Showing papers in "Critical Asian Studies in 2023"
TL;DR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors examined the roll-out of a contact-tracing tool called the Time-Space Companion project, which exemplified a state effort to incorporate data-driven surveillance technology into the public health apparatus during the coronavirus outbreak.
Abstract: ABSTRACT Based on ethnographic research carried out during the 2022 Covid-19 surge in southern China, this paper examines the roll-out of a contact-tracing tool called the Time-Space Companion project. The project exemplifies a state effort to incorporate data-driven surveillance technology into the public health apparatus during the coronavirus outbreak. By exploring the definition, identification, and management of Time-Space Companions, the paper shows that the project was used to discipline Chinese citizens and shift public health responsibilities onto them by transforming daily life into sites of public health regulation, discipline, and criminalization. The project also exemplified an on-going state effort to leverage surveillance technologies for the purposes of social management. The paper draws attention to the social repercussions that resulted when technology offered a tempting tool to enhance the infrastructural and despotic powers of mundane state actors.
2 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigates the Chinese party-state's hegemonic project to construct social consent in NGOs and how they react to this, and argues that the changing institutional dynamics of NGO governance in China demonstrates that Chinese civil society is a site of ideological struggle.
Abstract: ABSTRACT This article investigates the Chinese party-state’s hegemonic project to construct social consent in NGOs and how they react to this. Using service-oriented NGOs as examples, it argues that the changing institutional dynamics of NGO governance in China demonstrates that Chinese civil society is a site of ideological struggle. The party-state has adapted some foreign concepts and practices of civil society, which have been popular in China since the reform era, to serve its political and socioeconomic agenda, while avoiding political challenges of liberal values and discourse. Civil society’s hegemonic transformation relies on two major mechanisms—professionalization and Maoist incorporation. This process, however, also leaves some space for NGOs to act differently. Some have been comfortably incorporated into the state-led welfare system and reproduce authoritarian norms and practices among their beneficiaries, whereas counter-hegemonic activism still exists among groups that link their stance and agenda closely with marginalized groups in society.
1 citations
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors analyze the composition, character, modes, and sources of resilience of Indonesian land mafias, noting similarities with formations elsewhere, especially India, taking care to avoid reifying the category, view land maffias as opportunistic networks, or assemblages, of diverse actors including land brokers, investors, lawyers, gangsters, bureaucrats, law enforcement officers, and politicians.
Abstract: :In Indonesia, “land mafias” (mafia tanah) proliferate, alongside mafias that cluster around other commodities and state functions. We analyze the composition, character, modes, and sources of resilience of Indonesian land mafias, noting similarities with formations elsewhere, especially India. While taking care to avoid reifying the category, we view land mafias as opportunistic networks, or assemblages, of diverse actors including land brokers, investors, lawyers, gangsters, bureaucrats, law enforcement officers, and politicians. Their goal is to harvest rents from the transfer of ownership and control over land. They feature two elements: first, reliance on coercion (not always physical violence but always entailing transfer of property without freely-given consent, often via fraud or manipulation); second, institutional amorphousness crossing the state-society boundary. We analyze four modes of land mafia operation, though their nebulousness defies easy categorization. In explaining land mafia resilience, we acknowledge Indonesia’s property boom as a driver, but note that the ubiquity of mafias points to a more fundamental explanation: a variety of state formation involving pervasive engagement by state actors in illegal behavior in collusion with wealthy private actors. Mafias are central to Indonesian state formation, rather than aberrations. Feedback loops that incentivize illegal behavior make land mafias difficult to eradicate.
TL;DR: In this article , the lives of Shan migrant male sex workers, their adaptations to and survival strategies in the pre-and post-pandemic periods, are explored, using an intersectionality approach to understand how the intersections of class, gender, ethnicity, legal status, and the larger context of transnational sexual commodification shape the ways Shan migrant men engage in sex work.
