Berita Summer 2018

Table of Contents Letter from the Chair ... 2 Announcements ... 3 John A. Lent Prize 2018 Commendation ... 4 Ronald Provencher Travel Grant Commendation ... 4–5 Panel Report: Food, Belonging, and Identity in Colonial and Post-Colonial Malaysia/Singapore ... 7–8 Article: Social Categorization and Religiously Framed State-Making in Brunei... 9 Article: A New Dawn for Malaysia: The Election that Tipped the Balance ... 22 Project Report: Project M: Campaigning with a “Dictator” ... 29 Book Review: Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects: British Malaya, 1786-1941... 31 Call for Panelists and Book Chapters: Revisioning 2020 ... 32–33 Call for Book Chapters: Malaysian Politics and People, Vol. 3 ... 33–34 Job Opportunities ... 34 Call for Papers: Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs ... 34 Member Notes ... 35 Editorial Information ... 35https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/berita/1040/thumbnail.jp

Berita Summer 2021

Letter from the Chair ... 2 John A. Lent Prize and Provencher Travel Prize ... 4 Announcement: MSB panel Haze, Sand, Fire, Water Environmental Crises in Southeast Asia at AAS 2022 Hawaii ... 6 Article: Educating the Sultanate: The Melding of Higher Education and Islam in Brunei Darussalam, by Moez Hayat ... 10 Book Review: Local Democracy Denied: A Personal Journey into Local Government in Malaysia (Lim Mah Hui) by Koay Su Lyn ... 14 Book Review: The Roots of Resilience: Party Machines and Grassroots Politics in Singapore and Malaysia (Meredith L. Weiss) by Mohamed Salihin Subhan ... 17 Review Essay: Multispecies and post-humanist work in Borneo - Recent Contributions and Possible Futures, by Asmus Rungby ... 20 Publications and Articles ... 28 Editorial Information ... 32https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/berita/1046/thumbnail.jp

Berita Summer 2019

Letter from the Chair ... 2 Announcement ... 3 Prizes: John A. Lent Prize 2019 Commendation & Ronald Provencher Grant ... 3–4 Panel Reports: AAS Annual Conference 2019 (Denver, CO) ... 5–12 Article: “To Harmonize or Not Harmonize? Shariah Criminal Law in Malaysia” (Kerstin Steiner) ... 12–14 Article: “Reflections from the Field: On a Quest to Save the Poor: a Day in a “Zakat Camp” (Tímea Gréta Biró) ... 14–17 Article: “A Contemporary Ghost Story: The Tale of the Pontianak” (Rosalia N. Engchuan) ... 17–19 Book Review: Through Turbulent Terrain: Trade of the Straits Port of Penang (Loh, Wei Leng & Jeffrey Seow) by Cheong-Soon Gan ... 20–22 Publication: Michael G. Peletz (2020, forthc.) Sharia Transformations: Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary ... 22–23 Publication: Mareike Pampus (2019) Heritage Food: The Materialization of Connectivity in Nyonya Cooking ... 23–24 Job Opportunities ... 25 Call for Papers ... 25–26 Member Notes ... 26 BERITA History Reprint: John A. Lent (2002) “History of Berita and Malaysia/Singapore /Brunei Studies Group” ... 27–28 Editorial Information... 28https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/berita/1044/thumbnail.jp

Hybrid pathways to orthodoxy in Brunei Darussalam: bureaucratised exorcism, scientisation and the mainstreaming of deviant-declared practices

This article investigates the bureaucratisation of Islam in Brunei and its interlinkages with socio-cultural changes. It elucidates how realisations of state-enforced Islamic orthodoxy and purification produce locally unique meanings, while simultaneously reflecting much broader characteristics of the contemporary global condition. The article first introduces a theoretical perspective on the bureaucratisation of Islam as a social phenomenon that is intimately intertwined with the state's exercise of classificatory power and related popular processes of coproducing, and sometimes appropriating symbolic state power. Second, it outlines the historical trajectory of empowering Brunei's national ideology, Melayu Islam Beraja (MIB). It then explores social imaginaries and bureaucratic representations of "deviant"-declared practices, before illustrating how these practices become reinvented within the parameters of state power as "Sharia-compliant" services to the nation state. Simultaneously, national-religious protectionism is paradoxically expressed in thoroughly globalised terms and shaped by forces the state cannot (entirely) control. Newly established Sharia-serving practices become culturally re-embedded, while also flexibly drawing upon multiple transnational cultural registers. In the main ethnographic example, bureaucratised exorcism, Japanese water-crystal photography and scientisation fuse behind the "firewall" of MIB. These hybrid pathways to orthodoxy complicate the narratives through which they are commonly framed

Berita Winter 2018/2019

Letter from the Chair ... 2 Announcements ... 3–5 Article: “Memories of Rollei Singapore” (Loh Kah Seng, Nguyen Ngoc Luu Ly) ... 6–15 Article: “Encountering Communism in a Cosmopolitan City: The Ducroux Case in the Eyes of the Singapore Press” (Kankan Xie) ... 16–21 MSB Studies News: Guangxi University for Nationalities (GXUN) establishes China’s first Brunei Studies Center ... 22–23 Publications ... 23 Job Opportunities ... 23 Call for Papers ... 24 Call for Applications: Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute ... 25 Call for Applications: Monash University Malaysia ... 25 Member Profile: Margaret John ... 26 Editorial Information ... 27https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/berita/1041/thumbnail.jp

