Author: Nancy Munn

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

This contribution explores the discursive and practical marking of gay males as targets of a biopolitical regime whose aim, ostensibly, was and is to secure the health and well-being of the Vietnamese population. I consider how the contemporary apparat…

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 matter of gathering and storing troves of supplies, but is linked to a broader style of …

Departing from Aihwa Ong’s influential analysis of citizenship as a Foucauldian cultural project of subject-making, this contribution examines three global development citizen-subjects: transnational high-tech companies, marginalized women, and everyda…

This contribution argues that Aihwa Ong’s approach to the urban as problem-space is a powerful and underutilized conceptual tool for studying contemporary urban worlds. Drawing on fieldwork with an environmental nongovernmental organization in Dalian, …

In this contribution I draw on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia and provide an overview of the punitive trends in legal spheres and more encompassing cultural-political domains that typically accompany neoliberal globalization. I also consi…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

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. This was a key insight of Aihwa Ong’s classic …

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

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 of nongovernmental development organizations. A common theme among these diverse…

This contribution uses a comparative racialization framing to revisit Aihwa Ong’s notion of ideological blackening as applied to Southeast Asian refugee youth. Examining a case study of a Hmong teen in Wisconsin who received a long adult sentence based…

From post-World War II Germany to contemporary contexts beyond Europe and the United States, this contribution considers the extent to which “Blackness” has become a universal claim. It thinks through this claim in relation to Aihwa Ong’s discussion of…

Over the past forty years, Aihwa Ong has invented a remarkable collection of powerful concepts, delivered in compact and vivid terms, that have become essential instruments of a global anthropology. These concepts—which she crafted in response to anthr…

This contribution reflects on Aihwa Ong’s thoughts on the global and her later work with Asian scientists to look at recent Chinese state approaches to climate change. Departing from popular accounts that pose China as either an engine of climate catas…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

This essay explores the paradox of how Aihwa Ong’s classic work on Chineseness managed to remain in but not of China. Identifying the central importance of Edward Said’s notion of “contrapuntal analysis” to Ong’s approach to both Chineseness and modern…

This essay develops the method of mesoanalysis to comprehend problems shared at divergent sites, but that are not reducible to universal or general forces. Drawing on fieldwork at a state-owned steel factory in Indonesia, the essay describes a specific…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

In response to papers by Langlitz on the position of the devil’s advocate and Van Dinther on morality and advocacy, I try to parse ethics, morality, and moralizing in light of my two recent studies: of the rehabilitation of child sex molesters, and of …