Notes from the Field | Sia X. Yang offers a poignant meditation on the role of pain in art and performance in China: "Pain in contemporary China is not merely endured. It is organized, moralized, redistributed, and ultimately naturalized as value." criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...
Commentary | Muhammad Nawfal Saleemi argues that there is "an urgent need to mobilize a decolonial perspective grounded in indigenous genderqueer identities based on regional & cultural specificities" in response to protect legal rights of trans communities. criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...
Commentary | Jiahao Zhao critiques "rescue politics" in which "women are acknowledged, but only in forms that remain useful to states, media, & geopolitical projects" and defend war as liberation: "There is no straight line from bombing to emancipation."
criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...
Notes from the Field | Roshni Brahma shares an introspective reflection on the "shifting trajectory" of her positionality as a Boro researcher from Assam in Northeast India conducting ethnographic research at "home" as a "native anthropologist." criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...
Photo Essay | Stephen Black recounts his 1979 photo exhibition "Children of Vietnam" and shares images documenting the everyday life of children in Vietnam in the wake of war: criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...
1. Pain in contemporary China is not merely endured. It is organized, moralized, redistributed, and ultimately naturalized as value. To suffer is not simply to live under constraint; it is to demon...
Over the past few years, the “trans question” has become more central to the cultural politics of right-wing movements around the world. These convergences are emblematic of a globalized right-wing wh...
Mourning as a Political Image In Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, women gathered around new graves as families buried those killed in the latest round of war. A Reuters photograph from March 16 ...
criticalasianstudies.org
“You should have described the rituals in detail and more accurately. This is about our community, and the future generations are going to read this,” a young Boro colleague said to me after I had pub...
Introduction The war in Vietnam ended fifty years ago when the communist forces of North Vietnam overran Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam. Just three years later, in August and September 19...
Notes from the Field | Moira Moeliono, Tristam Moeliono, Maria Brockhaus & Grace Wong argue that Indonesia's 2023 Job Creation Law's promise of “entrepreneurship for all” obstructs social & environmental justice and silences visions of green development. criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...
Commentary | Imran Ahmed & Roshni Kapur detail political tensions around legal accountability in Bangladesh unfolding against a backdrop of deteriorating law & order, with moral policing, harassment, gender-based violence, and attacks on police on the rise. criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...
Introduction Resource extraction and the moulding of people into the workings of a global commodity market has a long history in Indonesia. The colonial government first enabled and legitimised reso...
Introduction In late 2025, the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh found former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina guilty in absentia and sentenced her to death. The trial reflected broader dem...
Commentary | Kanokrat Lertchoosakul argues that the result of the 2026 election in Thailand marks a new anti-democratic political formation—Royal Local Bossism—in which royalist‑aligned conservative power and local bossism, once rivals, now march together. criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...
For nearly three decades, Thailand’s electoral arena seemed increasingly dominated by parties aligned with democratic and liberal forces, from Thai Rak Thai’s landslides to the rise of Move Forward...
