SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE), Lund University:

Postal address: Box 792, SE-220 07 Lund, Sweden
Visiting address: Scheelevägen 15 B
Web page: http://www.ace.lu.se/

Contact persons: Director Roger Greatrex, phone: +46 (0)46 222 30 42
Masters Programme Coordinator Monica Falk Lindberg, phone: +46 (0)46 222 37 44

• A Programme for East and South-East Asian Studies was established as an interdisciplinary network at Lund University in 1984. It was initiated by the legendary sinologist, linguist and folklorist Kristina Lindell (1928–2005) – read more about Dr. Lindell.
As the result of a special Swedish government initiative, in 1997 this network was transformed into the present Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE), is focused on research and education concerning modern East and South-East Asia. Research carried out at the Centre is primarily in the fields of the social sciences and the humanities. It is headed by Professor Roger Greatrex, a scholar on China who also keeps a great personal interest in India, and has tried to initiate research comparing India and China. South Asia was however till recently totally excluded from the activities of ACE, but efforts are currently under way to open up the Centre also for South Asia, in co-operation with SASNET. Recently, two India related researchers, Anna Lindberg (new Director for SASNET from 1 July 2007) and Sidsel Hansson, have held post-doc positions at ACE. From 2009, a couple of Indian researchers have also been affiliated to the Centre.
More information about their research projects below.

• The more open approach towards South Asian studies is reflected in the Masters Programme in Asian Studies which started at the Centre in September 2003 (more information on the Masters programme, see below). In the year preceding the start of the programme, a working group consisting of teachers and researchers at the Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences at Lund University carried out the planning work for the South Asian track in close collaboration with SASNET.
Dr. Jan Magnusson, now assistant professor at the School of Social Work, Lund University, but previously the first webmaster/secretary of SASNET (in its initial stage in the year 2000), was a key person in the planning process. When the Masters programme started he was therefore employed by ACE as Director of Studies during the period 2003-2005. More information about Jan’s South Asia related research, see below.
Dr. Magnusson participated in the SASNET workshop on ”The role of South Asia in the internationalisation of higher education in Sweden” held in Stockholm 28-29 November 2006, where he gave a presentation about experiences from Lund University’s Masters Programme in Asian Studies both in the session dealing with ”South Asian students in soft sciences in Sweden” (read the presentation, as a pdf-file); and in the session dealing with ”Sending students to South Asia” (read this presentation, as a pdf-file).

• ACE has another strong South Asia connection in the fact that SASNET’s root node office is located within the premises of the centre in the Alfa 1 house at Ideon Research Village in Lund (photo from the office to the right). The root node office moved here in November 2003, from its previous location at the Lund University International Office in central Lund.

Karl Reinhold Haellquist Library Donation

In 2004 Inger Sondén-Haellquist donated a unique collection of 5 000 South Asia related books, journals, videotapes and pamphlets on various aspects of South Asian studies to SASNET/Lund University. The books come from the private library of her late husband, the renowned Swedish scholar Karl Reinhold Haellquist who passed away in 2000.
He was a historian specialised on South Asia, and worked for many years at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Copenhagen. The donated books were supposed to form a Memorial Collection at Lund University’s Asian Library (located in the same building as ACE and SASNET). More information on the book donation.
In January 2005 SASNET gave ACE (through Jan Magnusson) SEK 70 000 as a planning grant to what was called the “Haellquist Book Donation Project." The money was used to start cataloguing the donated books, and a room was set aside for the purpose. Parts of the collection have later, with funding from SASNET, been catalogued and displayed in the Asia Library (at Scheelevägen 15 D, first floor).
In June 2007 the Crafoord Foundation decided to give SEK 120 000 as a grant to SASNET in order to digitalize Karl Reinhold Haellquist’s private archive – part of the collection. This work has been carried out by a hired librarian, Erik Svanström, during the Fall 2008. See the new Karl Reinhold Haellquist Memorial Collection (KRHMC) web site on Mahatma Gandhi, launched in December 2008.
In 2009, the remaining part of the donation has been catalogued by Erik Svanström. It will be formally inaugurated by the Indian Ambassador to Sweden, Mr. Balkrishna Shetty, at a function to be held at the Asia Library on Thursday 10 September 2009, at 15.00. More information.

