Cultures, Nations, Identities and Migrations

Program and Conference Report

Venue

Humanities Research Centre
Old Canberra House #73, Lennox Crossing, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT, Australia

Dates

15-16 April 2004

Cultural flows and population movements associated with forces of 'globalisation' have not inexorably given way to universal or cosmopolitan values and identities. Primordialism and particularism have been as likely responses. How are identity and difference expressed in a globalising world? What are the discursive strategies through which individuals and groups construct cultural identities, including national, 'ethnic' and gendered identities ? Much of the rhetoric of identity and difference carries implicit assumptions of ontological distinctions. Identities, however, involve recognition, imagining as well as processes of construction and contestation. The Asia Pacific region is a site of old forms of cosmopolitanism (in parts of Asia) as well as sites of localised and particularistic identities. How are (relatively new) national identities expressed in the context of regionalism, localism and new forms of personal identity? How are identities reworked in the process of migration? The conference will bring together discussion of Asia, Australia and the Pacific in order to understand the ways in which identities are recognised, contested, dislodged and reconstituted in the contemporary world.

Sessions will be organized around themes including world religions and cosmopolitanism; cultural expression and diasporic identities; global constructions of indigeneity; transcultural marriage migration and the politics of gender.

Keynote speakers

Melani Budianta, American Literature, University of Indonesia
Paper: The Dragon Dance: Shifting Meanings of Chineseness in Indonesia

Dr Tony Day, Carolina Asia Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Paper: “Self” and “subject” in Southeast Asian Literature in the Global Age.

Greg Fry, International Relations

Kenneth M. George, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Paper: Aceh and Ikhlas on Fifth Avenue: A Story of Indonesian Islamic Elsewheres.

Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, East West Center, University of Hawaii

Kirin Narayan, University of Wisconsin-Madison,

Nicholas Tapp, Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, ANU,
Paper: Hmong Diaspora in Innisfail.

Professor Pnina Werbner, School of Social Relations, Keele University
Paper: Sufi Regional Cults in South Asia and Indonesia: Towards a Comparative Analysis.

PROGRAM

Paper abstracts and speakers' biographies

Please note the full rate early bird registration fee ($240) applies to 14 March 2004.

Convener

Dr Kathryn Robinson
Senior Fellow
Department of Anthropology
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University
Tel. 61-2-61253279

Email: Kathryn.Robinson@anu.edu.au

Enquiries

Leena Messina, Programs Manager, Humanities Research Centre, ANU
Email: Leena.Messina@anu.edu.au