Academic Projects:
In a nutshell, what ties my project together is my enthusiasm in translocative, transnational and transcultural communities that does not seek group bonding and identification through commonalities of race, nationality and religion. I believe emerging diversities of identities and communities across the world are particularly worthy of academic attention in an accelerating world where "crisis" has become a new "normal". Overall, my research interests span across STS, (studies of science and technology) anthropology of identity and relations, moral anthropology and critical political economy.
Our generation grew up with the language of "world citizen", "cosmopolitanism", and "global village", If we were to decipher cosmopolitanism as being a “world citizen”, this concept that has received ample attention from different disciplines since the post-war development era and the era of “hyper globalisation” faces a level of awkwardness. On the one hand, cheaper international transport, accelerated flows of information through digital tools, growing potential of remote work, and developments of politico-legal infrastructures have made “world citizenship” more accessible than ever. The prospect of meeting and conversing in a cosmopolitan location remains a financial privilege but is no-longer reserved for the very few — especially if virtual communities are taken into account. On the other hand, cosmopolitanism is getting more “bad press”. It is often regarded as detached, aloof and elitist. There are feelings of being betrayed by the rhetoric of globalisation in civil societies across both Global North and South locations. In Western countries, we see growing discontentment, distrust towards institutions and bigotry towards minorities, immigrants and intellectuals. In locations of the Global South, there is growing animosity towards an abstract image of “the West” and vilification of vulnerable minorities for “being influenced by the West”. The world is polarising and the language of “a united humankind in one community” is under heavy scepticism. However, globalisation hasn’t hasn’t “failed” us in terms of economic statistics. Most countries in the world saw an upward shift in terms of income. There is ample literature on disparity of wealth across various disciplines, whereas the need for an evening of social status receives less attention. The discourse of cosmopolitanism is worthy of re-examination in such volatile times where anxiety and distrust between states, entities and people are growing. How can we discover new ways of coexisting as a human species?
An overview of my past academic projects
This research is the product of my MA fieldwork. I spent 9 months combined in Dahab during the past few years, conducting fieldwork with freedivers and training freediving myself. My research addresses how freedivers in Dahab find comfort in interacting with the sea,. I am looking at the embodied departures from land-centred narrative freedivers go through by being-at-sea through. I'm also providing new insight for anthropological understandings of moral experiences centring on a variety of intersubjective moral experiences in which humans organically be-together otherwise; one that does not mainly take place with conversation, or some form of conversation --- what do freedivers learn from the sea and how does the experiences of being-at-sea impact their perception of life on land? Additionally, from situating my research from the standpoint of what is usually considered as a leisure and athletic activity – the practice of freediving – I’m adding to a literature on body and embodiment outside of areas in which phenomenological concepts have already proven effective such as those of healing (Csordas, 1990), sorcery (Kapferer, 1997); ritual (Taussig, 1993); spirit possession and trance (Halliburton, 2005).
In early 2020, when the rest of the world has not yet been "shellshocked" by the pandemic, a Weibo account went viral for posting fortune-telling predictions on a "widespread disease of the respiratory system". There has been a longstanding fatalistic tradition of mantic elements relating to collective and individual misfortunes in China. These mantic languages are gaining a new life in the post-pandemic world and geo-political uncertainties we live in/with today.
This essay wishes to examine the emergence of a popular "divination vernacular" in China, using divination language as an explanatory model. Building on the notion that continuing experience of uncertainty evokes psychic pain and real suffering that dwells in the "between-places" of clinical and political language, divination as an intersecting point of what is psychological and what is political, provides a glance at the psycho-politics of wellbeing in China today beyond clinical encounters. The researcher reflects upon her own intermittent participation in divination and also looks at two ethnographic encounters: one on divination consultation as a way to cope with an existentialistic crisis; one on political metaphors and divination, divination vernacular as an alternative to discuss politics.
Divination cultivates an emotion of unity by acknowledging a wider fatalistic uncertainty beyond personal endeavours. By addressing the unspeakable and touching the intangible, divination vernacular empowers its participants with an alternative language to discuss what is psycho-political, transgressing the "incommunicability of pain" (Das, 1997), and acts as a mobilisable cultural resource to carry on living.
Tracing Madness and Psychosis in Indonesia: Beyond “Outcome Paradox”
As we witness studies on psychosis/ schizophrenia proceed from illness to context in anthropology of psychologyIn the realm of psychological anthropology, it's no longer considered revolutionary to situate the human individual and their encounters beyond the confines of their physical body. Anthropologists have come to an agreement that the existential human experience such as “being mad” is situated across intricate social networks. This paper presents an auto-ethnography on the author’s personal experience dihantui (being haunted) and seeking exorcism in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Reflecting on local and clinical understandings of madness and normalcy, this paper explores the making of madness as a form of exclusion. Combining ethnography and genealogical analysis on how madness as well as clinical labels of psychosis/ schizophrenia is made, this paper critiques “the outcome paradox” — that countries in the global south with lower health care spending and fewer resources achieving better outcomes than countries in the global north with higher spendings — for reducing dialectical differences on what constitutes as “symptoms” and what constitutes as “care”. This paper provides insight to broaden our discipline’s range of notion on recovery and care. Additionally, coming from an ethnographer whose positionally is of neither “western” nor “native”, this paper proposes to consider anthropology as a specialised knowledge to empathically understand extraordinary human conditions and not fix cultural critiques to the ethnographer’s own society.