Through its involvement with the Masters Programme in Asian Studies (including a South Asia track), SASNET has also been actively working to open up the Lund University’s Asia Library (Asienbiblioteket at the ground floor in the same building as ACE and SASNET, entrance Scheelevägen 15 C) to include South Asia related literature besides its existing collections of literature on East and South-East Asia. Since a couple of years, the course literature for the Masters programme is available in the Asia Library, and in January 2007, the SASNET board decided to set aside SEK 25 000 to buy and catalogue books on modern South Asian studies for the Asia Library. A number of books from SASNET’s root node office collection (more information) were also donated to the Asia Library.
From October 2007, a list of SASNET’s first contribution of more than 100 volumes to the Asia Library was available through the Asia Library web page. Go for the 2007 list of South Asia books in Lund University’s Asia Library (as a pdf-file). Many more South Asia related books have been bought by SASNET in 2008, and have been donated to the Asia Library. Go for the 2008 list (as a pdf-file)

Research connected with South Asia:

Dr. Vipin Negi joined the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies as a post-doctoral research fellow on 24 August 2009. He will carry out his research at the Centre during the period September 2009 to June 2010 in the framework of the European Commission funded Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window Programme lot 13 (administered by Lund University).
Vipin is an Assistant Professor of Economics in Keshav Mahavidyalaya College at the University of Delhi, India. He received a PhD in Economics from Jamia Millia Islamia Central University, New Delhi in 2003. Now, he teaches on Micro Economics, Macro Economics and Indian Economy. His primary research interests are foreign portfolio investment and foreign direct investment to India. He is working on the main determinants of inward foreign direct investment to India during the post-reform period.
At ACE, Vipin will undertake a project to work on the issue of rapid expansion of service sector as the largest sector in terms of its contribution in GDP in India in the last 20 years and its implications on the nature and direction of the development process of India’s economy.

During the period September–October 2009, Dr. Swati Banerjee was another post-doctoral research fellow at ACE. Just like Dr Negi, she came to visit the Centre in the framework of the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window Programme. Dr. Bannerjee is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Community Organisation and Development Practice, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai, India. Recently, she has been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Women's and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
She did her masters in Social Work with specialization in Urban and Rural Community Development from TISS, Mumbai, India and PhD in Rural Development from the University of Mumbai on 'Relationship Between Environment, Quality of Life and Gender of Indigenous Communities in India'. Also participated in several national and international conferences and research/study programmes including a programme on Gender Studies at the International Women's University (ifu), University of Kassel, Germany and a programme on Environment and Development at Schumacher College, U.K. Received fellowships from Ford Foundation, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) etc.
Swati is associated with several grassroots organisations in India working with Indigenous communities and poor urban and rural communites with a focus on women. She is also part of the task force of the Government of Maharashtra, India to look into issues of gender, livelihood and Self Help Groups.
Major areas of research interests include Gender and Development with a focus on women's collectives; Environment and Livelihood issues of Indigenous Communities in India. Major publications include, 'The Impact of depleting environment and changing patterns of life on the access to food of the Katkari tribal community in Raigad, Maharashtra , Change, transformation and Collective Action Towards Empowerment of Women etc.
While at ACE, she wrote a working paper entitled “‘Bourgeois Utopias’? The rhetoric of globality in the contemporary suburban landscape of Calcutta”. The paper is published on the Internet, go for it!

Dr. Anna Lindberg, new Director on a 50 % basis for SASNET from 1 July 2007, also joined the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies as a post-doc researcher from the same date. During the preceding years, she worked as Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Penn State University, USA.
Personal web page.
Anna Lindberg defended her doctoral dissertation, titled ”Experience and Identity: A Historical Account of Class, Caste, and Gender among the Cashew Workers of Kerala, 1930-2000” at the Dept. of History, Lund University on 13 October 2001. Faculty opponent was Professor Umadevi Sambasivan, Dept of Economics, Kerala University. The project had been carried out under the auspices of the Center for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Read an abstract of the dissertation.
The dissertation was later published as a monograph by NIAS Press, Copenhagen, 2003. More information on the book. It was reviewed by Manja Bomhoff in IIAS Newsletter No. 43 (Spring 2007). Read the review (as a pdf-file).

