Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-10-09DOI: 10.1080/1683478x.2023.2254129
Floramante S. J. Ponce
{"title":"Hydroelectric development in “China’s backyard”? Modernity, market integration, and (im)mobilities in northwestern Laos","authors":"Floramante S. J. Ponce","doi":"10.1080/1683478x.2023.2254129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478x.2023.2254129","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThe post-1975 Lao state has considered hydropower projects an important driver of economic development. One of these is the Nam Nua 1 (NNua1), a Chinese hydropower project in northwestern Laos under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Grounded in ethnographic data gathered between August 2018 and September 2019 in Banmai Resettlement—the NNua1’s largest relocation site—this study analyzes how new physical infrastructures and systems of distributing entitlements have shaped the villagers’ experiences of modernity, market integration, and (im)mobilities. While this study pursues a villager-centered approach to scrutinizing hydroelectric development in China’s backyard, it also transcends discussions whether the resettled want to politically connect to or disconnect from the Lao state.Keywords: Hydropower developmentmodernitymarket integration(im)mobilitiesChinese project in Laos Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 I deliberately changed the names of the hydropower project, resettlement site, and all people I worked with in Laos to preserve their anonymity.2 Here I conceptualized the Lao state as a network of heterogenous entities that are created, maintained, and transformed through various political and economic processes and sociocultural practices. Rather than examining it as an administrative body with clear-cut bureaucratic structures, I scrutinized not just the entities comprising the Lao state, but also the “effects” (Mitchell Citation1991, 94-95), material ramifications, and symbolic power of such entities. As a social anthropologist, I focused largely on how the Lao people I worked with viewed, experienced, and questioned these dimensions of the Lao state.Additional informationFundingThe study’s fieldwork was generously supported by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.Notes on contributorsFloramante S. J. PonceFloramante S.J. Ponce is a postdoctoral fellow at the Maison des Sciences Humaines de l’Université libre de Bruxelles (MSH-ULB). He has been a lecturer at the Martin Luther University’s Institute of Anthropology and Philosophy (Halle, Germany) and the PUP’s Sociology and Anthropology Department (Manila, Philippines). Ponce completed his PhD in Social Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany). His doctoral research focuses on how a Chinese BRI Project in Laos engenders experiences of modernity, market integration, and geographical, socioeconomic, and metaphorical (im)mobilities.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135094898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-10-02DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2023.2270829
Wai-Man Tang
{"title":"Intercultural education and sports: teaching kabaddi in a multicultural setting in Hong Kong","authors":"Wai-Man Tang","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2023.2270829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2023.2270829","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract After the government of Hong Kong branded Hong Kong as “Asia’s World City,” there has been more interest in addressing the needs of multicultural education in the city. This is also the intent of this study, which discusses the impact of a sports program that involves a South Asian sport called kabaddi on intercultural competence. The program was conducted in a multicultural setting in secondary schools and social communities with participants of different ethnic backgrounds. These participants included students, school teachers and kabaddi coaches. Four schools were purposefully selected, and the data collection methods comprised interviews and participant observation. The findings of the study revealed that the program which adopted the approach of teaching games for understanding (TGfU) could enhance the intercultural competence of both Chinese and South Asian students. The students gained new knowledge about heritage/minority cultures, learned to appreciate them, and developed bonding and bridging social capital. The implications of this study validate the feasibility and merit of integrating intercultural education into physical education. However, it is important to identify the ethnic composition and relations of the participants and devise a suitable pedagogy and curriculum when implementing the program for optimal results.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"31 1","pages":"275 - 292"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139324486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-09-11DOI: 10.1080/1683478x.2023.2246334
James D. Letson
{"title":"Administering Affect: Pop-Culture Japan and the Culture of Anxiety","authors":"James D. Letson","doi":"10.1080/1683478x.2023.2246334","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478x.2023.2246334","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135981523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-08-31DOI: 10.1080/1683478x.2023.2240981
Nanase Shirota
{"title":"Volunteers’ listening as a “non-free gift”: an ethnography of Active Listening volunteering in Japan","authors":"Nanase Shirota","doi":"10.1080/1683478x.2023.2240981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478x.2023.2240981","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43552439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-07-12DOI: 10.1080/1683478x.2023.2229114
Tina Harris
{"title":"Places in Knots: Remoteness and Connectivity in the Himalayas and Beyond,","authors":"Tina Harris","doi":"10.1080/1683478x.2023.2229114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478x.2023.2229114","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46733205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2023.2214499
P. Tiné
