Page 11 - E-BOOK PULSE@FASS ISU NO.02/2023

Issue no. 2 | 2023

Research Institute for Humanity and Nature

(RIHN) Fairfrontiers Project

By Assoc Prof Dr Helena Varkkey
The Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto,
Japan is hosting the five-year project - “Fair for whom?
Politics, Power and Precarity in Transformations of Tropical
Forest-agriculture Frontiers” project, also known as
FairFrontiers. The project is led by Dr Grace Wong.

Throughout the tropics, forest-agriculture frontiers dominated
by diverse swidden mosaics are being converted to
homogenous landscapes of commodity agriculture. Despite
being labeled as “development”, smallholders in these
landscapes often benefit less than local elites and external
investors involved in frontier transformations. This imbalance
reflects underlying politics, institutional and power structures
around forests and land-use tenures.

Whose interests drive the transformations of forest-agriculture
frontiers? Who benefits? And who is made precarious? What
are possible policy options that can deliver ecologically
sustainable and socially equitable outcomes? FairFrontiers
applies inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to address Universiti Malaya on “A FairFrontiers Telecouping Study in
these aspects of development. Pitas, Sarawak”. She also participated in two workshops
related to the project, a research and science symposium
As a FairFrontiers project partner, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Varkkey is from 19 to 27 January 2023 in RIHN Kyoto, Japan, and a
leading a consultancy project under Unit Perundingan method workshop from 10-13 April in Penampang, Sabah.

Lloyd Fernando Seminar Series

By Assoc Prof Dr Susan Philip belated user” of English. But the
The English Department hosted two postcolonial nation also fails to
speakers on Malaysian and include him, with its apparent
Singaporean writers in the month of assumption that Mandarin is
June. On June 2nd, Ann Ang, an intelligible to all. The talk was
Assistant Professor at the National moderated by Dr. Fiona Lee from
Institute of Education, Nanyang the English Department. On June
Technological University, gave a 20th, Dr Grace Chin of Universiti
talk entitled ‘Poetry in Singlish? Assistant Professor Dr Ann Ang Dr Grace Chin Sains Malaysia presented a talk
Reading Joshua Ip and Hamid Roslan’. The talk provided entitled ‘Revisionary Reinscriptions: Their stories and
some fascinating insights into Singaporean poetry and the Palimpsestuous Bodies in Zen Cho’s The Order of the Pure
idea of Singlish as a language which functions not just as a Moon Reflected in Water’. Cho is a transnational Malaysian
kind of casual lingua franca, but possibly as a form of writer who has made a name for herself internationally as a
resistance to the governmental emphasis on ‘standard’, science-fiction/fantasy author. In the novella The Order of the
universally-intelligible English. Pure Moon Reflected in Water, she creates a kind of parallel-
world Malaysia in which magic and martial arts weave
Dr Ang examined the work of two Singaporean poets, looking together to unsettle and question history, race, gender and
at the ways in which they use Singlish and standard English. sexuality. Cho’s work presents a world in which the hard,
With reference to Joshua Ip’s work, she asks if poetry, even distinct boundaries between time and space, reality and
when using Singlish, is still targeted at an elite, Anglophone fantasy, and masculine self and feminine other are blurred,
audience. When discussing Hamid Roslan’s and their fluidity is emphasised.
parsetreeforestfire, Ang points out the complex relationship
that Hamid, as a Singaporean Malay, has with language. He Both talks were attended by students and staff, both in
positions himself as a postcolonial subject, a “secondary or person and online.
11 | Pulse@FASS