HU Southeast Asian Societies and Cultures Lecture Series
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January 22nd, 6PM
Invalidenstr. 118, Room 117.
Hong Quang Truong, topic TBD
January 29th
Digital Strike: donating time to the Spring Revolution
Min Htin Kyaw Lat (Universität Passau)
6PM
Invalidenstr. 118, Berlin Room 117
This presentation examines phenomenon of ‘digital strike’ in Myanmar, where politically motivated users coordinate online to raise funds for the Spring Revolution. Drawing inspiration and tactics from K-pop fandom culture, these networks engage in mass click-farming and streaming challenges to monetize content. Based on digital ethnographic research conducted in 2023, this study explores how these networks are organized, the types of content they produce, and their diverse monetization strategies. Findings reveal that this activity represents a significant evolution in digital resistance, transforming everyday online actions into a financial engine for a revolutionary movement. The study highlights how this model of ‘digital strike’ blurs the lines between entertainment, fandom, donation and political action, offering a potential avenue for resource-strapped movements. Ultimately, this case illustrates how grassroots digital communities creatively repurpose global platform infrastructures for political purposes in constrained environments.
February 10th
Land Development, Labour Commodification and the Restructuring of Welfare in Post-reform China and Vietnam
Minh Nguyen (Universität Bielefeld)
6PM
Invalidenstr. 118, Berlin
Room 117
This paper examines how the commodification of labour is shaped by the interactions between seemingly unrelated processes of welfare and land restructuring in China and Vietnam. It shows the changing mechanism of value extraction from rural labour as a commodity along with the land restructuring. Until recently, value extraction profited from the unpaid reproductive labour of migrant workers’ family members and the social welfare function of self-subsistence agriculture in the countryside, which helped to reduce the reproductive costs of migrant labour. With industrial relocation, vast areas of what were used to classify rural and agricultural land have been converted for urban residential and industrial purposes via policy instruments that privilege capital over labour. Rural people whose land and rural livelihoods are lost to these processes find themselves exposed to a much more commodified context of social reproduction, in which they no longer have recourse to the social welfare function of land while facing the increasing costs of household reproduction. With the option of returning to farming forever gone, the compensation they receive might provide them with financial resources to address their immediate needs and consumption desires, yet they are left with self-employment and factory work as the main livelihood options. As land and housing are central to the welfare of workers, the land restructuring has gone hand in hand with the restructuring of welfare systems that ensures an expansive, almost universal yet minimal level of social protection while promoting self-responsibility as the mainstay of wellbeing and livelihoods. The intertwining effects of land and welfare restructuring, we argue, help to maintain the devaluation of labour for the sake of value extraction and facilitate the commodification of labour.
Past events:
November 17th 2025
Panel Discussion. Milk Tea Alliance: Regional Activist Networks in Asia.
5:30-7:30 PM
Invalidenstr. 118, Room 117
In April 2020, the Milk Tea Alliance emerged as a collective effort among Asian netizens to fight against cyberattacks from pro–Chinese Communist Party users. The alliance later expanded beyond the online sphere, as its symbols and meaning were adopted by youth protesters across the region. From the streets of Hong Kong to Taipei, Bangkok, and Yangon, the Milk Tea Alliance became a symbol of cross-border solidarity and a representation of collaboration against authoritarianism and democratic backsliding. However, over time, the prominence and significance of the Milk Tea Alliance in public spaces have diminished among activists in the region. This discussion seeks to revive the spirit of the Milk Tea Alliance by creating a space for dialogue among activists from the alliance’s original member regions: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Myanmar, to deepen mutual understanding of each other’s struggles and highlight the importance of transnational collaboration amid the current wave of autocratization.
Four versions of milk tea will be provided.
Please register at johanna.neumann.1@hu-berlin.de
November 11th 2025
"Dreh's um" von Đức Ngô Ngọc.
6-8 PM
Invalidenstr. 118, Room 315
Der Berliner Regisseur und Filmproduzent Đức Ngô Ngọc stellt sein Projekt "Dreh's um" vor, in dem junge Leute vietnamesischer Herkunft Ihre Lebensrealität mit der Kamera festhalten.
Alle Interessierten sind herzlich eingeladen.