2024
Symposium "Whales of Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives"
How have whale-human relations changed over time? How have whales been conceptualised in art, literature, science, and religion? What challenges do they face today? At the final symposium of Whales of Power, leading scholars from a variety of academic disciplines present their findings and ideas about this topic.
Time and place: Nov. 8, 2024 1:30 PM – 5:00 PM, Klimahuset, Naturhistorisk Museum
About the symposium
The research project Whales of Power has almost come to an end. At this final symposium at Klimahuset, we present some of the results of our research. We also raise some new questions and make suggestions for future research.
The symposium focuses on one of the project's main themes: changing relations between humans and marine mammals, in maritime East Asia and beyond. We have invited two leading scholars of Asian history and literature to give lectures on this topic:
- Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Professor Emerita of Japanese History at Australian National University,
- Karen Thornber, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University.
Their lectures will be followed by a shared Q&A session.
In addition, we have invited a number of scholars, scientists, and artists who all work with whales to take part in a roundtable discussion on the past, present, and future of whale-human relations. Together, they will address questions such as:
- How have human-whale relations changed over time?
- How are these relations conceptualised, imagined, and enacted in different cultural and geographical contexts - in literature, art, religion, and science?
- How have humans and cetaceans affected each other's ways of living?
- What challenges do whales and other marine mammals face today, nearly four decades after the IWC moratorium, and how can we help them? Or: how do they help us?
The symposium is free and open for all. Registration is not required. The event will not be streamed or recorded.
Program
- 13.30-13.45: Welcome
- 13.45-14.00: Whales of Power: An Overview. Aike P. Rots, University of Oslo.
- 14:00-15.30: Panel: Whale-Human Relations in History and Literature.
Chair: Florence Durney, University of Oslo.- Lecture 1: Whales, Liquid Areas and Asia-Pacific Encounters in the Nineteenth Century. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Australian National University.
- Lecture 2: Thinking with Whales in Global Literature and Art. Karen Thornber, Harvard University.
- Q&A
- 15.30-15.45: Break
- 15.45-16.45: Roundtable Discussion: Rethinking Whale-Human Relations: Past, Present, Future.
- Chairs: Lene Liebe Delsett (University of Oslo) and Sonja Åman (University of Oslo).
- Panelists: Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme (University of Bergen), Max Bridge (Brown University), Sadie Hale (University of Bergen), Sakura Koretsune (independent artist), Tessel Janse (Goldsmiths, University of London), and Youri van den Hurk (Natural History Museum Paris).
Organiser
Aike Rots
Workshop “Transnational Goddesses and Ritual Transformations in East Asia”
This workshop explores transnational flows and interactions across East Asia and beyond in relation to popular goddess worship. It investigates some of the ways in which people in different historical periods and different parts of the region have interacted with their goddesses through ritual practices and storytelling, and how these goddesses have travelled and transformed in response to migration, foreign trade, changing social and political circumstances, and environmental change.
Time and place: May 6, 2024 9:00 AM – May 7, 2024 5:00 PM, Niels Treschows hus, 12th floor
Program
Day 1, Monday 6 May
- 9.15-9.45 Welcome, introductions, objectives
Part I Premodern maritime connections
- 9.45-10.45 Emily B. Simpson, Wake Forest University
Who is the Sacred Mother? Investigating the Worship of Mazu and Jingū in Kyushu - 10.45-11.00 Break
- 11.00-12.00 Elke Papelitzky, University of Oslo
Sailing the Waters of East and Southeast Asia: Ming Chinese Navigators and Their Religious Practices - 12.00-12.45 Lunch
Part II Kannon in modern imperialism and nationalism
- 12.45-13.45 Clinton Godart, Tohoku University
Kannon Movements and the Imperial Japanese Navy in Modern Japan - 13.45-14.45 Daigengna Duoer, University of California, Santa Barbara
Pan-Asianist Bodhisattvas at the Buddhist Yasukuni: Kōa Kannon and the Post-WWII Remembrance of Transnational Colonial Violence - 14.45-15.00 Break
Part III Religious diversity in modern China (and beyond) - 15.00-16.00 Daniel Mohseni Kabir Bäckström, University of Oslo (via Zoom)
Nang Tuolani: Goddess of Transnational and Transcosmic Flows - 16.00-17.00 Francesca Tarocco, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
Guanyin Halls and Vegetarian Sisterhoods in China and Southeast Asia
Day 2, Tuesday 7 May
Part IV Comparative perspectives from further south
- 10.00-11.00 Aike P. Rots, University of Oslo
Goddesses of South and Central Vietnam: Mapping the Pantheon - 11.00-12.00 Kathinka Frøystad, University of Oslo
Kali’s Political Paradox: Notes from a North Indian Temple - 12.00-13.00 Lunch
Part V Transnational connections in Japanese popular religion
- 13.00-14.00 Mark Teeuwen, University of Oslo
Gender Play in the Village Festivals of Rural Mikawa - 14.00-15.00 Erica Baffelli, University of Manchester
San’ya’s Kannon: Shared Vulnerabilities, Marginalities, and a Connection to Support Each Other - 15.00-15.15 Break
Part VI Moving forward
- 15.15-16.15 Natasha Heller, University of Virginia
Circuits and CO2: An Ecological Reading of Mazu Worship - 16.15-17.00 Final discussion: goddess worship, ecology, and transnational flows
2023
Infrastructural Violence, Fast and Slow: Rivers, Borders, and Security in South and Southeast Asia
In this guest lecture, Kimberley Thomas (Temple University) discusses how violence is intrinsic to infrastructure. She will illustrate this through examples of water and border infrastructures in the Ganges and Mekong Deltas.
