requires more than intellectual under-standing. It requires active self-reflection, interaction with those affected and a willingness to question deeply embedded patterns of privilege and prejudice. This work provides a narrative framework for understanding these processes and shows how theoretical knowledge can be translated into lived anti-racist practice.
Smart Energy for the World: The Rise of a Technonationalist Discourse in Japan in the Late 2000s
Creators: name: Zappa, Marco
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: In recent years, “smart city” has become a buzzword in discussions about urbanisation. While in Europe and North America the initial utopian optimism has now receded, due to booming implementation costs and surveillance concerns, the smart city model has taken root in rapidly urbanising Asia in particular, thanks to the activism of China and Japan. For the latter, smart city technologies and technical know-how represent the new frontier of export goods. In April 2018, the Government of Japan and that of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam announced the construction of a new smart city on the outskirts of the Vietnamese capital Hanoi that is set to become Japan’s largest ODA project to date. Despite changes in the global hegemonic narratives on smart cities, the new project bears the features of an urban settlement that revolves around technological data collection for the sake of perfect efficiency, rather than for its prospective inhabitants. Against this backdrop, how did the Government of Japan succeed in constructing a convincing narrative for made-in-Japan smart cities? Since 2011, thanks to specific initiatives by Japan’s government and investments by Japanese tech companies in the sector, a Japanese discourse on smart cities has emerged. Through an examination of earlier critiques of the smart city model and a close analysis of official policies and books by energy policy intellectuals, this paper will identify the main features of the Japanese discourse on smart cities and place it in the context of an evolving broader global narrative. The study demonstrates how the Japanese discourse on smart cities largely reflects a corporate managerial vision of the city and, at the same time, a “technonationalist” approach that informs the country’s foreign policy.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 1-2 (2020): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part II
An Enchanted Modern: Urban Cultivation in Shanghai
Creators: name: Greenspan, Anna
name: Tarocco, Francesca
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: China is in the midst of the fastest and largest process of urbanisation in history. Alongside the dynamism of the region’s hyperdense cities, however, are alarming levels of air pollution, recurrent stories of toxic food, contaminated waterways and intensifying popular protests concerning polluting factories and plants. Issues surrounding a sustainable urban ecology have thus become paramount in the construction of Asia’s metropolitan future. This paper, which focuses particularly on the Shanghai region, suggests that the ideas and practices of “cultivation” might be of value in the creation and imagination of a future ecological metropolis. We examine self-cultivation concretely, as a set of situated embodied practices in specific places and specific historical conditions. We also explore the abstract conceptual idea, by looking at how the modern philosopher Mou Zongsan articulated the idea of “cultivation” as a guide for life. Ultimately, we are interested in how the embodied cultural practices of cultivation can be harnessed as a strategy of re-enchantment, with the power to reconfigure urban nature in the Chinese megacity of the 21st century.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 1-2 (2020): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part II
Sex in the City: The Descent from Human to Animal in Two Vietnamese Classics of Urban Reportage
Creators: name: Quang-Anh Tran, Richard
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: This article examines the relationship between urban space, normative sexuality and animal metaphors in two Vietnamese classics of modern reportage, namely Tam Lang’s “I Pulled a Rickshaw” (1932) and Vu Trong Phung’s “Household Servants” (1936). Both reportages are set in colonial Hanoi, and both provide a glimpse of the explosive growth of urban space and its perceived effects on the city’s inhabitants. While scholars examining early twentieth-century Vietnamese urban reportages have tended to focus on their historical and ethnographic value, the article pays special attention to a key dimension that deﬁnes the genre: their ﬁgurative lan-guage. The article demonstrates that the distinction between human and animal is intertwined with each author’s critique of colonial modernity. For both Lang and Phung, urban space repre-sents a postlapsarian descent of the human to the animal level. Far from embodying liberation, urban space metaphorically ﬁgures as a disruption of certain ideals of human sociality founded on a moral regime, whereby the category of the “human” is distinguished from the animal by norms of self-regulation and self-moderation. Insofar as it is founded on such a regime, norma-tive sexuality and urban space embody antinomies of each other.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 1-2 (2020): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part II