In the Spring 2003 the Swedish Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquites (Vitterhetsakademin) awarded one of its 250th Anniversary 2003 grants in Aid of Research to Anna Lindberg. She was awarded SEK 25 000 for her doctoral thesis, considered to be excellent. More information.
Besides, she has been teaching in the fields of South Asian and Gender Studies at Lund University since 1994, and at the 10 credits undergraduate social science course on India/South Asia at Österlen Folk high school in Tomelilla. She has travelled to India with successive classes of undergraduate students and supervised their fieldwork.
In 2002 Anna Lindberg became a Visiting Scholar at the Dept of History, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA, and in 2005 she began teaching courses in World History, History of India, and Gender Studies at the Division of Arts & Humanities, Penn State University, Campus Altoona, Pennsylvania, where she worked as Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies.
Her research has focused on migration from the Indian subcontinent to the U.S. during the last part of the 20th century, with a gender perspective. Especially, she focuses on issues of Social history, like family formation and marriages, plus theories on Ethnicity and Identity.

She is currently engaged in a research project titled ”Marriage traditions in South India from 1930 to the present”. In November 2003 she was given a grant for SEK 1,4 million by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Stiftelsen Riksbankens jubileumsfond), for this project, and in November 2005 Dr. Lindberg received another SEK 1.8 Million as a three-years research grant from Sida/SAREC to continue with this project during the period 2006-08. More information about the 2005 Sida grants.
Project abstract: This study aims at exploring marriage customs and their material, ideological, and discursive consequences among selected communities in Kerala. It will mainly focus on the past forty years, but will set the historical background by tracing changes since the beginning of the twentieth century. The past four decades are of particular interest as a period of modernization and globalization, as well as a time when political identities have been increasingly based on religion or caste. In the context of Kerala, global processes since the 1960s are characterized by a large number of individuals who have migrated to the West (mostly Christians and Hindus) or to Arabian Gulf countries (mainly Muslims) for varying periods of time. The general flow of communication, tourism, and media are other aspects of cultural globalization in Kerala.
Originally encompassing both Kerala and Karnataka, it has been reformulated as a more intensive study of Kerala, including issues of globalization. Kerala is of specific interest for several reasons. The state is known for its positive social indicators and for the relatively high status of women there. Within the three main religious groups are communities with matrilineal and patrilineal traditions that reach into the mid-twentieth century. This is particularly important because property in matrilineal communities was owned by women and then transferred to the next generation through the female line. From an initial study focusing on marriage payments, it has broadened to include other cultural and religious factors contributing to the identity-creating processes. Class, caste, gender, and religious identities are seen as fluent and changing. Because of the pivotal importance of marriage in these identities, marriage payments will remain a dominant feature of the study.
One of the most serious problems in conjunction with the subordinate position of women in Indian society is the question of dowry. During the past few decades, there have been frequent reports of women being abused, victimized, and even murdered because of disputes related to dowry. Sex-selective abortions, female infanticide, reluctance to educate girls, and violence are other phenomena generally considered to be outcomes of the dowry system. Lesser forms of oppression include denial of property rights, barring women from higher education, and depriving them of resources they have inherited or earned. All are examples of the structural violation of human rights. From a Western point of view, the phenomenon of dowry appears as the practice of a traditional society––something that will disappear with “modernization”. Marion Kaplan has argued that the dowry system declined radically when large numbers of European women entered the labor market as part of what was considered the modernization process. In India, on the other hand, dowry has been taken up in recent years by groups who did not have this “tradition” during the early twentieth century. Laws concerning marriage, divorce, custody, family systems, and succession are not uniform in India, but differ among the various religions and from community to community. These have been continuous topics of discussion since Independence, making the study of marriage, along with its economic, symbolic, and discursive consequences, a complex and challenging task.