Time and place: Dec. 15, 2023 3:15 PM – 5:00 PM, Seminarrom 10, P.A. Munch hus
Structural violence can assume diverse material forms mediated through physical networks of circulation. Accounts of so-called infrastructural violence emphasize the social injustices effected by infrastructural construction, abandonment, and decay. However, I argue that beyond these well-documented impacts of early and late phases of infrastructural life, infrastructure also metes out violence—fast and slow—in the course of its normal functioning. As I illustrate through examples of water and border infrastructure, violence is not incidental to infrastructure but intrinsic to it. This is lamentably the case because of the spatial, temporal, and social horizons written into infrastructural designs, which I illustrate through examples of water and border infrastructures in the Ganges and Mekong Deltas. Yet, these same factors simultaneously reveal opportunities for producing more egalitarian ecologies, thus pointing a way toward more just and sustainable infrastructural relations.
About Kimberley Thomas
Kimberley Thomas is a human-environment geographer and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University (Philadelphia). She takes a political ecology approach to address questions about environmental politics, resource governance, and social justice in South and Southeast Asia. Her work on transboundary water governance, international development, social vulnerability to environmental hazards, and infrastructure has appeared in diverse publications, including Global Environmental Politics, the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Political Geography, and Water International.
Creating through fieldwork: a presentation by artist-in-residence Sakura Koretsune
Sakura Koretsune is a visual artist who seeks to reweave the stories between humans and cetaceans through embroidered images on textiles with texts in the form of journals and poems. In October 2022, she joined IKOS and Whales of Power as a guest researcher for one year with the support of the Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists of The Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan. In this guest lecture, she presents the work she has done in Norway in the past 12 months.
Time and place: Sep. 29, 2023 2:15 PM – 3:45 PM, Seminarrom 10, P.A. Munch hus
During her year in Norway, Koretsune visited various places that are relevant to her interest in human-cetacean relationships from the past to the present. Working with local museums and individuals in Norway and Japan, she has studied historical texts and images of the whaling technology transfer era of the two countries from the end of the 19th century to the early 20th century. For the entire month of May 2023, she stayed in Tranøy, Hamarøy and sketched local narratives and her impressions of life with the sea in the area. Her research and fieldwork landed various ways of representation, including embroidery installation, watercolor drawing, and animation.
Koretsune's works were presented in two exhibitions (HumSam-biblioteket, UiO and Hamsungalleriet på Tranøy) and one project (Historisk Museum) this year in Norway. In this lecture, she will present how she has worked on art and research collaborations during her residency in Norway.
Bio
Sakura Koretsune is a visual artist originally from Ondo-cho, Kure city, Hiroshima, Japan. She studied Native Arts of Alaska, Painting, and Sculpture at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 2010. She studied at Tohoku University of Art & Design and received a master’s degree in Localized Design in 2017. Koretsune focuses on whaling, fishing, and maritime religions in her fieldwork. She represents stories related to cetaceans with essays and embroidery works. She is the publisher of a small press “Ordinary Whales”.
Website: www.sakurakoretsune.com
Organiser
Whales of Power
Materiality, Meaning, and (Seafood) Substitutions
On 15 June, C. Anne Claus will give a guest lecture on the ecological, gastronomic, and cultural transformations of seafood in contemporary Japan. All welcome!
Time and place: June 15, 2023 12:15 PM – 1:45 PM, Seminarrom 10, P.A. Munch hus
Seafoods are indispensable to Japanese cuisine for transnational audiences. This status is enshrined in UNESCO's 2014 World Heritage distinction—one that declares fish to be an integral part of washoku. Within Japan, however, traditional culinary culture is in transition as the consumption of meat in recent years has overtaken that of fish.