Employment predicts decreased mortality among HIV-seropositive illicit drug users in a setting of universal HIV care
Creators: name: Richardson, Lindsey, 1977-
name: Milloy, M-J
name: Kerr, Thomas
name: Parashar, Surita
name: Montaner, Julio
name: Wood, Evan
Publisher: name: The University of British Columbia
Year: 2017

description: Objective: Given the link between employment and mortality in the general population, we sought to assess this relationship among HIV-positive people who use illicit drugs (PWUD) in Vancouver, Canada. Methods: Data were derived from a prospective cohort study of HIV seropositive PWUD (n=666) during the period of May 1996-June 2010 linked to comprehensive clinical data in Vancouver, Canada, a setting where HIV care is delivered without charge. We estimated the relationship between employment and mortality using proportional hazards survival analysis, adjusting for relevant behavioural, clinical, social and structural factors. Results: In a multivariate survival model, a time-updated measure of full time, temporary or self-employment compared to no employment was significantly associated with a lower risk of death (adjusted hazard ratio = 0.44, 95% CI: 0.22-0.91). Results were robust to adjustment for relevant confounders, including age, injection and non-injection drug use, baseline CD4+ T-cell count and baseline plasma viral load. Conclusions: These findings suggest that employment may be an important dimension of mortality risk of HIV-seropositive illicit drug users. The potentially health-promoting impacts of labour market involvement warrant further exploration given the widespread barriers to employment among this highly marginalized population and persistently elevated levels of preventable mortality.
Strangers in a Familiar City: Picun Migrant-worker Poets in the Urban Space of Beijing
Creators: name: Picerni, Federico
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: Urbanisation and rural-urban labour mobility are two founding traits of China’s contemporary society and socio-economic model. The connection between the two and the peculiar social mobility control system still in force, which bars non-urban residents from accessing basic services in the city, creates a new form of social stratiﬁcation between the “centre” and the “periphery” of urban society, as well as a new subject in the city – one not fully urban, nor still peasant, but remaining an outsider in the city. Migrant-worker communities have formed, one of the foremost being Beijing’s Picun urban village. In this paper, I analyse a corpus of poems published online in recent years by members of a literature group of migrant workers based in Picun. Reading them as a case of subjective representation of the social space of the city and the authors’ positioning in its web of social relations, and adopting a socio-literary approach, I particularly focus on the relation with the rural home, urban alienation and anomie, and the effort for symbolic recognition, locating this production in the larger spheres of contemporary migrant-worker literature and urban literature. By doing so, I demonstrate that such a literature challenges the coherence and uniformity of the city’s “text” (and identity), offering a multi-layer perspective of the socio-cultural production of urban space.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 51 Nr. 1-2 (2020): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part II
Christopher J. Shepherd: Haunted Houses and Ghostly Encounters: Ethnography and Animism in East Timor, 1860–1975
Creators: name: Sousa, Lúcio
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 50 Nr. 3-4 (2019): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part I
Cold modelling of slag-matte emulsions
Creators: name: Phelan, D. J.
name: Brooks, Geoffrey
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: The purpose of this work was to study the phenomena of coalescence and breakage of sulphide matte droplets in the slag-matte emulsions of the Vanyukov Process. This is a Russian designed non-ferrous bath smelter utilising side injection of the blast into a slag melt. A two dimensional, 1/6 scale perspex model with a continuous sample flow was developed. The model incorporated the use of digital camera ity and image analysis technology. Water and a low viscosity paraffin oil were chosen to represent the matte and slag phases respectively. Operating regimes described by Reynolds, Weber and Modified Froude dimensionless number groups were selected to assess the relationship between gas flow rates and he matte droplet size distribution. The gas flow rates studied in this project ranged from 0 to 140 l/min. Increasing flow rates from zero to 96 l/min resulted in an increase in the mean droplet diameter. An optimum flow rate in terms of maximising mean droplet diameter, and hence settling velocity, was found to occur with flow rates of 96 l/min. Increasing gas flow rates above this value resulted in a decrease in the mean droplet diameter.
