Workshop
Current research on (Southeast) Asia at the University of Cologne
9 October 2025
9:00 - 12:30 (CEST)
Programme
9-9:15 Welcome
9:15-10 Presentation slot 1 (Su and Nanny)
10-11:15 Presentation slot 2 (Sandra, Tong and Pujo)
11-11:15 Coffee
11:15-12 Presentation slot 3 (Rosalie and Luzile)
12-12:30 Looking ahead
Abstracts
“Womanhood” in Conflict-Induced Displacement: less visible arenas of battle over autonomy
Su Myat Thwe (Global South Studies Center, GSSC)
This ongoing work examines the gendered dimensions of conflict-induced displacement among Myanmar communities displaced to Thailand’s borderlands post-2021. While legal definitions of displacement often focus on political drivers such as war and persecution — and, more recently, environmental causes — this work highlights the economic, social, and gendered dimensions that shape displaced women’s lives.
Drawing from extended ethnographic research, examines how “womanhood” becomes a contested space where autonomy is negotiated daily, shaped by intersecting factors like class, generation, religion, and the broader political conflict. Women in these communities balance vulnerability tied to human security with resilience drawn from socio-economic resources in the liminality context of displacement. However, deeper struggles emerge around the meaning of autonomy—not as absolute freedom but as Stoljar’s notion of adaptive preference formation, shaped by constrained livelihoods and informed by feminist thought.
The analysis highlights shifting social norms around sexual freedom, the politicization of gender roles in conflict including the masculinization of resistance and the feminization of peace work, as well as the strategic gendered performances in humanitarian contexts. Drawing on Butler’s theory of gender performativity, the phenomenon is tried to understand how these performances simultaneously challenge and reproduce gender norms, potentially redefining “womanhood” within displaced communities and beyond to the host-home Southeast Asia states’ view on traditional gender norms.
Theoretical References
1. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge.
2. Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. Routledge.
3. Stoljar, N. (2024). Feminist perspectives on autonomy. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Summer 2024 ed.). Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/feminism-autonomy/
4. Turner, V. (1969). Liminality and Communitas. In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti Structure (pp. 41-49). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Another capitalism: Chinese miners in China and Southeast Asia before 1850
Nanny Kim (Global South Studies Center, GSSC)
This presentation outlines why I use a combination of history, historical geography and historical anthropology to study premodern Chinese mining history. I mainly focus on doing history on a topic that rarely appears in written records, on historical representations, and on piecing together a history of "capitalist self-organization" without "capitalism" in Chinese mining communities and of "colonial expansion" without "colonialism."
Home-making and youthful spaces in Vietnamese rap MV’s
Sandra Kurfürst (Global South Studies Center, GSSC)
The production of youthful spaces in Vietnamese cities as well as the fluidity of private and public space in Vietnam are topics immanent to current debates on Vietnamese urban geographies (Drummond 2000; Drummond and Nguyen 2008; Geertman et al. 2016; Geertman and Boudreau 2018; Kurfürst 2012; Kurfürst 2021). This paper adds to this body of literature by focusing on Vietnamese rap videos and their representations of private and public spaces, and how actors in these videos navigate urban space.
While rap has been practiced by young people in Vietnam since the 1990s, it has recently moved from underground to the so-called overground, not the least due to recent broadcasting on national television in shows such as King of Rap. Vietnamese women rappers like Suboi or Kimmese and Vietnamese men rappers like Lee 7 or NAH promote their music through music videos (MVs). These videos provide us with different ideas of place and practices of place-making. The videos take up hip hop aesthetics circulated through rap videos from the U. S., while referring to Vietnamese notions of home-making and taking on current dynamics of urban redevelopment. This study draws on remote and digital ethnography (Pink et al. 2015; Postill 2017) to understand ideas of belonging and place-making in rap videos. It employs emplaced digital ethnography, since the author has been to the cities the videos were shot in, and is familiar with the social production of space in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with two rappers. The music videos invite us to imagine alternative ways of being in the city and being together. For example, Suboi’s videos emphasise the presence of young women in the city, showing them riding and dancing through streets at night, a time where single women are expected to be home. By contrast, Lee 7 presents himself surrounded by big cars and money, while struggling with his alter ego in what appears to be his home. Moreover, NAH shares insides into the intimate place of his home, which is associated with his mother, while the public space of the street becomes the male domain where he meets his friends.
The video shots frequently shift between private and public spaces, showing the fluidity of the two. Moreover, they present what it means to be young Vietnam. In the case of NAH it means yet to be married, while living at home with his parents and the need to fulfill responsibilities vis-à-vis his mother as a child (Pham 2011). The music videos represent local ideas of youth and youthfulness, while demonstrating how youth navigate the city.
A Study of Karl Theodor Stöpel’s Journey to Formosa at the End of the 19th Century
Tong Yali (University of Cologne)
This research project explores the 1898 journey of German economist Karl Theodor Stöpel (1862–1940) to Formosa (modern-day Taiwan). Invited by the Japanese colonial government, Stöpel stayed on the island from November 1898 to January 1899 and successfully ascended the main peak of Yushan (Niitakayama/Mount Morrison) on December 26. His travelogue, Eine Reise in das Innere der Insel Formosa und die erste Besteigung des Niitakayama (Mount Morrison), Weihnachten 1898 (English: A Voyage into the Interior of the Island of Formosa and the First Ascent of Niitakayama (Mount Morrison) – Christmas 1898), published in Argentina in 1905, offers rich insights into his travel route and his observations of the Han Chinese population, various indigenous groups, and the Japanese colonial administration.
