IIAS Symposium

CHANGING LIFE-STYLES IN ASIA: CONSUMPTION, MEDIA, AND RELIGION
IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA AND INDONESIA 

December 19 & 20 & 21, 1994   

This international symposium is the first to be organized by our joint
collaborative research programme on 'Changing Life-styles in Asia', for which
the Fellows are Dr Will Derks, Dr Shoma Munshi, and Dr Jeroen Peeters. The
symposium aims to establish a comparative understanding of the reception and
transformation of 'cosmopolitan' cultural forms in contemporary India and
Indonesia. The project does not examine global flows as such, but focuses on
the practices/discourses through which they are represented. In organizing
this symposium we have identified three areas of research: namely Consumption,
Media, and Religion, in which productive links between different disciplines
and approaches are possible. The construction of certain forms of subjectivity
as related to group identities, be they religious, national, ethnic, class,
age or gender, is increasingly facilitated by distinctive styles of
consumption, for instance in the field of fashion. The participants in the
symposium will also examine the impact of globalizing discourses of
consumption on projects based on religion, ethnicity, regionalism, and
nationalism. Besides the study of consumption as a cultural contest, the
project will focus on the role of media, like television, video, film, and
audio-cassettes in the transformation of the public sphere in Asia. The third
and last session of the symposium, devoted to religion, will concentrate on
the ways in which Islamic discourse is re-constructed in order to resist
'Western' media images and forms of consumption. An effort will also be made
to explain how these forms of Islamic discourse are transformed by processes
of commoditization and state repression (in the form of religious products,
services, and media images) in the very act of resistance. 

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME 

MONDAY 19 DECEMBER: CONSUMPTION

9.00-9.30 Coffee/tea get-together

9.30-9.45 Welcoming speech: Prof. W.A.L. Stokhof, IIAS Director

9.45-10.00 Opening Remarks: Prof. P. Van der Veer 

Chairperson: Prof. B. Metcalf (Davis)
10.00-12.15 First session
Speakers: Prof. N.B. Dirks (Ann Arbor): Advertising campaign (title t.b.a.)
Dr S. Munshi (IIAS): Fashion in India (title t.b.a.)
Dr J.C.M. Peeters (IIAS): 'A Guided Tour of the Adam Malik Museum: or decoding
patterns of open and closed distinction'

12.30 Lunch

14.00-15.30 Second session
Speakers: Dr E. Tarlo (London): Clothing in India (title t.b.a.)
Prof. D. Chakrabarty (Canberra): 'Reading Khadi and its Derivatives:
lifestyle, gender and political communication in India'. 

15.30-15.45 Coffee/Tea break

15.45-16.30 Discussion

TUESDAY 20 DECEMBER: MEDIA

Chairperson Prof. N.B. Dirks (Ann Arbor):
9.30-10.45 Third session, part one
Speakers Prof. A. Sweeney (Berkeley): (title t.b.a.)
Dr W. Derks (IIAS): (title t.b.a.)

10.45-11.00 Coffee Break

11.00-12.30 Third session, part two 
Speaker: Dr M. Hobart (London): 'Consuming passions: overinterpretating
television in Bali'
Discussion

12.30 Lunch

14.00-15.30 Fourth session
Speakers: Prof. J. Siegel (Ithaca): 'Media or Medium?'
Prof. B. Arps (Leiden): 'Songs of Passion: media discourse and cultural change 
--  a case from Java'

15.30-15.45 Coffee/Tea break

15.45-16.30 Discussion and Summing Up


WEDNESDAY 21 DECEMBER: RELIGION


Chairperson Prof. B. Arps (Leiden)

9.30-11.00 Fifth session, part one
Speakers Dr M.M. Bruinessen (Utrecht): (title t.b.a.)
Dr J. Bousfield (Canterbury): 'Hi-tech Sufis and other designer-producers of
spirituality'

11.00-11.15 Coffee break

11.15-13.00 Fifth session, part two
Speakers: Prof. B. Metcalf (Davis): 'Modern Media and Youth in a Transnational
Muslim Pietist Movement: the case of the Tablighi Jama'at'. 
Discussion 
Concluding Remarks and Summing Up: Prof. P. Van der Veer