Contemporary Studies on Asian Cities
Creators: name: Heinrich, Patrick
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: This review article explores recent urban studies in Asia in order to explore differences, similarities and convergences between urban and area studies. The review of three recent publications of urban studies in Asia is motivated by the transnational and transcultural make-up of many contemporary Asian cities and their growing interconnectivity. These phenomena result in a rescaling of urban economies and networks, and this is also reflected in urban ambitions and planning. After a brief presentation of the three publications under review, I discuss three questions: Why do urban studies matter for area studies? How are social relations articulated in urban spaces? What is the city doing to people and what are people doing to the city? The discussion of these questions notes that the relation between city, nation state, neighbouring states and the rest of the world has become more complex and harder to predict. Careful consideration of the cases under study reveals processes of a recalibration of relations, calling for the attention of area studies. Urban centres constitute a rewarding field of studies as they require a new focus on new details, experiences and developments.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 50 Nr. 3-4 (2019): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part I
A Place of Caring: Politics of the HIV Testing Centre in the Red House Square, Taipei
Creators: name: Hsieh, I-Yi
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: The Red House neighbourhood in the Ximen shopping district, located on the south side of Taipei, has been the centre of the city’s vibrant culture of sexual inclusivity and gay activism since the early 2000s. Next to the shining billboards at Ximen Square, the Red House presents itself as a reminder of the neighbourhood’s historical transformation from a marketplace during the Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan (1895–1945) to a major pornography theatre in the 1970s–1990s, while emerging as a new urban centre for youth culture, entertainment and outdoor gay bars in the 2000s. Addressing issues of urban exclusion and inclusion, this paper focuses on an HIV testing booth located in the Red House area. Based on interviews with social workers and drawing analyses from archival research, this paper reflects on the politics of a place of caring. Providing 15-minute HIV testing sessions free for anyone in the gay community, the testing booth is an outpost of the Taiwan AIDS Foundation, a nongovernmental organisation that receives public funds. Despite the fact that HIV tests are now widely available for purchase – even accessible from vending machines – the testing booth’s cosy, discretionary and friendly manner renders it a place of caring, where one can be attended by social workers as well as receiving a consultation.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 50 Nr. 3-4 (2019): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part I
Tokyo behind Screens: Participant Observation in a City of Mobile Digital Communication
Creators: name: Purkarthofer, Florian
Publisher: name: International Quarterly for Asian Studies
Year: 2020

description: This paper critically discusses the method of participant observation (as ethnographic method and everyday practice), which consists of participation, observation and mediation, and suggests adjustments, through the lens of perception, which seem necessary in smartphone-saturated cities. The author argues that digital and material forms of mediation lead to different possibilities and limitations of sensory perception. These therefore need to be consciously acknowledged in the social production and construction of space and place. Through a focus on human perception, the challenges that individualised on-site media consumption provides to the concepts of participation, perception and mediation are discussed. In this regard, the interface, most prominently the screen, functions as a nexus that retranslates information through mediation back into the field of human perception. Mobile digital communication can therefore enrich the sphere of perception (at site), but what is digitally mediated is at the same time constrained by the technical and translational possibilities of the medium and the interface. The case study of the Shimokitazawa Curry Festival in Tokyo is used to show how participation, multisensory perception and mediation are practiced in an urban setting. The same case also provides empirical data concerning multisensory participation as a method that is facing new challenges through increasing mobile digital communication.
description: International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Bd. 50 Nr. 3-4 (2019): Urban Poetics and Politics in Asia, Part I