The Nordic Asia Podcast

How did American imperialism affect Thai scholarship? And what does Buddhist cosmology got to do with the Thai royal tours to Burma and the United States in the 1960s? In this fascinating episode, Matthew Phillips talks to Petra Desatova about moving beyond binary readings of Thai history, avoiding existing preconceptions and using images to get a more holistic understanding of the past.

In this episode, Katarzyna J. Cwiertka speaks with Satoko Naito to share her expertise on Japanese food and food packaging. The discussion deals with washoku (“Japanese food”), designated as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013, as well as the fascinating and interrelated histories of edible meibutsu (noted product of a particular site) and omiyage (souvenir) that developed alongside domestic tourism. Dr. Cwiertka's recent publications, discussed in the episode, include Branding Japanese Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku (with Miho Yasuhara, University of Hawai’i Press, 2020) and Too Pretty to Throw Away: Packaging Design from Japan (with Ewa Machotka, Museum of Japanese Art and Technology Press, 2016, available for download from her website https://www.cwiertka.com/).

In this episode, Hermann Aubié joins Outi Luova to discuss what’s actually at stake with TikTok. While the political storm in the US failed to address the actual concerns with TikTok, this episode looks beyond the headlines and identifies issues that are also highly relevant in the European context.

In this episode Paul Midford joins Henrik Hiim for a conversation about his new book "Overcoming Isolationism: Japan's Leadership in East Asian Security Multilateralism." Based on thousands of pages of declassified documents from Japan's Foreign Ministry and Cabinet Office, and on a quarter of a century of interviews, this book introduces Japan's often overlooked leadership in promoting East Asian Security Multilateralism, starting with its role in helping to establish the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1993, and its consistent leadership ever since. This book challenges stereotypes of Japan as passive and reactive in regional security. You can read more about Overcoming Isolationism here.

In this episode, Hermann Aubié talks with Outi Luova about the methods of information control that have been applied by China's party-state since the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. What were the possible reasons that enabled the party-state's politics to prevent China's infectious disease surveillance and reporting system from working? How does the Communist Party of China try to manage the flow of information about the pandemic not only in China, but globally?

In this podcast, Martin Seeger from the University of Leeds joins Petra Desatova to talk about his recent book Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism jointly published by Silkworm Books and NIAS Press. Martin shares his insights into how he researched this fascinating topic and how he discovered that an unknown female Buddhist practitioner was the true author of well-known Thai Buddhist texts that had been wrongly attributed to a prominent male monk. 

In this episode, Kristin Eggeling talks to Petra Desatova about her recently published book ‘Nation-Branding in Practice: The Politics of Promoting Sports, Cities and Universities in Kazakhstan and Qatar.’ How do Kazakstan and Qatar brand themselves to the outside world and their own citizens? What lies behind Kazakstan’s re-branding of its capital city Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana)? And how does one even research this elusive concept of nation branding? 

In this episode, Lucrezia Canzutti talks to Petra Desatova about the lives of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia: who are these people? How did they end up living in Cambodia? What is their relationship with the Cambodian state? And why are their lives so precarious? Join us for this fascinating talk about ethnicity, citizenship and Cambodian politics.

Since becoming a constitutional monarchy in 1932, Thailand has been governed by twenty different constitutions. Although they all had their own unique features, constitutions from 1997 onwards placed much emphasis on judiciary and elite watchdog agencies as the righteous arbiters of Thai political life. In this podcast, Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang talks to Petra Desatova about this constitutional change and its roots in traditional Buddhist notions of power and karma.

In this episode, Helene Maria Kyed joins Duncan McCargo for a conversation about her upcoming book 'Everyday Justice in Myanmar'. Kyed shares her insights on the project behind the book, and justice and informal resolutions in Myanmar. Based on a unique collection of ethnographic studies, 'Everyday Justice in Myanmar: Informal Resolutions and State Evasion in a Time of Contested Transition' is the first book to explore how ordinary people in Myanmar access justice and resolve disputes, and will be published in August2020 by NIAS Press. You can read more about it here: http://niaspress.dk/book/everyday-justice-in-myanmar/