As mentioned above Dr. Jan Magnusson, closely connected to SASNET from the beginning (being its first webmaster, and for the past few years being a member of the board), was based at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE) from 2003 till 2005, coordinating the Masters programme in Asian Studies. Since 1 January 2006 he is however back at the School of Social Work, his home institution.
Jan Magnusson is involved in a couple of South Asia related research projects, one focusing on Tibetans in India, and another one on the Baltistan movement in north Pakistan. More information about his research work.

• Dr Sidsel Hansson was previosly connected to the Department of History of Religions, Centre for Theology and Religious Studies (more information about her research at CTR), but later held a post-doc position at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE) from 2004 till 2008. She is still connected to ACE as a lecturer on specific Masters programme courses.
During the period April–November 2008, Dr. Sidsel Hansson substituted as Director of SASNET. Since December 1, 2008 she is working at Lund University’s Section for International Relations, as co-ordinator for one of the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window India programmes, lot no 13, programme 2. More information on the EMECW 13 web site.

In January 2004 Dr. Hansson was given a three-years grant from Sida/SAREC to carry out a major research project on hinduisation and women’s groups within the environmental movement in Rajasthan. The project is called: ”Gender, Education, Religion, and Environment. Women's activism and self-education in an environmental risk district in northwest India”. More information.
The project was carried out in collaboration with Pernille Gooch, Division of Human Ecology, Dept. of Ethnology, and the MA student Behnoush Payvar.
Project Abstract: The project studies the nexus of social, cultural and religious factors influencing underprivileged women’s access to educational resources and civil society agency in an environmental risk region. It discusses the most important factors obstructing/facilitating the process. In order to gain an understanding of the dynamics it is essential to look into women’s efforts to organise themselves at the micro level. The analysis focuses on the women as actors, and on the strategies that they use. A main hypothesis in the project is that women’s empowerment depends on their capacity to strategically use their environmental knowledge which affords status in some contexts, and their religious traditions which affords legitimacy in other contexts. Data from the ethnographic study will be compared with data from secondary sources in order to discuss education and gender vulnerability in environmental risk areas and the consequent policy implications.

Together with Dr. Catarina Kinnvall, Dept. of Political Science, Sidsel has also been involved in planning the independent, interdisciplinary 15 ECTS researcher training course on ”Religion, Conflict and Identity in South and Southeast Asia”. It ran for the first time in October 2006, and aims at supplying students with overviews of the broader religious developments in South and South East Asia. Supervision was given in the form of seminars first in Lund and then in Copenhagen.
Similar courses will be included in a new Nordic Summer University (NSU) programme initiative that Dr. Hansson has been instrumental in realizing. ”South Asia and the challenges of the 21st Century” which is one of the themes for the NSU during the period 2008-10. More information.

In August 2006, Dr. Hansson received a SASNET guest lecture grant to invite Dr. Bidyut Mohanty (photo to the right) from the Women's Studies Department at the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS) in New Delhi, India. Dr. Mohanty came to Sweden in October 2006 and gave lectures at Lund University and Göteborg University. She lectured about ”One million women grasstroots (village council) leaders: How do they govern the communities?”.

6–7 March 2008, the Swedish national Gender and Development Network (GADNET) organised a so-called Dreamcatcher conference at Lund University. Sidsel Hansson and her colleague at ACE, Dr. Monika Lindberg Falk (involved in research on Thailand), organised the workshop that was titled "Gender, Religion and Development". More information about GADNET.

Masters programme in Asian Studies – with a South Asian track

Full information about the Masters programme, with detailed information on the courses at the track for South Asian studies. Deadline for application for the Autumn 2009 intake is 1 February 2009.
Contact person: Monica Lindberg.
From 2007 the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies organises a 120 ECTS credits Master's Programme in Asian Studies at Lund University, with two tracks – one for East and South-East Asian studies, and one for South Asian studies. Together they admit 60 new students every year.
It is an interdisciplinary master programme focusing on political, economic, social, and cultural issues in Asia. The interdisciplinary character of the programme, the focus on contemporary Asia, and the possibility to conduct fieldwork in Asia, make the master programme in Lund unique in Europe. It is the only English language programme of its kind in the Nordic countries.
The programme is aimed at students who after their undergraduate studies want to gain area expertise on contemporary Asian societies. The programme permits students to specialise based on their regional, thematic and disciplinary interests. It provides students with advanced knowledge about contemporary issues in Asia with the objective that they will acquire the background knowledge and concrete skills necessary to understand, assess and analyse social, economic and political developments in the region.

