Area of Interest:

Theoretical: transnationalism, diasporas, and globalization; urban anthropology; political anthropology with special reference to anthropology of the state; cultural politics of ethnicity/race, class, and gender; theory of the commons; political economy; critical theories of power. Geographic: Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia; local politics, economic restructuring, and race relations in the Southern United States; East Asia.

Education:

Ph.D., Stanford University; M.A., California State University San Francisco; B.A. (Philosophy), Reed College

Research & Activities:

Research Experience and Publications:

In 2000, 2001, and 2003, I studied the transnational strategies, identities, and cultural logics among Chinese who fled Indonesia in the wake of violent persecution against them in mid-1998. This project is ongoing.

From 1995 to 2001, I participated in a multi-sited, collaborative ethnographic research project with two other UNC Anthropology faculty (Dorothy Holland and Catherine Lutz) and several UNC Ph.D. students (Lesley Bartlett, Marla Frederick, Thad Guldbrandsen, Enrique Murillo) on local democracy and its relationship to activism, neoliberal politics, and economic restructuring in five communities in North Carolina. Coming out of this research, with these colleagues I wrote Local Democracy under Siege: Activism, Public Interests and Private Politics, New York University Press, forthcoming, 2007.

In 1978-1980 for the dissertation, and in 1985, 1990-1993, and 1997, I carried out ethnographic and historical research on identity formation among urban Chinese in Malaysia and overseas. This has led to a book I am now completing, “Getting Through Life”: Classed and Gendered Lives, and the Cultural Politics of Chinese Identity in Malaysia, based on long-term ethnographic and historical research among working-class Chinese men in postcolonial urban Malaysia and overseas. Coming out of this research, in addition to being the author of many refereed journal articles and book chapters, with Aihwa Ong I edited the widely cited book Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, Routledge, 1997.

From 1984-1989, I conducted historical research on the formation of an ethnic peasantry in colonial Malaya, which resulted in the book British Colonial Rule and the Resistance of the Malay Peasantry, 1900-1957, Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1992.

Present Research and Teaching Interests:

In addition to completing “Getting Through Life,” I am currently working on issues related to alternative economic practices, including the theory of the commons, and to states undergoing globalization. I have just written two essays, “The global idea of the commons” and “In search of the intellectual commons,” which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Social Analysis in 2006/2007.

I have also written an essay on contemporary China, “Is China becoming neoliberal?” which is currently under submission with a journal. I am incorporating this and several other essays written or under way in a book on the anthropology of the state which I will seek to complete by the end of 2007.

I regularly teach courses on Urban Anthropology (Anth 567), Chinese Diasporic Formations in the Asia Pacific (Anth 578), Political Anthropology (Anth 491), Economic Anthropology (Anth 465), Alternative Economic Systems (Anth 466), and the First Year Seminar “Asian Cultures, Asian Cities, Asian Modernities” (Anth 052). Depending on demand, I also teach The Anthropology of Space and Power (Anth 462), Anthropology and Marxism (Anth 449), and Globalization and Transnationalism (Anth 502).

I offer graduate seminars in urban anthropology, critical theories of power, globalization and transnationalism, Marxism, and in other selected topics related to my research.

Selected Publications:

Dorothy Holland, Donald Nonini, Catherine Lutz, et al., Local Democracy under Siege: Activism, Public Interests and Private Politics, New York University Press, forthcoming, 2007.

“Indonesia Seen by Its Outside Insiders: Its Chinese Alters in Transnational Space” Social Analysis 50, 1, 214-225, 2006

“Making the case for Kleptocratic Oligarchy (As Dominant Form of Rule in the United States),” Social Analysis 49, 1, 177-189, 2005

“Diasporas and Globalization,” in Carol Ember, Melvin Ember and Ian Skoggard, eds. Encyclopedia of Diasporas. New York: Kluwer/Plenum, 2005, 559-570.

"Spheres of Speculation and Middling Transnational Migrants: Chinese Indonesians in the Asia Pacific," in Brenda S.A. Yeoh and Katie Willis, eds, State/ Nation/ Transnation: Perspective on Transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific, London: Routledge, 2004, pp.37-66

"American Neoliberalism, 'Globalization' and Violence" Reflections from the United States and Asia," in Jonathan Friedman, ed., Globalization, the State, and Violence, Altamira Press (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), 2002, pp. 159-197

"The dialectics of 'disputatiousness' and 'rice-eating money': Class confrontation and gendered imaginaries among Chinese men in Peninsular Malaysia." American Ethnologist 26, 1: 47-68, 1999

"'Chinese society,' coffeeshop talk, possessing gods: The politics of public space among diasporic Chinese in Malaysia. " positions: east asia cultures critique 6,2: 439-473, 1998

Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, edited with Aihwa Ong. New York: Routledge, 1997

Donald Nonini and Aihwa Ong, “Introduction: Chinese Transnationalism as an Alternative Modernity," in Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, A. Ong and D. Nonini, eds. Routledge Press, 1997, pp. 3-33.