Alongside the decline in fishers and fish, seafood cooking culture is in crisis. Fewer cooks are willing or even able to process and cook fish at home, putting government agencies and chefs alike on high alert. How are seafood advocates attempting to address the ensuing intertwined ecological, gastronomic, and cultural transformations?
Rather than a highly technocratic approach that oftentimes emerges in environmental projects, contemporary responses to these changing conditions have enlisted the help of cultural icons like Sazae-san, Sakana-kun, and traditional rakugo poetry.
This talk analyzes projects designed to remake cultural tastes through the substitution of certain undesirable fish for other more beloved species. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2022-2023, the talk delineates the diverse ways that chefs and home cooks create meaning and interpret materiality as they negotiate and enact such substitutions in their restaurants and in their homes.
The lecture will be followed by comments from our discussant, environmental anthropologist and researcher at the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities Pierre du Plessis.
C. Anne Claus is is a cultural anthropologist who researches environmental issues in contemporary seascapes, primarily in Japan. She is an associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C., USA. Her publications include Drawing the Sea Near: Satoumi and Coral Reef Conservation in Okinawa (University of Minnesota Press 2020).
Organiser
Whales of Power
2022
Reweaving Whale Stories: Between Fieldwork and Visual Art
Sakura Koretsune is currently in Oslo as a guest researcher in the Whales of Power project. She is a visual artist who collects stories of human-whale relations, and uses these as inspiration for embroidered images on textiles, as well as texts in journals and poems. In this presentation, she will introduce some of her art, and present her plans for research in Norway.
Time and place: Oct. 28, 2022 12:15 PM – 1:30 PM, P.A. Munchs hus, seminar room 15
Sakura Koretsune is a visual artist who seeks to reweave the stories between humans and cetaceans through embroidered images on textiles with texts in the form of journals and poems. In this presentation, she will present her publication project "Ordinary Whales", which is a series of small booklets containing both visual works and texts, on which she has worked since 2016. Inspired by the notion of "super whale" proposed by anthropologist Arne Kalland, she has been trying to reweave rich stories of whales in different regions to find stories that counterbalance images of the "super whale" created by media and the imagination of people who are not close to living cetaceans.
For the past six years, Koretsune has visited various places that have relationships with whales and dolphins. These places are both inside and outside Japan: Ishinomaki and Kesennuma (Miyagi, Japan), Taiji (Wakayama, Japan), Abashiri and Tomakomai (Hokkaido, Japan), Point Hope (Alaska, USA), Shinnecock Nation (New York, USA), and more. As she traveled and studied local beliefs toward whales in Japan and compared them with other places overseas, she realized that the reality is more complicated than the image of "Japan as a whaling country" suggests.
Sakura Koretsune will join the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages of the University of Oslo as a guest researcher for one year with the support of the "Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists" of The Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan. She will participate in the ERC-funded research project "Whales of Power: Aquatic Mammals, Devotional Practices, and Environmental Change in Maritime East Asia”. At this seminar, she will introduce her past works and outline how her view toward human-cetacean relationships has changed through the years of my research and creation. She will also present her plans for her year in Oslo.
Bio
Sakura Koretsune is a visual artist originally from Ondo-cho, Kure city, Hiroshima, Japan. She studied Native Arts of Alaska, Painting, and Sculpture at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 2010. She studied at Tohoku University of Art & Design and received a master’s degree in Localized Design in 2017. Koretsune focuses on whaling, fishing, and maritime religions in her fieldwork. She represents stories related to cetaceans with essays and embroidery works. She is the publisher of a small press “Ordinary Whales”.
Aquatic Powers: Divine Animals of the Asia-Pacific
International Conference "Aquatic Powers: Divine Animals of the Asia-Pacific"
Time and place: June 1, 2022 2:00 PM – June 3, 2022 4:30 PM, University of Oslo
From the Himalayan glaciers to the expanses of the Indian and Pacific oceans, Asia is intersected and connected by waterways. Riverine and maritime trade networks have long enabled cultural and economic exchange between different parts of the Asian continent and the larger Pacific region. Countless human and non-human animals depend upon the Himalayas and the plains and deltas of rivers like the Mekong, Yangtze, and Ganges for survival. Myriad others live along continental and island coasts and depend upon the sea. Asia-Pacific societies and ecologies are shaped by the glaciers, rivers, lakes, deltas, seas, and oceans that connect them. To many people, these waters are sacred—as are the creatures that inhabit and protect them.
