Category Asia
Different ‘Developments’: Japanese Anthropologists and Development
by Kazuki Horiuchi Non-western countries, such as China and India, have become in the last decades major actors of international development (Madwsley 2013). Yet, distinguishing between traditional and emerging donors, might be an over-simplified dichotomy, as donors are not unified in their purposes, and their policies have changed considerably over the years (see Gu and […]
Liminality: Unfixed Culture, Unfixed Selves
by Gertrude Lamare It was June of 2015, and we were on the road, travelling down to Umwang village in Assam, to witness the completion of a much-delayed burial of a woman who had died a hundred years ago. She was a member of the Makdoh clan of the Khasi-Bhoi tribe. Umwang village technically fell […]
Becoming Human: Malala Yousafzai and the Politics of Representation
by Carlo Ceglia Malala. It is enough to say her first name. How did this 21-year-old Pakistani girl – the youngest, as well as the only female Pakistani, to win the Nobel Peace Prize (2014) – become one of those very few people to be known just by their first name? What about her story […]
China’s Uyghur re-education centres in Xinjiang will not produce a loyal and obedient population
by James McMurray **Previously published on The Conversation UK.** The Chinese government’s denials of its mass interment of Xinjiang’s Uyghur citizens have evaporated as international pressure has piled up in recent weeks. In their place has come propaganda extolling the “re-education centres” in which the Uyghurs are held, and which new evidence from the BBC […]
The Spinners of Boyanese Bhavacakra
by Danang Nizar Long outside the radar of anthropology, there was an ethnic group in a secluded island called Bawean, located in the middle of Java Sea, Indonesia, which has a distinctive transnational migration culture. Bawean people (or Boyanese) have a longstanding tradition of migrating to the Malay Peninsula. As early as 1845, the ethnic […]
Creating a World Without Poverty?
By Hannah Feldman Sat on the floor of a small shared room on the outskirts of Metro Manila, Mae* and her sisters are hurriedly crafting necklaces, while their small children treat them as their personal jungle gym – climbing around their shoulders with giggles of glee. The only light comes from a crack in the […]
Shadow over Burma: the Rohingya crisis in context
By Elisa Sandri In late August, alarming reports and harrowing images started to surface from Myanmar. It soon became clear that Rohingya people—a Muslim minority living in a remote region of Rakhine State, bordering Bangladesh—were being killed, tortured, and their villages burnt down. Official Myanmar state outlets reported that Rohingyas had attacked local communities and […]