Abstract: Thailand’s sex industry for same-gender sexual services for men has seen a shift to a predominantly migrant workforce, particularly in northern Thailand. The majority of male sex workers in Chiang Mai are ethnic Shan nationals from neighboring Myanmar. This research explores the lives of Shan migrant male sex workers, their adaptations to and survival strategies in the pre- and post-pandemic periods. The paper employs an intersectionality approach to understand how the intersections of class, gender, ethnicity, legal status, and the larger context of transnational sexual commodification shape the ways Shan migrant men engage in sex work. Based on two sets of data collected before and after the Covid-19 pandemic, the research explores how Shan male sex workers utilize their sexualities and other forms of capital while managing a plethora of risks.
TL;DR: This paper argued that the voluntarism of Juche represents a decisive break from the objective laws of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, thereby turning Marx on his head, and argued that North Korea's status as a geopolitically insecure post-colonial country engaged in a forced march from backwardness to a modern industrialized economy has had a decisive impact on both the form and content of North Korean state ideology.
Abstract: ABSTRACT The existing literature on North Korea has been divided over whether the country’s state ideology of Juche should be regarded as a variant of Soviet Marxism-Leninism or whether the explicit voluntarism of Juche means that it should be viewed as a distinctive indigenous ideology. Drawing on Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development and Gramsci’s theory of ideology, the paper argues that North Korea’s status as a geopolitically insecure postcolonial country engaged in a forced march from “backwardness” to a modern industrialized economy has had a decisive impact on both the form and content of North Korean state ideology. Understood as a form of developmental nationalism that seeks not only to legitimize authoritarian rule but also to create a collective subjectivity suited the task of rapid catch-up national development, Juche constitutes a combined ideological form that rests on Marxist-Leninist origins but has deliberately drawn on existing forms of “common sense” conducive towards the mass mobilization of society. In doing so, this paper critically engages with the argument that the voluntarism of Juche represents a decisive break from the supposedly objective laws of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, thereby “turning Marx on his head.”
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors analyze the military's contemporary menu of electoral manipulation as a comprehensive set of intertwined strategies, integrating the analysis of various technical elements of the authoritarian electoral process that are often only looked at in isolation.
Abstract: One decade after Myanmar’s military regime organized non-competitive elections that unexpectedly commenced a period of political reforms, the military leadership upended this transitional period with a coup based on a narrative of electoral fraud. Cancelling the November 2020 election results which had confirmed the voters’ preferences for civilian rule, the military has begun organizing fresh elections while concurrently leading a war against the population. Building on Schedler (2002) and the debate on authoritarian elections, this article analyses the military’s contemporary menu of electoral manipulation as a comprehensive set of intertwined strategies. It integrates the analysis of various technical elements of the authoritarian electoral process that are often only looked at in isolation. The article deconstructs the military’s election-related narratives as self-legitimation in a region where authoritarian elections are the norm. Despite considerable efforts to forge conditions in their favor and create an aura of legitimacy, however, Myanmar’s military does not appear very imaginative in this undertaking, but employs a retrograde toolbox in a brutal manner. Whether this strategy is successful will not depend on the authoritarian leaders’ skills alone, but also on recognition from domestic, regional and international audiences which the junta’s performance seeks to achieve.
TL;DR: The authors discusses how different groups within Myanmar's population respond to multiple crises caused by the 2021 military coup, the economic and social consequences of multiple waves of Covid-19 and increasing global food and fuel prices.
Abstract: ABSTRACT This paper discusses how different groups within Myanmar’s population respond to multiple crises caused by the 2021 military coup, the economic and social consequences of multiple waves of Covid-19 and increasing global food and fuel prices. It is based on monthly observation reports (MOR) by local researchers to focus on the range of actions taken by Myanmar’s silent accommodating majority. Contrary to conventional studies that treat “loyalty” and “passive resistance” as separate categories of individual or collective responses to government failures, this paper introduces “accommodation” as a strategy to reflect actions by those who have engaged in both compliance and passive resistance to deal with the military dictatorship in Myanmar. Those who practice accommodation strategies prioritize safety-first approaches that avoid open resistance to the military regime while simultaneously challenging its claim to legitimacy. Some of the strategies that undermine the military regime’s claim to legitimacy, however, such as the civil disobedience movement in education and healthcare, further deprive the state of the resource to serve the needs of the general population and thus have detrimental and long-term impacts on individuals who use these.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors investigated the impact of climate change and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the local tourism industry in a culturally Tibetan region of Nepal and the diaspora in New York City.