The sacred waterways of continental Asia and the maritime Asia-Pacific region are home to a variety of divine animals. People worship albatrosses, catfish, cranes, crocodiles, dolphins, dragons, dugongs, nagas, octopuses, orcas, rays, sharks, squid, turtles, whales, and other animals. These animals are divine messengers, incarnations of ancestral spirits, and the embodiments of gods. They are divine agents who affect human lives and are central to numerous Asian and Pacific cosmologies and ritual traditions. But they are also threatened: by habitat loss, climate change, overfishing, river dams, and pollution. What happens to more-than-human spiritual ecologies when divine animals die out? What new meanings do these sacred creatures acquire in a time of mass extinction, ecological breakdown, disenchantment, and religious transformations?
For this conference, we have invited scholars working on one or more Asian and/or Pacific traditions to share their research on divine aquatic animals. They are historians, scholars of religion, anthropologists, geographers, environmental scientists, and artists. The conference will have an interdisciplinary, exploratory, and small-scale character.
Researchers and students based in Oslo can attend the conference without presenting a paper, but registration is mandatory. If you wish to attend, please fill out the following registration form by May 11, 2022: https://nettskjema.no/a/267082
Selected conference participants will be asked to contribute a chapter to a book on this topic in the autumn of 2022. The volume will be published by a leading academic press, and edited by Lindsey DeWitt, Florence Durney, and Aike Rots. The conference and edited volume are part of the project Whales of Power: Aquatic Mammals, Devotional Practices, and Environmental Change in Maritime East Asia. This project is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 803211 (ERC Starting Grant 2018).
Conference program
June 1 (Wed) - Sophus Bugges hus, seminar room 1
- 13:30–14:00 Arrival and Coffee
- 14:00–14:15 Welcome
- 14:15–15:45 Panel 1: Ritual Innovation and Change (I)
Chair: Lindsey DeWitt Prat- Susan M. DARLINGTON (Deep Springs College): Long Life for a River: Water, Spirituality, and Environmentalism in Northern Thailand
- Marius PALZ (University of Oslo): The Okinawa Dugong: A Messenger in Past and Present
- Aike P. ROTS (University of Oslo): Creatures of the Bodhisattva: Comparing Whale Worship in Japan and Vietnam
- 15:45–16:00 Break
- 16:00–17:30 Panel 2: Environmental Degradation and Community Identity
Chair: Florence Durney- Yvonne TAN (Independent Researcher): Remembering and Rethinking the Water Nagas and End of Paradise
- DARMANTO (Czech Academy of Sciences): Crocodile, Social Order, and Environmental Transformation on Siberut Island (Indonesia)
- Piyawit MOONKHAM (Washington State University)*: ‘Nagascape’: An Observation of Local Myth, Communal Space, and Cultural Landscape in the Chiang Saen Basin, Thailand
- 17:30–20:00 Welcome Reception
June 2 (Thu) - Sophus Bugges hus, seminar room 1
- 9:00–10:30 Panel 3: Nature Conservation and Species Diversity
Chair: Marius Palz- Victoria C. RAMENZONI (Rutgers University): The Sarong of the Sailfish: Endenese Cosmologies about the Maritime World and the Legend of the King of the Ocean
- VŨ Long (Center for Biodiversity Conservation and Endangered Species) and Ellen HINES (San Francisco State University): Whale Temples Hold Critical Knowledge About Marine Mammal Diversity in Central Vietnam
- Fynn HOLM (Harvard University): Three Thousand Ebisu: Dolphin Worship and Hunts in Northeastern Japan
- 10:30–10:45 Break
- 10:45–12:15 Panel 4: Fishing Industry and Trade
Chair: Florence Durney- Evan NICOLL-JOHNSON (University of Alberta): The Eel who Became a God: Animals of the Yangtze River in Early Medieval Chinese Narratives
- WAKAMATSU Fumitaka (Kyoto University)*: Imagined Commodity: Nationalism, Fetishism and Whale Meat in Japan
- Suneel KUMAR (University of Georgia): Transforming Ecological Knots: Palo, Khawaja Khizer and the Ethical Relations During the Times of Environmental Crisis in the Indus Delta of Pakistan
- 12:15–13:00 Lunch
- 13:00–14:30 Panel 5: Materiality and Representation
Chair: Nguyễn Anh Tuấn- Alexandra DALFERRO (Cornell University): Nagas in Knots: Silk Patterns as Conduits and Connections to Unseen Worlds
- Veronica WALKER VADILLO (University of Helsinki): The Snake, the Crocodile, and the King: Nautical Technology and Supernatural Potencies in Angkor
- ĐOÀN Thị Mỹ Hương (Vietnam National Institute of Culture and Art Studies): The Turtle Symbol in Vietnamese Culture
