Area of Interest:

Theoretical: urban anthropology; political anthropology with special reference to anthropology of the state; cultural politics of ethnicity/race, class, and gender; political economy; global systems and transnationalism; critical theories of power; theory of the commons.

Geographic: Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia; local politics, economic restructuring, and race relations in the Southern United States; East Asia.

Education:

Ph.D. in anthropology, Stanford University, 1983; M.A. in anthropology, San Francisco State University, 1974; B.A. in philosophy, Reed College, 1968.

Professional Background:

I am currently Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before that I was Associate Professor of Anthropology (1994-2002) and Assistant Professor of Anthropology (1987-1994) at UNC Chapel Hill; and Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, 1983-1987.  

I have served as Associate Editor since 2007 of the journal Social Analysis, and as a member of the Editorial Board of Critical Asian Studies (previously: Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars) since 1994. I served as an Associate Editor from 2006-2008 of the International Encyclopedia in the Social Sciences (2nd edition; 9 vols.), Thomson/Gale, 2008, and as Acting Editor of Dialectical Anthropology from 1991-1993.  

I am currently President-Elect of the Society of Urban, National, and Transnational Anthropology.

Research & Activities:

Research Experience
In 1978-1980, 1985, 1990-1993, 1997, 2002, and 2007, I carried out ethnographic and historical research on class, citizen and ethnic politics of urban Chinese in Malaysia.  . This has led to a book to be completed in 2009, “Getting By": Class and the Cultural Politics of Citizenship 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, I co-edited (with Aihwa Ong)  the widely cited book Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, Routledge, 1997.

From 1995 to 2007, I participated in a multi-sited, collaborative ethnographic research project with two other UNC Anthropology faculty (Dorothy Holland and Catherine Lutz) and four  Ph.D. students (Lesley Bartlett, Marla Frederick, Thad Guldbrandsen, and 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, 2007.   This book received the Delmos Jones and Jagna Sharff Prize for the Best Book in the Critical Study of North America offered by the Society for the Anthropology of North America, 2008-2009.

In 2005-2007, I undertook comparative research on the commons and common-property regimes, and edited and wrote the introduction for a book on various contemporary forms of the commons and the challenges these face under the conditions of late capitalism, the recomposition of contemporary states, and globalization.   This book was published as The Global Idea of "the Commons," Berghahn Press, 2007.

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 research has resulted in two refereed articles.

From 1984-1989, I conducted historical research on the concurrent formation of an ethnic peasantry and the formation of the British colonial state in  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 the book “Getting By,” I am currently working on issues related to alternative economic practices, and, with Dorothy Holland, am about to begin a multi-sited ethnographic research project on the alternative agrifoods movement in the U.S. funded by a National Science Foundation grant.

I am also interested in changes in the urban class politics and changing composition of Asian states under the conditions of neoliberal globalization, and have published an article entitled,  “Is China becoming neoliberal?” in Critique of Anthropology 28, 2: 145-176, 2008.  With a co-author, I am incorporating this and several other essays written or under way in a book on the re-composition of contemporary states which we seek to complete by the end of 2010.  

I regularly teach courses on Urban Anthropology (Anth 567), The Chinese Diaspora of the Asia Pacific (Anth 578), Political Anthropology (Anth 491),  and  Alternative Economic Systems (Anth 466).     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:

Books

The Global Idea of ‘the Commons,’ edited by Donald Nonini.  Critical Intervention Series, 10.  Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007

Local Democracy Under Siege: Activism, Public Interests and Private Politics,  by Dorothy Holland, Donald Nonini, Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, Marla Frederick McGlathery, Thaddeus Guldbrandsen and Enrique G. Murillo.  New York: New York University Press, 2007

Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, edited by Aihwa Ong and Donald Nonini. New York: Routledge, 1997

British Colonial Rule and the Resistance of the Malay Peasantry, 1900-1957 (Monograph Series, 38.)   New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1992

Journal Articles (Selected & Refereed)

    “Is China Becoming Neoliberal?”  Critique of Anthropology, 28, 2: 145-176, 2008

    “Processes of State, Class and Ethno-racial Formation in Urban Malaysia: Geo-spatial Transformations and Regime Shifts 1970-2000,” Anthropologica 50,2: 255-268, 2008

    “Comment: Thinking about Neoliberalism as If Specificity Mattered,” FOCAAL, 51: 151-153 May/June 2008

    “Grounded utopian movements: Subjects of neglect,” by  Charles Price, Donald Nonini and Erich Fox Tree, Anthropological Quarterly 81,1: 187-218, 2008

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

    "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

    "Race, Land, Identity: (At) Tribute to Raymond Williams."  Cultural Critique 41 (Winter 1999): 158-183, 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

Book Chapters (Selected & Refereed) 

    “The Chinese diaspora.” In Encyclopedia on Race and Racism. 3 Vols., edited by John H. Moore.  Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.    Volume 1, pp. 304-307, 2008

     “Introduction: The Global Idea of ‘The Commons’,” in The Global Idea of the Commons, edited by D. Nonini,   Critical Intervention Series, 10.   Oxford:  Berghahn Books  (reproduction  of article of same name in Social Analysis,  50,3, 2006),  pp. 1-25, 2007

    “Reflections on  intellectual commons,” in The Global Idea of the Commons, edited by D. Nonini. Critical Intervention Series, 10.   Oxford:  Berghahn Books  (reproduction of article of same name in Social Analysis, 50,3, 2006), pp. 66-88,  2007

     “Indonesia seen by outside insiders: Its Chinese alters in transnational space,” in Identifying with Freedom: Indonesia after Suharto, edited by Tony Day.  Oxford: Berghahn Books (reproduction of article of same name, in  Social Analysis 50, 1, 214-225, 2006), pp. 105-124, 2007

      “Making the case for Kleptocratic Oligarchy (As Dominant Form of Rule in the United States),” in Bruce Kapferer, ed., Oligarchic Corporations and New State Formations, Oxford: Berghahn Press, 21 pp., (reproduction of article of same name, 2006 Social Analysis 49, 1, 177-189, 2005), pp. 24-43, 2005

  “Toward A (Proper) Postwar History of Southeast Asian Petty Capitalism: Predation, The State, and Chinese Small Business Capital in Malaysia,” In Alan Smart and Josephine Smart, eds., Petty  Capitalists and Globalization: Flexibility, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, Albany: SUNY Press,  2005, pp. 167-200

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

    “Critique: Creating the Transnational South,” in James L. Peacock, Harry Watson, and Carrie Matthews, eds., The American South in A Global World, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005, pp. 247-264

   “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: Perspectives 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), 2003, pp.  159-197