The future is family
The future is family Future visions energize growing enterprises, states, and families to act. Together, these entwined processes and their conflicts open unpredictable avenues for both profit-making and social transformation.…
Singing a cosmos into being—for silent or argumentative ancestors?
Singing a cosmos into being—for silent or argumentative ancestors? Go to Source
Death rites as existential inquiry
Death rites as existential inquiry Go to Source
Ritual action, context and comparison
Ritual action, context and comparison Go to Source
Against invisibilization—towards “Blackness” as a universal claim
Against invisibilization—towards “Blackness” as a universal claim From post-World War II Germany to contemporary contexts beyond Europe and the United States, this contribution considers the extent to which “Blackness” has…
Asia as strategy: Deployments of a Chinese planet
Asia as strategy: Deployments of a Chinese planet This contribution reflects on Aihwa Ong’s thoughts on the global and her later work with Asian scientists to look at recent Chinese…
Making MSM: Biopolitical subjects in Vietnam
Making MSM: Biopolitical subjects in Vietnam This contribution explores the discursive and practical marking of gay males as targets of a biopolitical regime whose aim, ostensibly, was and is to…
Sustainability enclaves in Southeast Asia
Sustainability enclaves in Southeast Asia Resource regimes in postsocialist Laos have been dominated by foreign actors in ways that frequently dovetail with the prerogatives of multilateral investment and the work…
Making things fungible
Making things fungible This essay draws on Aihwa Ong’s conception of “fungible life,” applying it to the practice of stockpiling essential goods. It argues that stockpiling is not just a…
Towards a “contrapuntal” anthropology of the global
Towards a “contrapuntal” anthropology of the global This essay explores the paradox of how Aihwa Ong’s classic work on Chineseness managed to remain in but not of China. Identifying the…
Neoliberal globalization, the punitive, and the pastoral
Neoliberal globalization, the punitive, and the pastoral In this contribution I draw on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia and provide an overview of the punitive trends in legal spheres and…
Spiritual economy as mesoanalytics: An ethnography of a global problem space in Indonesia
Spiritual economy as mesoanalytics: An ethnography of a global problem space in Indonesia This essay develops the method of mesoanalysis to comprehend problems shared at divergent sites, but that are…
Global anthropology and the art of the middle range
Global anthropology and the art of the middle range Over the past forty years, Aihwa Ong has invented a remarkable collection of powerful concepts, delivered in compact and vivid terms,…
Ideological blackening, masculinity and comparative racialization: Situating Southeast Asian Americans
Ideological blackening, masculinity and comparative racialization: Situating Southeast Asian Americans This contribution uses a comparative racialization framing to revisit Aihwa Ong’s notion of ideological blackening as applied to Southeast Asian…
The devil’s in the detail: Consequences, intent, and moral futures in anthropology
The devil’s in the detail: Consequences, intent, and moral futures in anthropology Go to Source
Warning against and experimenting with morality
Warning against and experimenting with morality Go to Source
Ethics, morality, and moralizing in anthropological research
Ethics, morality, and moralizing in anthropological research In response to papers by Langlitz on the position of the devil’s advocate and Van Dinther on morality and advocacy, I try to…
Volunteering for the environment in China: The urban as a terrain of problematization
Volunteering for the environment in China: The urban as a terrain of problematization This contribution argues that Aihwa Ong’s approach to the urban as problem-space is a powerful and underutilized…
The ethnography of the global after globalization
The ethnography of the global after globalization This collection of essays seeks to reinvigorate ethnographic investigation of the contemporary global. At a moment afflicted by transnational pandemic, political chauvinism, and…
Reflections on ethnographic fieldwork across a lifetime
Reflections on ethnographic fieldwork across a lifetime Ethnography, Ahead of Print. In this ‘Tale from the Field’, I reflect on the practice of ethnographic fieldwork with folk puppeteers over time,…