Sociology Awareness Week is coming up very soon. And it is therefore our pleasure to announce the list of events that we will run over a three day period from 16th- 18th Feb.

Why is consulting a physician better than a healer? Why do students have to obey teachers? In using examples from daily life, this talk will introduce the construct power-knowledge as a key Sociological term. In the talk, we will disentangle the relation punishment-power-knowledge as  means to control human life and societies.

The film exposes the psychological effects of an infamous experiment conducted by the Stanford University Psychology Dept. in which students assumed the roles of prisoners and guards in the basement of a campus building for 6 days.

Wondered how Singapore evolved from villages to high-rise residences? How was kampong life like? Follow the filmaker and discuss her journey to recollect her childhood memories in Lim Chu Kang through archival photographs and old film footage.

Our central booth will be located outside canteen A. So do catch us there along with exhibitions from both AWARE and TWC2.

Collection of SociTees can be made from Tuesday onwards at our booth.

Come this 21st October, there wll be a film screening at SPMS LT-3. Assoc Prof Roxana Waterson (Sociology, NUS) will be presenting her recent ethnographic documentary film about her work on the Toraja people of Sulawesi, Indonesia.

WHEN THE SUN RISES: A TORAJA PRIEST OF THE ANCESTRAL WAY
A video documentary by Roxana Waterson (2007)

Synopsis

Tato' Dena' is a special priest of the Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors"), the indigenous religion of the Sa'dan Toraja people of Sulawesi, Indonesia. He holds the title of To Minaa Sando, and officiates especially at Rites of the East, those that have to do with life and fertility (as opposed to mortuary rites, the Rites of the West). He knows by heart a vast repository of ritual poetry, myths and genealogical knowledge. In Tana Toraja the pace of conversion to Christianity has quickened in the past few decades, so that today, perhaps less that 5% of Toraja still maintain the Aluk To Dolo. The film is a portrait of Tato' Dena', but the bigger question it asks is whether this religion can survive at all? Will Tato' Dena' have a successor, or will his poetic knowledge be lost?

WHEN THE SUN RISES is her first film, essentially made single-handed, about the now almost extinct indigenous religion of the Toraja, Aluk To Dolo. It is the product of friendships made over 30 years of fieldwork, capturing a certain moment in the decline of an indigenous religion in the face of conversion to world religions and the pressures of modernity. It thus represents a particular example of a phenomenon that has occurred world-wide as a result of European colonisation and continuing globalisation in today’s post-colonial era.

So, do join in and catch this film presented by the film-maker herself.

21st October
5.00pm
SPMS LT-3 (the new building near Canteen B)
Registration not required

Labels: events, film screening