Abstract: ABSTRACT How do high mountain communities, facing the grave effects from climate change and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the local tourism industry, perceive and navigate multiple protracted disasters? This article takes up this question from the perspective of a specific mountain community, that of Mustang, a culturally Tibetan region of Nepal bordering the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), China. Our findings stem from collective ethnographic research conducted with Mustangi communities in Nepal and among the diaspora in New York City to investigate the nexus between high mountain livelihoods, particularly tourism, and the consequences of two distinct yet interlocking disasters: climate change and the global health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the pandemic has undermined elements of Mustang’s economic future and simultaneously prompted a resurgent appreciation for and reliance on more traditional modes of community governance and social support. The fact that these dynamics are unfolding amidst ever-present concerns over the effects of climate change in the Himalayas, against the backdrop of labor- and education-driven outmigration, adds a profound layer of complexity to thinking about the future of tourism but also of Himalayan lives, from built infrastructures to the community resilience needed to sustain both.
TL;DR: In this article , the post-9/11 ramifications of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in South Waziristan, Pakistan are explored and a post-colonial state has undermined state and tribal political relations which constituted political order first during the British colonial era and later in Pakistan.
Abstract: ABSTRACT This study explores the post-9/11 ramifications of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in South Waziristan, Pakistan. It discusses how the post-colonial state has undermined state and tribal political relations which constituted political order first during the British colonial era and later in Pakistan. Furthermore, it explores how the post-colonial state has shared de facto sovereignty in the region with a “good” Taliban in the shape of a peace committee. To understand the Pakistan post-colonial state’s engagement with South Waziristan, it is necessary to make sense of the ongoing GWOT and the resulting necropolitics of life and death in South Waziristan. The paper explores how residents have confronted different scenarios when they encounter the new powerholders. It details the everyday experiences, life stories, and socio-political existence of the people of South Waziristan as an alternative narrative to how mainstream media and academic sources have discussed this area.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors explored the paradoxes of mainstream public debates on illegalities and delinquencies by providing interdisciplinary perspectives on the Muslim-majority nation of Malaysia and drew on nearly three years of ethnographic fieldwork and historical research, supplemented by analysis of court records, media accounts, and other sources, to argue that essentialized categories and conceptual dichotomies in the dominant public narratives on crime contribute to the relative elision of gender in discussions of criminality.
Abstract: ABSTRACT In the past few decades many countries have experienced a surge in crime that is heavily gendered. Men are responsible for much of the rising tide of criminality (and for most criminal offenses prior to the recent surge). This dynamic threatens not only women and children but also societies and polities more generally. Additionally, it occasions serious doubts about state agents’ widely touted commitments to law and order and their oft-celebrated claims to prioritize the safety, flourishing, and overall well-being of law-abiding citizens. It is thus paradoxical that mainstream public debates on illegalities and delinquencies oftentimes do not substantively engage the strongly gendered nature of criminal transgression. This article explores such paradoxes by providing interdisciplinary perspectives on the Muslim-majority nation of Malaysia. It draws on nearly three years of ethnographic fieldwork and historical research, supplemented by analysis of court records, media accounts, and other sources, to argue that essentialized categories and conceptual dichotomies in the dominant public narratives on crime contribute to the relative elision of gender in discussions of criminality. The article also addresses the socio-political significance of these dynamics and some of their comparative and theoretical implications.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors examine the features and limits of a new dispute resolution mechanism implemented by Chinese courts called, "Source Governance of Social Disputes" (SGSD), which aims to bring courts back to the center of dispute resolution by pre-emptively intervening in dispute-prone processes via technology-based mechanisms.
Abstract: This article examines the features and limits of a new dispute resolution mechanism implemented by Chinese courts called, “Source Governance of Social Disputes” (SGSD). Differing from existing extralegal means of dispute resolution, SGSD aims to bring courts back to the center of dispute resolution by pre-emptively intervening in dispute-prone processes via technology-based mechanisms. However, this has generated two pitfalls. Although preemptive repression can be adopted by deploying digital technologies to impose mediation on people and persuade them to make compromises, such technological deployment by and large fails to resolve the root causes of social disputes. Additionally, SGSD introduces new risks of technological abuse which may coerce litigants to accept mediation instead of adjudication, causing an erosion of public confidence in the Chinese legal system and a weakening of regime legitimacy.
