ICAIOS | International Centre for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies

Report | World-making in Transnational Spaces: Experiences of Indonesians in the Middle East

Reported by: Ariane Boulanger

World-making in transnational Spaces: Experiences of Indonesians in the Middle East

By Judith Schlehe

judith 800x592 Judith and her team conducted previously a research on the perception of “the West” by Indonesian called “Beyond Occidentalism”. The main founding was that it is not that central anymore. She then decided to focus on Middle East, which is the rising power in terms of religion for Indonesia. There is three researches in this project: on the Haji, on the TKI and hers on experiences of Indonesian students and alumnis in Middle East and more specifically Cairo.

So far, she spent two weeks in Cairo and did fieldwork in Jogjakarta, Madura, Lombok, Jakarta and Aceh. Her theoretical background uses Henrietta’s Moore definition of globalization “ordinary’s people ability to enact change and social transformation related to their imaginations and desires for new possibilities and self-making”. She thus focuses on how ordinary people do globalization. She had three main research questions: Which imaginaries are related to Indonesian student’s lived experiences in Cairo? How are new subjectivities related to ideas of Indonesia’s place in the world? We change when we go abroad, how are those changes related to Indonesia as a whole? What does this mean for the navigation of differences?

PDS: World-making in Transnational Spaces

Public Discussion Series

World-making in Transnational Spaces:

Experiences of Indonesians in the Middle East

With Judith Schlehe

(University of Freinburg, Germany)

Jum'at, 13 November 2015 | 16.30-18.00 WIB | Ruang Seminar ICAIOS

Open and Free

Registration: ICAIOS (0651) 755 2368 / info@acehresearch.org

Abstract

This session discusses transregional linkages, taking 'academic pilgrimage' to the Middle East as an example. Academic mobility is facilitating flows of knowledge and cultural (re)orientations. This talk's focus is on Indonesian graduates from Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Thier everyday practices, imaginaries, intentionalities and anxieties are interconnected with a reframing of the Arab world. The main question is how making sense of the world and at once self-making are connected to the politics of identity and difference. In our globalizing world the ways of world-making and the strategies of dealing with alterity continue to be imbued with cultural and historical values, power relations as well as everyday experiences. Yet, there is also considerable transformative dynamics and contingency of identity and difference, especially when it comes to transnational encounters.

About the speaker

Judith Schlehe

Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Freiburg, Germany
Member of the interdisciplinary research group on "Grounding Area Studeis in Social Practice"

GLS: Religion and Memory in a Time of Danger: The Atomic Bombs in The Age of Fukushima

Guest Lecture Series

RELIGION AND MEMORY IN A TIME OF DANGER: THE ATOMIC BOMBS IN THE AGE OF FUKUSHIMA

Pembicara: Gregory A. Vanderbilt

(Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies, Graduate SchooL UGM)

Selasa, 10 November 2015 | 16.30 – 18.00 Wib | Ruang Seminar ICAIOS

OPEN & FREE

Registrasi: ICAIOS (0651) 755 2368/ info@acehresearch.org

Abstract

Observations of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki come in the midst of a shift to the right in Japanese politics towards abandoning its postwar pacifist positioning (and active opposition in the streets of Japanese cities) as well as the passing on of those who directly experienced the bombs (the hibakusha). To what extent do their voices still gather concentrated as well as ritualized attention? What roles do religious leaders, movements, institutions, and forms now play in this process, in a society that tends to define itself as areligious? Hiroshima has often been framed as a universal tragedy while memorialization of Nagasaki has tended to highlight connections to Catholicism, including the “hidden Christians” the 150th anniversary of whose reemergence close to what became the hypocenter was celebrated earlier this year, but religious ideas, including the comforting of souls in Buddhist terms, are present in both sites. Now, the triple disaster of March 11th, 2011, which shows the vast cost of nuclear power as an energy of Japan’s modern life, raises new questions about how to remember the two atomic bombs. These comments draw on fieldwork during the observations in August 2015 in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the literature that has developed over the last seventy years.

PDS: Kita dan Thalassemia

Public Discussion Series

KITA DAN THALASSEMIA

Pembicara: Nurjannah Husien (Aktivis Thalassemia)

Jumat, 30 October 2015 | 16.30-18.00 WIB | Ruang Seminar ICAIOS

Tentang Kita dan Thalassemia:

Thalassemia merupakan salah satu jenis penyakit kelainan darah dan merupakan penyaki tketurunan yang diturunkan oleh kedua orangtua yang membawa sifat thalassemia. Enam sampai sepuluh dari setiap 100 orang Indonesia membawa gen penyakit ini. Kalau sepasang dari mereka menikah, kemungkinan untuk mempunyai anak penderita talasemia berat adalah 25%, 50% menjadi pembawa sifat (carrier) talasemia, dan 25% normal. Aceh dengan penduduknya +/- 5 juta jiwa dan merupakan salah satu propinsi dengan prevalensi thalassemia tertinggi di Indonesia dengan angka mencapai13.8 % (kemenkes 2010).

Beberapa waktu yang lalu saya mendapatkan kesempatan, mengikuti 2nd PAN - ASIAN Conference di Hanoi, Vietnam. Pengalaman ini merubah cara pandang saya terhadap thalassemia, yang sebelumnya diperkirakan rata-rata umur harapan hidupnya sekitar 20 tahun ternyata diluar negeri mereka bisa tumbuh layaknya anak-anak normal, bisa berkarier dan bekeluarga.