Stöpel’s background as an economist sets him apart from the Japanese ethnologists of his time, and his writing constructs layered representations of both self and other. This study investigates how cultural attribution, colonial power relations, and personal perspective intersect in Stöpel’s account. It examines an intercultural encounter at the close of the nineteenth century, analyzing how Stöpel’s depiction of Formosa transcends geographic description to emerge as a cultural construct—an intricate interplay of admiration, critique, and projection.
A millennium of interspecies affairs.
Javanese farmers and the Arenga sugar palm, the 900s - 2010s
Pujo Semedi (Universitas Gadjah Mada)
Aren palm (Arenga pinnata) in Java is interesting. For centuries, since the late first millennium, aren have been supplying various everyday life needs among the Javanese: "... the sap can be boiled into sugar. The trees' braided leaves can be used for roof and wall coverings. The woody spines provide firewood, and the finer spines are suitable for making baskets and brooms. If the tree is old, the trunk is good for house material as well as for bridges and firewood. The fruits, the so-called kolang-kaling, are a delicacy". Paleographic, historical, and ethnographic data reveal that the relationship between palm trees and Javanese society throughout the second millennium was a journey of ups and downs. Initially, when the majority of the Javanese population still lived in the lowlands, their sugar supply was provided by the Asian palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer), coconut (Cocos nucifera), and nipa palm (Nipa fruticans). The importance of aren palms increased with the expansion of habitation into mountainous areas where the palmyra palm no longer grew. During the early colonial rule in the 18th century, the role of the aren palm as a sugar supplier in Java was still quite strong. The situation changed when the sugarcane industry developed in the 19th century. From then on, the position of the aren palm as a sugar producer became marginal, and this situation continues until now. Following the view of Donna Haraway (2008, p. 16), for the Javanese, the aren palm tree falls into the relationship of companion species, where both parties shape each other's existence. Aren trees shape Javanese people, and vice versa. The historical journey of the aren palm also indicates the changing position of Javanese farmers in political-economic relations with the broader world, from feudal subjects to capitalistic market subjects. This dynamic raises questions about the fluctuations in the relationship between aren palm and Javanese farmers, including when the relationship is close, when it is stretched, and when it is broken. Concerning the marginalization of the role of aren in the 19th century, it can also be asked why aren was no longer a companion species when Javanese farmers were integrated into capitalistic market relations by colonial powers, why were aren palms not involved in the sugar industry that developed in Java since the mid-19th century? What natural and social characteristics were inherent in the aren tree that prevented it from becoming a companion species for the market subject, whereas sugarcane could, and oil palm and coconut, which are also part of the palm family, could?
“The difference concrete makes. Shifting from timber to cement in rural Laos”
Rosalie Stolz (Global South Studies Center, GSSC)
Though ubiquitous and often unnoticed in our everyday surroundings, concrete notoriously divides the minds (Forty 2013). Not least its climate and environmental impacts are critically debated. Nevertheless, concrete is on the rise in many areas of the Global South generally, and rural areas in mainland Southeast Asia specifically, oftentimes replacing local building materials. This moment of shifting from, for instance, timber to cement is instructive to investigate “the social properties of concrete” (Elinoff and Rubaii 2025).
A material feature of bamboo and timber houses becomes even more striking when contrasted with the emerging concrete house environments: their relative permeability. Whereas timber and bamboo can be permeated easily by sounds and smell, enhancing the production of a characteristic village soundscape, the walls of concrete houses tend to ‘envelope’ the residents (Gowlland 2020) and mark a noticeable difference between what is within and what is beyond these walls (Stolz 2025). Another, still underexplored, way in which concrete differentiates is by its temporality: Where houses were never meant to be permanent, concrete - promising to be long-lasting (Archambault 2024) - makes a veritable difference. Concrete’s temporal-cum-material features impacts on the temporality literally in-built in the relationship between houses and social groups.
Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in northwestern Laos, I explore the temporal difference that concrete makes among Khmu speakers used to live in bamboo and timber houses that were not supposed to outlive their residents. In doing so, I investigate concrete’s “promise of permanence”, its unforeseen implications and eventual failures in living up to it.
Archambault, Julie. 2024. “Concrete Times.” Annual Review of Anthropology 53: 293-308.
Elinoff, Eli and Kali Rubaii. (eds). 2025. The Social Properties of Concrete. Punctum Books.
Forty, Adrian. 2013. Concrete and Culture. A Material History. London: Reaktion Books.
Gowlland, Geoffrey. 2020. “The Materials of Indigeneity: Slate and Cement in a Taiwanese Indigenous (Paiwan) Mountain Settlement.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26(1): 126–45.
Stolz, Rosalie. 2025. “Impermeability.” In The Social Properties of Concrete edited by Eli Elinoff and Kali Rubaii, 251-6. Punctum Books.
Transplantation of Urban Plans in the Global South(east Asia)
Luzile Satur (University of Cologne)
Urban plans are blueprints for the city’s socio-economic development, aesthetical design, and ecological welfare. The state in cooperation with international agencies provide excellent urban structural plans; however, they are not entirely implemented such as the Framework Plan for the City of Cagayan de Oro and Cagayan de Oro Comprehensive Land Use Plan in the City of Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. As a result, the city suffered from the effects of climate change brought by typhoons. The city’s existing land use and environmental conditions evince the consequences of unimplemented urban structural plan. Urban plans remain on paper. They are never implemented nor completely worked out because of underlying political and economic interests. Urban plans are made not to address the social challenges but to cater to the illusion of élites together with the hegemony of global forces. On the positive side, planning with the genuine intention of paying attention to the pressing needs of the community particularly the informal sector assures inclusivity. The assurance of community participation can exemplify inclusiveness.