SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Newsletter 20:

24 October 2002

SASNET News:

• Symposium for PhD students and post-docs in the weekend
57 participants will take part in the SASNET symposium for Swedish PhD students and post-docs engaged in research related to South Asia in a vast variety of research fields – from Physiology, Surgical Sciences, and Electrical Power Engineering, to Social Anthropology, Comparative Religions, and International Education – in the coming weekend, 25–27 October 2002, at Marstrands Varmbadhus, north of Göteborg. The symposium will be devoted to discuss the situation of PhD students in South Asian Studies or South Asia relevant studies (recruitment, fieldwork, supervision, finishing, post-doc situation). See the final programme for the symposium.

• Panels suggestions welcome to the EASAS conference at Lund 2004
The 18th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies will take place at Lund University, Sweden, 6–9 July 2004. Scholars engaged in research and teaching concerning South Asia with regard to all periods and fields of study are welcome to take part in the conference, which is organised by SASNET, on behalf of the European Association for South Asian Studies, EASAS. Suggestions for panels should be delivered before 30 June, 2003. More information.

• 15 November last date for SASNET planning grants
Last date for applications to the next round of SASNET Planning and Networking grants is Friday 15 November, 2002. Full details on http://www.sasnet.lu.se/grantsinvit.html.

• Masters course in South Asian studies at Lund University
A 60 credits Masters Course (Magisterutbildning) in South Asian Studies will start at Lund University in the Fall 2003. The course, which is currently planned by a working group consisting of teachers and researchers in the Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences (and assisted by the SASNET root node at Lund), will be administered in collaboration with the Centre for East and South East Asian Studies at Lund University. Jan Magnusson, PhD, Dept. of Social Work, former SASNET webmaster, is in charge of the planning process.

• SASNET lecture on pollution in Tiruppur
Dr Prakash Nelliyat, environmental economist from Madras School of Economics, Chennai, India, held a SASNET lecture at Lund University, on ”Environmental cost of T-shirts. The case of Tirupur, India”, on Wednesday 2 October, 2002, at the Dept of Human Ecology. Prakash Nelliyat is working on a thesis on ”Economic Assessment of Industrial Water Pollution – A Case Study of Textile Processiong Units in Tiruppur”, and has been staying at Linköping University for two months during the Fall of 2002, on a World Bank Scholarship.

• SASNET lecture on South Asian regional stability
Professor Bhupinder Brar from Dept of Political Science, University of Punjab, Chandigarh, India, was invited by SASNET to lecture at the Dept of Sociology, Lund University, on ”Stability and Security in South Asia: Towards a Post-Nationalist Perspective”, on Wednesday 9 October, 2002. To the right: Prof Brar together with the SASNET Director, Prof Staffan Lindberg.

Community News:

• Swedish Development Studies research
A large number of Swedish researchers in Development studies will present their projects/programmes during the conference ”Fattiga och rika. Aktuell utvecklingsforskning och dess villkor i Sverige”, arranged at Lund University 9–11 January, 2003. Prof Keith Griffin from the University of California, Riverside, and Prof Barbara Harriss-White from the Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, are specially invited guests. They will discuss ”Meeting the Challenges of Globalisation: Opportunities and Threats for the Developing World” with researchers from Asia and Africa. More information.

• Dissertation on Islamic banking in Bangladesh
Mohammed Nurul Alam, at the Dept of Business Administration, Lund University (but since 2001 living in Toronto, Canada), defended his doctoral thesis on ”Financing Small and Cottage Industries in Bangladesh by Islamic Banks: An Institutional Network Approach”, on Thursday 24 October, at the School of Economics & Management. Faculty opponent was Professor Amjad Hadjikhani, Dept of Business Administration, Uppsala University. Read the abstract.

• Human Rights award to Asma Jahangir
The Pakistani Human Rights activist Asma Jahangir will be given Oslo University’s Human Rights Award for 2002. She will get the award at a ceremony at Georg Sverdrups hus, Blindern on 29 October. More information.

• Two Indian students graduated from the IIIEE
Two Indian students received their degrees from the Master’s of Science Programme in Environmental Management and Policy, at Lund University, on Friday 4 October, 2002. The 60 credits course is run by the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, IIIEE. The Indian ambassador to Sweden, Ms Chitra Narayanan, was the chief guest at the graduation ceremony. More information on our page on IIIEE.
The Indian Ambassador held an honorary speech at the occasion. Read the full text.