- 14:30–14:45 Break
- 14:45–16:15 Panel 6: Indigenous Ethics and Natural Resource Management
Chair: Aike P. Rots- Sonja ÅMAN (University of Oslo): Solidarity and Self-Determination in Indigenous Whaling Politics
- Barbara AMBROS (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)*: Refraining from Killing and Releasing Aquatic Life in the Edo Period
- Brendan A. GALIPEAU (National Tsing Hua University)*: Salmon Ancestors and Climate Change in Indigenous Taiwan
- 16:15–16:30 Break
- 16:30–18:00 Panel 7: Boundaries and Contact Zones
Chair: Lindsey DeWitt Prat- Quoc-Thanh NGUYEN (Lyon Institute of East Asian Studies)*: Whale and Crocodile Worship: What Maritime Cults Teach Us about Southeast Asia and Cultural Syncretism in Troubled Times
- Florence DURNEY (University of Oslo): Ocean Bordering: Hunting, Belief and Multispecies Interdependency in Nusa Tenggara Timor
- Fabio RAMBELLI (University of California, Santa Barbara)*: The Ichthyosphere and the Sacred: Maritime Animals and Japanese Religions
- 19:00–22:00 Conference Dinner
June 3 (Fri) - Lucy Smiths hus, 10th floor
- 9:00–10:30 Panel 8: Aesthetics and National Heritage
Chair: Sonja Åman- Yuske TANINAKA (Independent Artist/Researcher): Geo-Body of Whale / Alternative Oceans
- NGUYỄN Thị Hiền (Vietnam National University): Images of the Sacred Dragons, Turtles and Claws in the Folk Consciousness of the Việt People
- NGUYỄN Anh Tuấn (University of Oslo): Mass Tourism and Stranded Whale Gods: The Invention of Tradition and the Search for Cultural Identity in Central Vietnam
- 10:30–10:45 Break
- 10:45–12:15 Panel 9: Ritual Innovation and Change (II)
Chair: Aike P. Rots- Andrew Alan JOHNSON (University of California-Berkeley): The Fish King and the Black Naga
- Erling Hagen AGØY (University of Oslo): “Thousands of Flood-Dragons and Clam-Monsters Came Forth”: Divine Animals as the Causes of Climate Events in Late Imperial China
- Kathryn DYT (Institute of Historical Research, University of London)*: Crocodiles and Dragons: Liminal Aquatic Beings in Vietnam During the Nguyen Dynasty
- 12:15–13:00 Lunch
- 13:00–15:00 Panel 10: Fluid Identities
Chair: Florence Durney- Lindsey DEWITT PRAT (Ghent University): Meandering with the Water Goddess in Japan: Dragon to Snake, River to Sea, Mountain to Island, and More
- Darcie DEANGELO (University of Oklahoma): Bucketed Women & Fainting Giantesses: Everyday Ecological Transformations and Gendered Sorrows in Cambodian Stories
- Ika NURHAYANI (University of Brawijaya)*: Ecolinguistics: Indonesian Folklores on Divine Marine Animals
- Mark TEEUWEN (University of Oslo): Crocodiles in Early Imperial Mythohistory? The Riddle of the Ancient Wani
- 15:00–15:15 Break
- 15:15–16:30 Final Discussion and Publication Plans
- Optional: Pizza and Drinks (self-funded)
* = Participation via Zoom
2021
Secularism in Asia: a Comparative Perspective
In this guest lecture, Peter van der Veer from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen will give a comparison of secularism in India and China, focusing on the idea of the secular as rational and on violence against religious minorities.
Time and place: Nov. 29, 2021 4:15 PM – 6:00 PM, P.A. Munchs hus: Seminar room 10
This talk addresses two issues that do not seem to receive enough attention in the discussion of secularism. The first is the question of the secular as rational. This question is raised especially by Max Weber’s work on Entzauberung. It relates to secular policies against magic or superstition, especially in communist states. The second issue is that of violence against religious minorities. The relation between minority and majority is crucial in all nation-states and secularism of the state seems an important factor in them. The lecture focuses on the comparison of secularism in India and China. In various ways, Asian intellectuals have sought to connect modern ideas about the location of religion in society and state with Asian traditions. In East Asia, this has led to various forms of repression of certain kinds of religion as superstitious impediments to progress. In South Asia, this is subsumed under a unifying impulse to create religious forms of nationalism. The imperative of modern nationalism is to nationalize religion. This leads to the understanding of some religions as belonging to the civilizational essence, while marginalizing other religions. The very existence of religious difference can be interpreted as a challenge to the unitary state and its developmental mission. Forms of secularism are essential in extending the protection of the state to religious minorities and to differences in beliefs and practices.
