Ritual as theory, theory as ritual
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Category: English
The rights of the dead
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Corpses and voices across worlds
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Introduction to “Kinship nomenclatures and kin marriage” by Paul Kirchhoff
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Kinship nomenclatures and kin marriage
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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 more encompassing cultural-political domains that typically accompany neoliberal globalization. I also consi…
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 conceptual tool for studying contemporary urban worlds. Drawing on fieldwork with an environmental nongovernmental organization in Dalian, …
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, that have become essential instruments of a global anthropology. These concepts—which she crafted in response to anthr…
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 central importance of Edward Said’s notion of “contrapuntal analysis” to Ong’s approach to both Chineseness and modern…
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 become a universal claim. It thinks through this claim in relation to Aihwa Ong’s discussion of…
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 refugee youth. Examining a case study of a Hmong teen in Wisconsin who received a long adult sentence based…
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 secure the health and well-being of the Vietnamese population. I consider how the contemporary apparat…
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 not reducible to universal or general forces. Drawing on fieldwork at a state-owned steel factory in Indonesia, the essay describes a specific…
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 of nongovernmental development organizations. A common theme among these diverse…
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 matter of gathering and storing troves of supplies, but is linked to a broader style of …
Ethical citizenship and global development: Exploring the intersections
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…
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. This was a key insight of Aihwa Ong’s classic …
Singing a cosmos into being—for silent or argumentative ancestors?
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Death rites as existential inquiry
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Ritual action, context and comparison
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
How exceptional are the Lòlop’ò?
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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 state approaches to climate change. Departing from popular accounts that pose China as either an engine of climate catas…
Iconoclasm and the restitution of African cultural heritage What role for the communities of owners?
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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 disciplinary retrenchment, they offer a model for reengagement with the gl…
Destruction or dialectics: Other iconoclasms and the new heritage culture industry
This essay examines Zoë Strother’s efforts to historicize recent debates about the repatriation of cultural heritage while also situating contemporary protest movements, such as “Rhodes Must Fall,” in the long and varied history of iconoclasm on the Af…