• Staffan Lindberg on Indian development
An article on named ”India – Modernity and Passion” (in Swedish only), was written by Staffan Lindberg for the magazine Internationella Studier, 3/2002. The article is available through SASNET as a pdf-file. Read it.

• Rehabilitation of University faculties in Afghanistan
The World Bank supports the rehabilitation of university faculties and colleges in Afghanistan, and the establishment of a distance-learning center in the country, through the so called ”Emergency Education Rehabilitation and Development Project”. In the Middle of October 2002 the World Bank, at its second Implementation Group Meeting in Kabul, fully endorsed the National Development Budget presented by the government in Afghanistan. More information.

• New opportunities for Indian and Swedish business development.
More than one hundred Indian and Swedish business leaders met in a seminar in Stockholm on 7 October 2002 under the heading ‘India and Sweden – New Vistas of Cooperation’. Read a report by SASNET Director Staffan Lindberg, who took part in the meeting. http://www.sasnet.lu.se/bussmeet.html

• Third EU–India Summit held in Copenhagen
The Third EU–India Summit took place in Copenhagen on 10 October, 2002. Several areas of co-operation were discussed during the summit in which Prime Minister Vajpayee took part. More information.

Conferences and courses

• A Conference on ”Developing Countries and the Network Revolution: Leapfrogging ormMarginalization?”
is arranged by Norsk forening for utviklingsforskning, in collaboration with the Development Studies and Collaboration Initiative, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, 14-15 november, 2002. More information.

• A Symposium on ”Developing Participation – Challenges for Policy and Practice in Approaches to Poverty Reduction and Democratisation”
is arranged in Stockholm on Tuesday 19 November, 2002, 9.00–17.00. The symposium includes lectures by Dr John Gaventa, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, U K, and Dr Ranjula Bali Swain, Dept of Economics, Uppsala University, and it is organised by Sida and the Collegium for Development Studies at Uppsala University. Venue: Hotel Victory, Lilla Nygatan 5, Stockholm. Register participation before 4 November to Mia Melin. More information on the Collegium homepage.

• A Conference on Human Rights Research
with the theme ”Globalisation, Development and Human Rights” is organised by the Institute for World Congress on Human Rights (IWCOHR), at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on 22-24 November, 2002.

• The conference ”Transgressing Culture – Rethinking Creativity in Arts, Science and Politics”
takes place in Malmö and Lund, Sweden, 29 November – 1 December, 2002. It is organised by a group calling themselves MalmöLund Third Space Seminar, influenced by the post-colonial Indian theorist Homi K Bhabha. The conference is partly financed by the twin cities and universities of Lund and Malmö. Among the keynote speakers are Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. More information.

• A conference on “Culture, Colonisation and Decolonisation in South East and South Asia: French, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch Perspectives”
is arranged at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, on 20–22 February 2003. The conference is organised by the Institute of Romance Studies, in collaboration with the AHRB Centre for Asian and African Literatures. Professor Ann Laura Stoler of the History Dept, University of Michigan, will deliver a public keynote address on the topic of “Affect and the colonial state” at SOAS on 20 February in the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre. For more information contact the Institute of Romance Studies.

• More conferences connected to South Asian studies, se SASNET’s page, http://www.sasnet.lu.se/conferences.html

Important lectures and workshops

• Panel debate on the impact of Tomb plundering and smuggling
The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Östasiatiska museet), Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, arranges a panel debate on the impact of tomb plundering and smuggling – especially in Asia and Africa – on ancient monuments and museum collections worldwide, on Saturday 9 November, 2002, 13–15. Experts in different fields related to this problem, including the museum’s Director Magnus Fiskesjö, will discuss what should be done to stop the International trade in stolen antiquities. These items in many cases end up in museums and private collections today.

News on courses and education

• Erasmus World funding from 2004
As a means of promoting exchange and dialogue between cultures the European Commission on 17 July, 2002, decided to introduce a new Higher Education programme called ERASMUS WORLD (not to be confused with the main Socrates/Erasmus programme), with a proposed budget of €200 million, covering the period 2004-2008. Erasmus World will seek to attract more students from third countries (i e not EU member and associated states) and to enable European students to study in these countries.
The programme also encourages EU partnerships to develop joint Masters Courses to attract EU-funded postgraduate students from third countries to European institutions, and it will fund European students to study in third countries, as well as promote staff exchanges to and from Europe. More information on the programme.