Lecturer's bio
Peter van der Veer is Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen as well as Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Utrecht University. In 2019 and 2020 he was the Provost’s Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago, where he gave the Annual Vivekananda Lecture. He is an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author or editor of more than ten books, including most recently, The Modern Spirit of Asia (Princeton), The Value of Comparison (Duke), The Handbook of Religion and the Asian City (Berkeley), the Secular in South, East, and South-East Asia (Palgrave), and Refugees and Religion (Bloomsbury).
Organiser
Whales of Power
Japan’s Sacred Sumo and the Exclusion of Women
In this guest lecture, Lindsey DeWitt Prat, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Ghent University, will give a talk on the rich cultural history of the sumo wrestler, focusing on the often obscured role women have played throughout this history.
Time and place: Oct. 20, 2021 4:15 PM – 6:00 PM, Sophus Bugges hus: Auditorium 2
Few icons of Japanese culture are more widely recognized than the sumo wrestler. He sports a loincloth and a slicked back topknot. His hulking body is poised to engage. And he is always a man, in the popular imagination at least. The Japan Sumo Association, a quasi-governmental corporation, champions itself as the custodian of a divine affair cultivated by male deities and mortal men, and exclusive of women. Juxtaposing modern and contemporary sumo literature with historical documents and present-day practices, Dr. DeWitt’s talk peers behind the icon and shows how the fantasies surrounding sumo obscure the richness and diversity of its cultural history, a history that includes women.
Lecturer's bio
Lindsey DeWitt Prat is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Ghent University. Photo credit: Lindsey DeWitt Prat.
Lindsey DeWitt Prat is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Ghent University. Photo credit: Lindsey DeWitt Prat.
Lindsey DeWitt Prat is a Flanders Research Foundation (FWO) Postdoctoral Fellow at Ghent University. Her research interests center on Japan and span four main areas of inquiry: religion; gender; social inclusion/exclusion; and tradition/heritage discourse.
Her home page: lindseydewittpratresearch.org
Organiser
Whales of Power
2020
Workshop: "Ethnographic Fieldwork in East Asia in Times of Covid-19"
On 12 August, we have a digital workshop on doing ethnographic research in East Asia in times of Covid-19. The workshop is organised in collaboration with the ERC-funded project WelfareStruggles at Bielefeld University, Germany. Participation is by invitation only.
Time and place: Aug. 12, 2020 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Zoom
Calling for Wind and Rain Rituals: Environment, Emotion and Royal Authority in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam
In this guest lecture, Kathryn Dyt from the Institute of Historical Research in London will give a talk on weather rituals performed by the nineteenth-century Vietnamese court as a way to regulate rainfall and other natural events.
Time and place: Jan. 23, 2020 12:15 PM – 1:15 PM, P.A. Munchs hus: Seminar room 3
The environment was a major preoccupation of the Nguyen court in nineteenth-century Vietnam. ‘Calling for Wind and Rain Rituals’ (Cau Dao) was a key means through which the court sought to regulate rainfall, to restore clement weather and to alleviate the effects of natural disasters such as floods, droughts and epidemics. Drawing on a range of sources including court histories, administrative records and religious texts, this talk explores the complex relations between the environment and royal authority through a study of Cau Dao ritual practices. The success or failure of ritual efforts to regulate rain is meticulously documented in royal reports. While irregular rainfall was often interpreted as a sign of Heavenly disapproval with the ruling dynasty, this talk delves into the various explanatory paradigms for natural events and considers how responsibility for rain was distributed across a broad social and supernatural spectrum. Emotion was a key ingredient in ritual efficacy. This lecture considers the emperor’s role as a mediator of sentiment between the people and the environment, thus challenging previous scholarly depictions of the Nguyen court as self-absorbed and insular.
Lecturer's bio
Kathryn Dyt is a Past and Present Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London. An environmental and cultural historian with a regional specialism in Southeast Asia, she has conducted extensive historical research in Vietnam since 2004. Her PhD thesis, completed at the Australian National University, was awarded the 2018 ASAA Prize for the Best Thesis in Asian Studies. Kathryn is currently completing her book manuscript, The Vietnamese Weather-World: An Environmental History of the Nguyen Dynasty, which explores how the Vietnamese court in the nineteenth century organised itself in relation to the powerful, agentive and emotional ‘weather-world’ within which it was immersed.
Organiser
Whales of Power
Whale Blood at the Beach: Coastal Pollution and the Anti-Whaling Movements in Japan and Norway, 1900-1912
In this guest lecture, Fynn Holm from the University of Zurich will give a historical perspective and comparison of the environmental knowledge of anti-whaling movements in Japan and Norway.