{"title":"Modern dharma: the moral worlds of Newar middle-class families in Bhaktapur, Nepal","authors":"P. Tiné","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2023.2214499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2023.2214499","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The dissertation “Modern Dharma: The Moral Worlds of Newar Middle-Class Families in Bhaktapur, Nepal” explores family transformations among an emerging middle class in the Nepali city of Bhaktapur. By examining personal narratives of conflict and adjustment in domestic settings and among kin, this work sheds new light on the negotiation of social roles and relationships in the pursuit of an idealized notion of well-being in a context of accelerated socio-economic change.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"217 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46297206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478x.2023.2222991
G. Mathews
{"title":"Asylum seeking in Hong Kong as a rite of passage","authors":"G. Mathews","doi":"10.1080/1683478x.2023.2222991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478x.2023.2222991","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article, based on interactions and interviews within a class of mostly African asylum seekers in Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions over the past 17 years, examines their asylum-seeking as an extended rite of passage, one that eventually led their lives in a more fulfilling direction than asylum-seeking as generally portrayed in the academic literature. Some of these former asylum seekers in Hong Kong have returned to their home countries; some have attained refugee status and now live in the United States or Canada; some have found alternative paths to leave asylum-seeker status, and now live in Southeast Asia; and some have gotten married to Hongkongers and have become permanent Hong Kong residents. Most of the former asylum seekers I interviewed said that, although being an asylum seeker was a long and frustrating process, it was in the end worthwhile for them. What they have experienced as asylum seekers was a long voyage lasting many years into the prime of their lives but that eventually reached a destination better than where they had left.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"196 - 212"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47064160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2023.2219968
Stevi Jackson
{"title":"Sexuality and the rise of China: the post-1990s gay generation in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China","authors":"Stevi Jackson","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2023.2219968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2023.2219968","url":null,"abstract":"Chinese English speakers in terms of foreign language and race, and draws from multiple linguistic perspectives to do so. Foreignness is never defined in the book as just one thing, but is shown to be a number of things that are being constructed as symbolically modern in local linguistic hierarchies. This study is groundbreaking in its arguments about the changing relationship between race, language, and modernity.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"228 - 231"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41415023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2023.2221147
Hannah Bulloch
{"title":"Magic, luck, and permeable personhood in the Philippines","authors":"Hannah Bulloch","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2023.2221147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2023.2221147","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Cebuano term palihi denotes a range of rituals to induce desired outcomes through analogical causation. It is predicated on the understanding that at inceptions - including the New Year, building, planting, and pregnancy - qualities may be transmitted from an entity or process to another that is in genesis or renewal. A type of sympathetic magic, palihi is intended to direct these forces to bring luck, such as prosperity, intelligence or vigorous growth. Drawing on ethnographic research on Siquijor Island and interviews with Filipino diaspora this article explicates key patterns and principles underlying palihi, situates these within an international scholarship on associative magic, and considers what palihi and related taboos illuminate about Visayan concepts of personhood, particularly the development, boundaries, connections and malleability of people. The article advances a case for anthropological conceptualizations of personhood whereby bodily boundaries/permeability are not necessarily fixed, but subject to sometimes dramatic temporal flux.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"157 - 176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46547462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Asian anthropologyPub Date : 2023-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2023.2222984
Gracia Liu-Farrer, Dalima Tamang
{"title":"Visa policies, migration industry and the ethnic entrepreneurship trap: the case of Nepalese restaurant businesses in Japan","authors":"Gracia Liu-Farrer, Dalima Tamang","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2023.2222984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2023.2222984","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Ethnic entrepreneurship can be an alternative economic strategy among immigrants whose labor market opportunities in the host society are hindered by language deficiency, institutional constraints or racial discrimination. However, it can also constrain migrants’ social economic mobility. This is especially likely when, with particular visa policies, ethnic business is appropriated as a channel for labor migration, trapping migrants in a narrow economic niche. Excessive concentration in one type of business leads to low road competition within the community and co-ethnic exploitation. This study uses the case of Nepalese immigrants’ restaurant businesses in Japan to illustrate this pitfall of ethnic entrepreneurship. It highlights the roles of the immigration regime and the migration industry in creating such a condition.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"177 - 195"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48418187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}