Berita Winter 2019/2020

Table of Contents Letter from the Chair ... 2 MSB Group Events at the AAS Conference 2020, Boston, MA (March 19-22) ... 3–4 Article: ‘A Fresh Look at Fish Through a Brief History of Fish Head Curry’ (Geoffrey K. Pakiam) ... 5–10 Article: ‘‘My Second Home’: An Interview with Rose Chew,Ticketing Officer of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, 1990–2016’ ... 11–13 MSB Member News ... 14 Publications ... 14–16 Job Opportunities ... 16 Call for Applications: M.A. and PhD Programs ... 17–18 Call for Papers ... 18 Editorial Information ... 18https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/berita/1045/thumbnail.jp

The bureaucratisation of Islam in Southeast Asia: transdisciplinary perspectives

Special Issue on this topic. In their specific local contexts, state- and non-state projects of bureaucratising Islam are driven by very different socio-political motivations and conditioned by equally different (albeit often interconnected and overlapping) historical trajectories and their discursive substrates. In this special issue, we examine this transnationally and transregionally observable phenomenon in the context of Southeast Asia, where the quest for "order" -no matter how messy or even entirely failed in its outcomes- is particularly strong. In this regional setting, the institutional trajectories of the "nation-state-ization" of Islam date back to colonial times, which have continued to cast a long shadow that informs the particular manifestations of bureaucratised Islam in each country

Effect of the Matrix Metalloproteinase Inhibitor Doxycycline on Human Trace Fear Memory

Learning to predict threat is of adaptive importance, but aversive memory can also become disadvantageous and burdensome in clinical conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Pavlovian fear conditioning is a laboratory model of aversive memory and thought to rely on structural synaptic reconfiguration involving matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)9 signaling. It has recently been suggested that the MMP9-inhibiting antibiotic doxycycline, applied before acquisition training in humans, reduces fear memory retention after one week. This previous study used cued delay fear conditioning, in which predictors and outcomes overlap in time. However, temporal separation of predictors and outcomes is common in clinical conditions. Learning the association of temporally separated events requires a partly different neural circuitry, for which the role of MMP9 signaling is not yet known. Here, we investigate the impact of doxycycline on long-interval (15 s) trace fear conditioning in a randomized controlled trial with 101 (50 females) human participants. We find no impact of the drug in our preregistered analyses. Exploratorypost hocanalyses of memory retention suggested a serum level-dependent effect of doxycycline on trace fear memory retention. However, effect size to distinguish CS+/CS− in the placebo group turned out to be smaller than in previously used delay fear conditioning protocols, which limits the power of statistical tests. Our results suggest that doxycycline effect on trace fear conditioning in healthy individuals is smaller and less robust than anticipated, potentially limiting its clinical application potential

Haploidentical transplant with posttransplant cyclophosphamide vs matched related and unrelated donor transplant in acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic neoplasm

Hematopoietic cell transplantation from haploidentical donors (haploHCT) has facilitated treatment of AML and MDS by increasing donor availability and became more feasible since the introduction of post-transplant cyclophosphamide (ptCY). In our single-center retrospective analysis including 213 patients with AML or MDS, we compare the outcome of haploHCT (n = 40) with ptCY with HCT from HLA-identical MRD (n = 105) and MUD (n = 68). At 2 years after transplantation, overall survival (OS) after haploHCT was not significantly different (0.59; 95% confidence interval 0.44-0.79) compared to MRD (0.77; 0.67-0.88) and MUD transplantation (0.72; 0.64-0.82, p = 0.51). While progression-free survival (PFS) was also not significantly different (haploHCT: 0.60; 0.46-0.78, MRD: 0.55; 0.44-0.69, MUD: 0.64; 0.55-0.74, p = 0.64), non-relapse mortality (NRM) was significantly higher after haploHCT (0.18; 0.08-0.33) vs. MRD (0.029; 0.005-0.09) and MUD (0.06; 0.02-0.12, p < 0.05). Higher NRM was mainly caused by a higher rate of fatal infections, while deaths related to GvHD or other non-relapse reasons were rare in all groups. As most fatal infections occurred early and were bacterial related, one potential risk factor among many was identified in the significantly longer time to neutrophil engraftment after haploHCT with a median of 16 days (interquartile range; 14.8-20.0) vs. 12 days (10.0-13.0) for MRD and 11 days (10.0-13.0) for MUD (p = 0.01)

Pro-Inflammatory wnt5a and Anti-Inflammatory sFRP5 Are Differentially Regulated by Nutritional Factors in Obese Human Subjects

Background: Obesity is associated with macrophage infiltration of adipose tissue. These inflammatory cells affect adipocytes not only by classical cytokines but also by the secreted glycopeptide wnt5a. Healthy adipocytes are able to release the wnt5a inhibitor sFRP5. This protective effect, however, was found to be diminished in obesity. The aim of the present study was to examine (1) whether obese human subjects exhibit increased serum concentrations of wnt5a and (2) whether wnt5a and/or sFRP5 serum concentrations in obese subjects can be influenced by caloric restriction. Methodology: 23 obese human subjects (BMI 44.161.1 kg/m 2) and 12 age- and sex-matched lean controls (BMI 22.360.4 kg/m 2) were included in the study. Obese subjects were treated with a very low-calorie diet (approximately 800 kcal/d) for 12 weeks. Body composition was assessed by impedance analysis, insulin sensitivity was estimated by HOMA-IR and the leptin-to-adiponectin ratio and wnt5a and sFRP5 serum concentrations were measured by ELISA. sFRP5 expression in human adipose tissue biopsies was further determined on protein level by immunohistology. Principal Findings: Pro-inflammatory wnt5a was not measurable in any serum sample of lean control subjects. In patients with obesity, however, wnt5a became significantly detectable consistent with low grade inflammation in such subjects. Caloric restriction resulted in a weight loss from 131.964.0 to 112.363.2 kg in the obese patients group. This was accompanied by a significant decrease of HOMA-IR and leptin-to-adiponectin ratio, indicating improved insulin sensitivity