Time and place: Jan. 9, 2020 12:15 PM – 1:15 PM, P.A. Munchs hus: Seminarrom 10
The introduction of large-scale industrial whaling operations in Norway and Japan at the turn of the twentieth century triggered wide-spread concern among the local fishing population. In 1903, frustrated fishermen destroyed a whaling station in Mehamn in Northern Norway. A few years later, in 1911, a whaling station was burned down by local fishermen in Hachinohe in Northern Japan. Both groups argued that the flensing of the whales caused whale blood, oil, and grease to be disseminated along the coast, destroying local flora and fauna. Furthermore, according to the environmental knowledge of the fishermen, whales brought fish closer to the shore and were, therefore, part of the fishermen's hunting regime.
This talk discusses the similarities of the Norwegian and Japanese anti-whaling movements by focusing on the environmental knowledge of the local fishing populations. It is argued that concerns regarding coastal pollution were closely related to the socio-economic circumstances, but also the cultural beliefs of the locals.
Lecturer's bio
Fynn Holm is a research fellow and lecturer at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich. He has studied History, Law, and Japanese Studies at the Universities of Basel and Zurich and is currently finishing his Ph.D. thesis titled "Living with the Gods of the Sea: Anti-Whaling Movements in Northeast Japan, 1600-1912."
Organiser
Whales of Power
2019
WhoP Workshop "Ethnographic Fieldwork in Asia: Research Ethics, Data Security, and Personal Safety"
On 16 and 17 December 2019, WhoP organises a workshop on ethnographic fieldwork in Asia. Here we will discuss various issues related to research ethics, data security, and personal safety. On the first day, there will be a number of guest lectures and group discussions. On the second day, we will discuss individual PhD and postdoc projects. If you wish to take part in the workshop, you can sign up by sending an email to the WhoP PI, Aike Rots.
Time and place: Dec. 16, 2019 9:00 AM – Dec. 17, 2019 5:00 PM, P.A. Munchs hus, Blindern
In a short article published in the journal Ethnography, four leading Dutch anthropologists recently proposed a new set of ethical guidelines for anthropological research (De Koning et al. 2019). As the authors indicate, there is a fundamental tension between the realities of ethnographic research and some of the demands of funding bodies and data protection agencies, which operate with notions of “personal data” derived from medical and quantitative social sciences. One such example is the obligation to make data anonymous and open access, which denies the embodied and intersubjective nature of ethnographic knowledge exchange. Anthropological materials, the authors argue, “cannot be considered as disembodied and transferable ‘data’”; “providing open access to fieldwork materials is therefore limited.” Similarly, the use of informed consent forms for interviewees can be problematic. In many societies, the use of such forms would be considered inappropriate and may jeopardize relations of trust between a researcher and her interlocutors. As De Koning et al. write: “Anthropological research is built on trust, and researchers have a responsibility to protect the privacy and the safety of their interlocutors. (…) We consider it legitimate and often advisable to work with oral forms of consent, since written consent forms may impact negatively on interlocutors’ privacy, safety, and possession of knowledge.”
As scholars conducting qualitative ethnographic research, we have to comply with official regulations concerning personal data. Meanwhile, we also have a moral responsibility vis-à-vis our interlocutors in the field. What do we do when these two obligations collide? How do we protect the privacy and safety of our interlocutors, especially in totalitarian societies? How do we define “personal data” in qualitative ethnographic research, and how do we ensure that these data are treated in ways that guarantee the safety of our interlocutors, while also meeting European legal and formal requirements? In other words, how do we translate concepts and regulations that have been developed in Euro-American legal and cultural contexts into our Asian fieldwork settings? And, equally important, how do we protect our own personal safety in the field, and that of our partners and children?
These are some of the questions that will be addressed during this two-day workshop, the aim of which is to be better prepared for the challenges posed by the uncertainties of ethnographic fieldwork as well as legal or institutional requirements. Thus, we will discuss not only the theory, but also the practicalities and formalities of research ethics in the present age. Changes in legal requirements (e.g., GDPR), institutional formations, open access imperatives, and IT security are all posing new challenges for researchers conducting ethnographic fieldwork. European regulations may not be easily transferable to Asian (totalitarian) contexts, but somehow we have to make this translation. At this workshop, we will reflect upon these issues and share our experiences, concerns, and suggestions.
The workshop lasts two days. The first day consists of several guest lectures and discussions, addressing problems related to fieldwork challenges, data protection, formal requirements, informed consent, software and computer use, and personal safety. Confirmed speakers are Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, Olga Djordjilovic, Asbjørn Brovold Gabrielsen, Mette Halskov Hansen, Heidi Østbø Haugen, and Elisabeth Schober. On the second day, we will discuss individual research projects. Participants will briefly introduce their projects and share some of their ethical or practical concerns, and give feedback to each other, drawing on the lectures and discussions from the first day.