The field work is normally carried out during the third semester in South Asia. The Centre has agreements with a number of institutions, among them the Institute of Social Science (ISS) in New Delhi, India, allowing the Lund University students to stay at ISS on an internship programme basis. The photo to the right shows the 2006 student group to ISS. The ISS Director, Dr. George Mathew is seated second from left, flanked by Mr. Carl-Gustaf Svensson from the Swedish Embassy, Mrs. Svensson, and ISS faculty.

The programme has been successfully run at Lund University since the Fall 2003, but until the 2006 courses lasted only for three semesters (as a so-called ”Magisterutbildning med bredd”).
During 2008, Dr. Sidsel Hansson coordinated the South Asia related courses within the programme, but teachers come from several other departments at Lund University. They included Neelambar Hatti, Dept. of Economic History; Alia Ahmad, Dept of Economics, Catarina Kinnvall, Dept of Political Science; and Staffan Lindberg, Dept. of Sociology. Researchers from academic institutions in Copenhagen were also frequently invited to do lectures. Among them are Dr. Neil Webster, Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS, and Dr. Stig Toft Madsen, Nordic Institute for Asian Studies, NIAS.
The sixth batch of students are doing their field work in South Asia during the Fall 2009, whereas the seventh batch starts its courses on September, 1, 2009.

The first batch of students from the Masters Course in Asian Studies, South Asian track, that started in September 2003, carried out their field work in different parts of South Asia during the Fall 2004. One of the students, Behnoush Payvar (photo to the right) wrote a MA thesis on ”Press coverage on women, environment, and development in India” as part of a major research project led by Dr. Sidsel Hansson.

Keshab Prasad Bhattarai (photo to the left) was a student in the second batch, and carried out field work in the Fall 2005. Keshab, hailing from Nepal, writes his MA thesis on the conflict in Nepal, it will be presented in May 2006. He has already written an article on Armed Conflict and Migration: A threat for development and peace. A case of Nepal, in which he presents an argument on; what is the ground for the present armed conflict in Nepal and why has it been a problem though the history of the conflict is not that longer compared to other armed conflicts around the world? In February 2006 it was published on the Heidelberg University Nepal Research web site. Read the article (as a pdf-file)
Mr. Bhattarai has now returned to Nepal, but keeps his Swedish connections, being country representative for the Swedish Organisation for Individual Relief, SOIR (IM in Swedish), a development assistance organisation based in Lund. In Nepal, SOIR since 40 years runs a school in the village Wahaki in Parbat, a remote district of western Nepal. From February 2007 this school has been expanded with new buildings, and within two years it will turn into a community college, that will have an academic collaboration with two Swedish folk high schools, Österlen folk high school in Tomelilla and Helliden folk high school in Tidaholm. Keshab is in charge of the Wahaki college and other projects that SOIR is engaged with in the country.

Ingibjorg Stefansdottir (photo to the right) is a student from the second batch. She participated in the SASNET workshop on ”The role of South Asia in the internationalisation of higher education in Sweden” held in Stockholm 28-29 November 2006, and gave a report about her student’s experiences from both a summer course arranged by the Nordic Centre in India (NCI) in Hyderabad, and Lund Masters programme fieldwork in India. Read Ingibjorg Stefansdottir’s presentation at the workshop (as a pdf-file)

Elizabeth Williams Ørberg was a student on the Masters Programme in Asian Studies at ACE during the period 2005–07, and she wrote a Master thesis entitled ”The ‘Paradox’ of Being Young in New Delhi. Urban Middle Class Youth Negotiations with Popular Indian Film”. The thesis is published as a working paper on the Internet, go for it. •
Ms. Williams Ørberg is now a PhD candidate the Dept. of Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics, Aarhus University, Denmark. On Monday 30 November 2009, 10.00–12.00, she will hold a guest lecture at ACE. She will talk about “Youth, sexuality and popular culture in New Delhi”. Venue: ACE, Java hall, ground floor, Scheelevägen 15, Lund.