TL;DR: Long was a leading scholar of the Vietnam/Indochina War and of the history of Vietnam from ancient times through French colonialism and US neocolonialism, postwar Vietnam, US-Vietnam relations, and Southeast and East Asia, especially China as discussed by the authors .
Abstract: Internationally renowned historian and antiwar activist Ngô Vĩnh Long died at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bangor, Maine on October 12, 2022, at the age of seventyeight. A professor of History at the University of Maine from 1985 until his death, Dr. Long was a leading scholar of the Vietnam/Indochina War and of the history of Vietnam from ancient times through French colonialism and US neocolonialism, postwar Vietnam, US-Vietnam relations, and Southeast and East Asia, especially China. From his undergraduate years at Harvard until the end of his life, Ngô Vĩnh Long was a courageous intellectual activist and an activist intellectual. He often described himself as a proud Vietnamese patriot who cared deeply about Vietnam, its past, and its suffering, as well as about the United States, his second home. Even in the darkest of times, he maintained his vision and hope for a much better Vietnam, a more egalitarian US, and much better US-Vietnam relations. Long sometimes described himself and was considered by some others as a pacifist. This is accurate if by “pacifist”wemean an opponent of war and a promoter of peace, reconciliation, and justice. But Professor Long was not the kind of pacifist who would uncompromisingly and openly condemn all expressions of violence, such as those exerted by Vietnamese anti-colonial and anti-imperialist revolutionaries, who were not always nonviolent in their struggles for freedom and independence. At the same time, he always worked to offer alternatives to violent responses to oppression, exploitation, and domination. Much of Ngô Vĩnh Long’s scholarly and activist priorities and commitments can be traced back to formative influences in his family upbringing and his youthful experiences in Vietnam. These influences and experiences shaped his commitment to speak truth to power. From his youth until the end of his life, Long was profoundly moved by the human-caused suffering of Vietnamese people, which he dedicated his life to alleviating. He believed in providing independent analyses regardless of the personal, career, and other risks he faced from those in Vietnam and in the United States challenged by his interpretations and actions. He had an unshakable commitment to study and educate others about the violent and unjust economic, political, and cultural realities of French colonialism, US neocolonialism, Chinese imperialism, and other expressions of domination in the contemporary world. In taking such positions, commitments, and actions, Ngô Vĩnh Long did not live under any illusions. He fully expected, and accepted, the negative consequences of his beliefs on his personal life, intellectual development, and professional career.
TL;DR: In this paper , Hayward is a lecturer in China and Global Affairs at the Lau China Institute, King's College, London, UK, and is the author of a paper entitled "A Conversation with Jane Hayward: China and International Affairs: A Conversation with a Lecturer in Global Affairs".
Abstract: Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJane HaywardJane Hayward is a lecturer in China and Global Affairs at the Lau China Institute, King’s College, London.
TL;DR: This paper argued that Thai conservative movements have received support when they engage in populism, in contrast to when these movements revert to more traditional, authoritarian mobilization tactics, pointing to the possible existence of an alternative strand of Thai conservatism, one tentatively termed populist conservatism.
Abstract: It is often asserted that the Thai public, particularly members of the urban middle class in Bangkok, are inherently conservative, leading them to support mass protests preceding recent military coups. What is often overlooked is that support for these movements has not been consistent, with polls suggesting that at many points, the Bangkok public has opposed these protests. This prompts the question: why has the broader public supported anti-democratic conservative moments at key moments, but not others? This article argues that Thai conservative movements have received support when they engage in populism, in contrast to when these movements revert to more traditional, authoritarian mobilization tactics. This points to the possible existence of an alternative strand of Thai conservatism, one this article tentatively terms populist conservatism. Paying attention to this vague, yet powerful symbol of “the People” offers a more plausible explanation for the successes and failures of modern Thai conservative movements.