This is a closed workshop: only a limited number of participants can attend, and they have to sign up in advance. The atmosphere will be informal, collegial, and confidential, allowing us to share our questions and concerns in a safe environment. The workshop is primarily targeted at early-career scholars (postdocs and PhD candidates), but senior scholars are welcome to take part, too. If you wish to participate, please send an email to the Whales of Power project leader, Aike Rots (a.p.rots[at]ikos.uio.no), by November 15. Participation is free and lunches are provided, but registration is binding. Participants will be asked to share their research proposals or project outlines, together with a short text discussing some potential challenges in their project, in advance, by November 29.
Organiser
Aike Rots
Vietnamese Maritime Culture: Traditional Beliefs Between Land and Sea
In this guest lecture, Quoc-Thanh Nguyen from the Lyon Institute of East Asian Studies will talk about Vietnamese fishing culture and whale worship. The lecture will include a short documentary film showing.
Time and place: Nov. 21, 2019 12:15 PM – 1:15 PM, P.A. Munchs hus: Seminarrom 14
The coast of Vietnam is located at the heart of maritime trade routes that have connected different countries of Asia. As this area is also at the crossroads of three main imperiums - the Chinese, Indian and Archipelago worlds - the culture we find here is marked by the influence of these three. For centuries, Vietnamese fisherfolk have lived with traditional beliefs coming from foreign cultures. Their protective deities bear the mark of several different cultures, including Chinese, Cham, and even cultures outside Asia. This combination of foreign religious elements is what has characterized fisherfolk culture.
Among all maritime cults, the best example is that of the whale cult. During the lecture, a short documentary film will be screened, showing whale worship among Vietnamese fishermen. A major event of the year for the fishermen, the whale festival, brings thousands of pilgrims to fishing villages to celebrate marine mammals. These religious ceremonies offer us a cultural palette of surprising wealth, revealing their footprints in Southeast Asia. They also show us another face of Vietnamese Culture – one rather complex, with many perspectives.
Lecturer's bio
NGUYEN Quoc-Thanh holds a PhD in Languages, Literatures and Societies from INALCO in Paris and is now an associate member of Lyon Institute of East Asian Studies (IAO). Her research is focused on sea communities in the South China Sea.
Organiser
Whales of Power
Re-Conceptualizing the South China Sea
Whales of Power is happy to announce the guest lecture "Re-Conceptualizing the South China Sea" by Dr. Edyta Roszko (Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen). The lecture is organised in collaboration with East Asian Lunch Seminars, IKOS, University of Oslo.
Time and place: May 23, 2019 12:15 PM – 1:15 PM, P.A. Munchs hus, seminarrom 10
Re-Conceptualizing the South China Sea: Ethnicity and Mobility Beyond Nation, Society and Cartographic anxieties
In the geopolitical conflict over the South China Sea, fishers are placed at the centre of Chinese and Vietnamese cartographic imaginations that define the sea either as “Chinese” or “Vietnamese” and hence tie them to the disputed territories of the Paracels and Spratlys. While their historical presence and customary fishing rights in the South China Sea (SCS) have been much publicized in the context of this territorial dispute, the long-standing Cham seafaring trade networks and legacy are ignored by both countries.
Based on ethnographic, archaeological and archive fieldwork in Vietnam and China, Roszko will link—usually separated—histories and activities of Cham, Han and Viet fishing groups, offering longue durée analysis of oceanic connections, without romanticizing. Rather than aiming to (de)legitimize Vietnam’s respectively China’s territorial claims to the SCS, she argues that the contemporary use of occupational and national labels produces particular effects by projecting recent closures and enclosures onto the past, in spite of interconnected histories of the Cham, Vietnamese and Chinese.
Bio
Edyta Roszko is a Senior Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway, where she develops a new research direction on oceans. After her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology / Martin Luther University (Halle, Germany – 2011) which focused on religion and politics in Vietnam, she did ethnographic research among Chinese and Vietnamese fishing communities in the common maritime space of the South China Sea.
Bridging different historical periods and countries, the question of mobility, migration and connectivity of fishers compelled her to historicize fishing communities and to work beyond the nation-state and area studies frame.
Edyta’s newly awarded European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project TransOcean at Chr. Michelsen Institute expands her geographic field beyond Vietnam and China to include other global regions in Oceania and West and East Africa.
Edyta’s scholarly articles have appeared in Cross-Currents: East Asian history and Culture Review, Nations and Nationalism and Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and other journals. Her monograph Fishers, Monks and Cadres: Navigating State and Religious Authorities along Central Vietnam’s South China Sea Coast is forthcoming with NIAS Press (Copenhagen).