Asia Institute - Theses
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ItemA Historical Comparison of Maududi and Hallaq: Religion, State and Political Theology in Mughal India( 2022)This thesis examines and compares different approaches to moral coercion and social order in Muslim political ethics. I compare the claims of Maulana Maududi’s Islamism paradigm with what I call Wael Hallaq’s Islamic Governance paradigm, with reference to their analytical relevance in Mughal India. Utilising the expansive resources in recent revisionist scholarship, I analyse Mughal ideas about religion, state and political theology, considering the ways in which Maududi, or Hallaq, are able to capture or appreciate those ideas. I find that, after examining Mughal sources, Hallaq overall offers a more persuasive way of understanding Muslim practice. Instead of solely privileging, as Maududi does, formal state-based legalities and a punitive approach to securing moral compliance, Mughal political culture more closely reflects the model offered by Hallaq. It was a milieu wherein important voices elevated personal ethical cultivation and openness to matters of social order, in a context of social and religious plurality. Ultimately, I contend that the consideration of a wider range of premodern Muslim voices draws our attention towards Hallaq’s model, destabilises Maududi’s Islamist grip on interpretations of Muslim history, and allows for a more thoroughly non-statist understanding of political Islam.
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ItemMental illness manga in contemporary Japan: patients (tojisha) as knowledge producers( 2021)The thesis aims at exploring lived experiences of mental illness in contemporary Japan by looking at the manga created by those with direct experiences (tojisha). The manga analysed were all published in the period after the inclusion of psychiatric patients in the employment quota in 2018. Written by mental health tojisha, or those who self-identify as living with mental health challenges, these works provide insight into the authors’ subjective experiences of mental illness, as well as diverse ways of coexisting with disability and moving forward. They reflect not only personal experiences but recent mental health care transitions to community-based care and policy reforms that support tojisha’s independent living. Tojisha narratives revealed that individuals’ illness journeys are unique, depending on their circumstances. To convey their subjective psychological experiences and reclaim their selfhood from homogenising medical diagnosis, authors use metaphors and other storytelling devices. However, some commonalities in how mental illness is lived and negotiated in the authors’ daily lives were observed. The manga provided insight into different aspects of illness experiences including (1) how illness affects tojisha’s sense of self and how tojisha (re)construct their identities through graphic narratives; (2) how illness symptoms affect tojisha’s daily functioning; (3) how tojisha experience medical encounters and healthcare institutions; (4) how the social networks respond to tojisha’s condition and how societal responses affect tojisha; (5) what kind of treatment and self-care strategies tojisha engage in to manage their condition; (6) how the Internet is used in contemporary illness management; (7) how illness affects tojisha’s employment participation and what systems of support are available to encourage tojisha’s independent living; (8) how gender and sex shape tojisha’s illness experiences. Through graphic storytelling, the authors not only reconstruct their identities disrupted by illness, but provide readers companionship, useful information, and tips for navigating illness. By being useful to peers, the authors transform from patients to what Frank (1995) termed “wounded healers”. By presenting the richness of embodied experiential knowledge found in tojisha manga, the thesis argues for the importance of listening to the voices of mental health patients who have historically been underrepresented and misrepresented. Their manga represents a valuable source of knowledge not only for peers and caregivers but medical professionals, scholars, and policymakers.