Claudia Merli

Uppsala University | UU · Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology

This paper examines fatherhood among the Malay Muslims of Southern Thailand (representing a minority at the national level, but constituting the majority population in the region). Traditional practices related to birth and the postpartum period are upheld as a marker of ethnic and religious identity by such groups. Building on the concept of patre...

After the tsunami of 26 December 2004, local discourses in the prevalently Muslim Satun province in Southern Thailand were characterized by religious interpretations of the disaster. The range of Islamic interpretations varied, and was far from homogeneous. Statements are framed in plural theodicies and ultimately impute disasters to human responsi...

This article considers the contexts and processes of forensic identification in 2004 post-tsunami Thailand as examples of identity politics. The presence of international forensic teams as carriers of diverse technical expertise overlapped with bureaucratic procedures put in place by the Thai government. The negotiation of unified forensic protocol...

This article explores how the resurgence of a forgotten chimeric figure from the Japanese history of disasters and epidemics, the prophesizing Amabie, intersects with some central ecological and political discourses in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially those asso-ciated with culinary practices, human rights and relations with o...

The years 2020-2022 engraved our existence with epidemiological and political monstrosities that will not be forgotten for quite some time. The COVID-19 pandemic dragged us to contemplating the possibilities of a plague that, rather than being confined to the global south’s ‘invisible’ territories of diseases, heavily affected the global north and...

When is it ethically permissible for clinicians to surgically intervene into the genitals of a legal minor? We distinguish between voluntary and nonvoluntary procedures and focus on nonvoluntary procedures, specifically in prepubescent minors (“children”). We do not address procedures in adolescence or adulthood. With respect to children categorize...

Genital cutting is a well‐researched bodily practice in anthropology, often associated with the formation of gender, personhood, and self in different cosmologies. Early anthropology focused on male initiation rituals, blood sacrifices, and masculinity. As more women anthropologists conducted fieldwork on reproductive health, practices that male an...

Gunung Merapi (Mountain of Fire) is the guardian of a cosmogonic-sacred landscape, and one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. Its eruptions are well studied, however, the relationships among ritual, science, protection and grassroots disaster management arising after the 2006 and 2010 eruptions are mostly overlooked. This paper fills thi...

The Japanese yōkai Amabie (アマビエ) was a forgotten chimeric figure from the Japanese history of disaster and epidemics until the emergence of the Covid‐19 pandemic, when a few manga artists and Kyoto University Library brought her back to public attention and gave her global fame on social media. A drawing contest with the hashtag #AmabieChallenge st...

Whilst, globally, volcanic eruptions are unusual and cause anxiety in affected communities, people living near Sakurajima volcano, Japan are exposed to frequent ashfall with little-to-no official intervention. As part of a wider project, this study assessed how this apparently normalised experience affects residents’ perceptions of health impacts,...

We seek to clarify and assess the underlying moral reasons for opposing all medically unnecessary genital cutting of female minors, no matter how severe. We find that within a Western medicolegal framework, these reasons are compelling. However, they do not only apply to female minors, but rather to non-consenting persons of any age irrespective of...

This chapter focuses on the embodied experiences of women and men during and in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It explores ethnographic material collected in Thailand’s southernmost western province from December 2004 to March 2005 and on subsequent returns to the field to analyse how people lived the catastrophe through theirs and...

The UK's Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is the largest pay-for-performance scheme in the world. This ethnographic study explored how QOF's monetary logic influences the approach to healthcare in UK general practice. From August 2013 to April 2014, we researched two UK general practice surgeries and one general practice training programme. The...

http://www.ifrc.org/publications-and-reports/world-disasters-report/world-disasters-report-2014/

http://aseasuk.org.uk/3/sites/default/files/Aseasuk_News_no._55_(2014).pdf

Merli, Claudia. 2013. Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women. Oxford University Press. Southeast Asia and the Pacific Muslim women occupy a pivotal position in Southeast Asian countries where their history and political participation intersect with nation-building programs, as well as complex multi-ethnic and...

This article portrays the life and activity of Muslim indigenous midwives in Satun province, Southern Thailand. Their art is transmitted almost exclusively through the maternal line and their traditional knowledge has been modified, transformed and reinvented but never abandoned, even as new biomedical information and techniques have been imparted...

This paper explores how local people in a province in southern Thailand perceive the practice of male and female genital cutting. In order to understand the importance placed on these practices, a comparison is drawn between the two and also between the male circumcision and the Buddhist ordination of monks as rites of passage. Discourses on the ex...

This study explores contemporary practices concerning women’s and children’s bodies, with a special focus on postpartum practices, the treatment of the afterbirth and its cosmological dimensions, and male and female circumcision. At the intersection between traditional midwifery and modern medicine, Muslim women cross the boundaries between differe...

Among the Thai- and Malay-speaking Muslims living in southern Thailand, the traditional midwife (alternatively called mootamjae in Thai or bidan in Malay) performs a mild form of female genital cutting (FGC) on baby girls. This article is based on material collected in the Satun province, located on the Andaman coast, bordering on the Malaysian sta...