New and updated items on SASNET web site

• More Swedish departments where research on South Asia is going on:
Added to the list of research environments at Swedish universities, presented by SASNET. The full list now includes more than 60 departments. Go to the presentation page, http://www.sasnet.lu.se/environment.html.

‡ Division of Geriatric Epidemiology, Department of NEUROTEC
(Clinical Neuroscience, Occupational Therapy and Elderly Care Research); at Karolinska Institutet Medical University, Stockholm
– Stockholm Gerontology Research Center, Geriatric medicine section
‡ Division of Applied Thermodynamics and Refrigeration, Dept of Energy Technology, at Kungl Tekniska Högskolan, Stockholm
‡ Dept of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management. at Lund University
‡ Dept of Law, at Stockholm University
‡ Dept of Human Geography, at Södertörn University College, Huddinge

• Several new articles recommended for reading
Look at http://www.sasnet.lu.se/recreading.html for suggestions on interesting new articles on South Asia in International media.

Cultural Events connected to South Asia in Scandinavia

• Odissi performance by Kolkata artist in Stockholm
The extraordinary Odissi dancer Dipanwita Roy from Kolkata, India – a disciple of Padmabushan Shri Kelucharan Mahapatra, and Padmashree Sanjukta Panigrahi, performs at Musikmuseet in Stockholm (Sibyllegatan 2), Friday 25 October, 2002, 18.30. Dipwanita Roy has previously toured Sweden, she performed in Lund and Göteborg in 1992, but this is her first show in Stockholm. More information from Musikmuseet.

• Tagore programme at Nobel Museum in Stockholm
The Nobel Museum in Stockholm arranges a programme on the Indian author/poet, and Nobel laureate 1913, Rabindranath Tagore, on Thursday 31 October, 2002, 18.30. P O Henricson lectures on Tagore’s life, and Bubu Munshi-Eklund sings his compositions in the original language Bengali. The museum, located in Börshuset at Stortorget in Gamla Stan, also presents Tagore in its exhibitions, and through a film and an exhibition catalogue in several languages.

• Bharata Natyam performance with a social content
The Indian Bharata Natyam artist Sarangarajan Vijayalakshmi from Chennai tours Sweden during September–October 2002, with a performance called ”Love’s Wisdom in the Last Era”. It is a touching performance that deals with the evil phenomenon of Infanticide in certain parts of the State of Tamil Nadu in South India, and it is arranged by Alvom, an organisation that fights infanticide. The next performance will take place on 31 October, 19.00, at Stadsteatern in Kristianstad (Tivoliparken). SASNET sponsored a performance in Lund on Wednesday 23 October.

• ”God has 99 names” now in Norrköping
Riksutställningar and SKS has produced an exhibition on ”Gud har 99 namn”, on tour through Sweden, now on its third year! It is on show till 10 November, 2002, at Arbetets Museum in Norrköping. More information.

 Best regards

     Staffan Lindberg           Lars Eklund

SASNET/ Swedish South Asian Studies Network

SASNET is a national network for research, education, and information about South Asia, based at Lund University. The aim is to encourage and promote an open and dynamic networking process, in which Swedish researchers co-operate with researchers in South Asia and globally.
The network is open to all sciences. Priority is given to co-operation between disciplines and across faculties, as well as institutions in the Nordic countries and in South Asia. The basic idea is that South Asian studies will be most fruitfully pursued in co-operation between researchers, working in different institutions with a solid base in their mother disciplines.
The network is financed by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and by Lund University.

Postal address: SASNET – Swedish South Asian Studies Network, International Office,
Lund University, P O Box 117, S-221 00 Lund
Visiting address: Gamla Kirurgen, Sandgatan 3, first floor, room no. 230
Phone: + 46 46 222 73 40
Fax: + 46 46 222 96 65
E-mail: sasnet@sasnet.lu.se
Web site: http://www.sasnet.lu.se
Our office is manned weekdays 9-17, and open to visitors.

Staff: Staffan Lindberg, director/co-ordinator &
           Lars Eklund, webmaster/programme secretary