Asian Journal of Social Science最新文献

This paper explores the academic experiences of women academicians in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data was collected through online questionnaires from 87 women faculty members teaching in colleges and universities. Findings indicate that increased household work of women due to the pandemic and resulting lockdown has amplified their effort in executing their teaching and examination related duties, but they have ensured that their remote teaching performance has largely remained unaffected. However, the pandemic seems to have had adverse effects on research of women faculty that is likely to impinge on their future prospects of career advancement. Managing the increased demands of teaching and household work and maintaining work-life balance has been stressful for them.

Employing the frame of gender and political ecology, this paper analyses the synergies of indigenous knowledge, agroecological farming and local conservation as a sustainable mitigation and adaptation strategy for climate change in Tehri Garhwal in the state of Uttarakhand, India. The study is based on field research conducted between 2017 and 2018 exploring how women's roles in regenerative agriculture provide them with agency. the nature of which has not been explored. While there is a need to mainstream such practices to sustain the commons and women's empowerment through structural, institutional and financial support, it is crucial to analyze the scope of this empowerment. This paper highlights the predicament of women farmers as their ability to exercise agency in the agricultural space does not necessarily translate into overall empowerment or a transformation of existing gender- and caste- based hierarchical power relations in society, as the latter will require interventions along multiple fronts.

Drawing on ethno-historical perspectives and ethnographic study, this article depicts the tradition of tattooing and its eventual prohibition among the Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh, India. Locally known as tipe, the tradition of marking body and ban within the Apatani society help us understand how economic and political changes in and around the Ziro valley have had an impact on their social and cultural aspects. The tradition of tattooing was part of Apatani culture for several years, but the beginning of the 1970s witnessed that the youth association of the tribe decided to ban the practice in order to help the tribe progress towards what they considered “modernity” and “development,” albeit positioning themselves from the western civilizational discourse.

Being pushed to the margins of society, brothel-based sex workers in Bangladesh develop relations with their intimate partners, referred to as babus. This study, based on fieldwork in a Bangladeshi brothel, documents how sex workers' relations with intimate partners are shaped by intimacy and exploitation and the ways meanings of such relations are rooted in cultural norms. This paper shows that sex workers' intimate relations involve trust, dependency, and emotional attachment, which extend to choices of condom use. This paper argues that sex workers' relations with their intimate partners derive meaning from the broader culture of Bangladesh, in which femininity and domesticity play a dominant role. Understanding sex workers' intimate relations in the Bangladeshi context is important because it sheds light on the nature of the private life of the sex workers from a culture-specific point of view.

With K-pop's tremendous growth transnationally, scholars have pointed to the industry's inclusion of singers from different national and ethnic backgrounds, highlighting them as examples of successful glocalization. But there has been little attention paid to how these “foreign” singers, now integrated into the Korean pop music industry, are received within South Korea itself. In South Korea, public attention towards these idols has intensified as a result of the global success of multinational K-pop groups like Blackpink and NCT. The public visibility of these idols complicates South Korea's image as an ethnically, linguistically, and culturally homogenous nation. This article examines the domestic reception of these idols, exploring the tensions that emerge at the intersection of Koreanness, K-pop, and multiculturalism in South Korea today. Drawing on focus group interviews with Korean K-pop fans as well as Koreans who do not actively follow the industry, the article explicates how foreign K-pop idols alternately challenge and reinforce contemporary understandings of Koreanness.

Political Violence in Southeast Asia since 1945, is a thoughfully curated and thematically organized volume of work covering case studies from six countries within Southeast Asia. This review examines the major contributions of this edited volume to Southeast Asian Studies, highlighting some of the key themes and topics explored in each of its six parts.

Drawing on interviews with 40 gay academics, this article explores their experiences of managing sexual identity in Chinese universities. Three strategies of identity management are identified: passing via marriage or heterosexual relationships, self-distancing from people on campus, and demonstrating outstanding professional performance. This article argues that Chinese universities are heteronormative spaces in which queer identities are excluded. By highlighting gay academics’ transgression of heteronormativity within the closet, this research also unpacks gay academics’ expression of agency in subtle forms.

This paper questions to what extent the category “Asia” is effective as a cultural or ethnic identifier in late modernity. It elucidates the category's plurality and individual customization, as well as the limitations of Asian solidarity, by analyzing the narratives of two groups in Singapore: Chinese Singaporeans and Japanese sojourners. The Singaporean government's national-identity building owes much to Asianist discourses. For Chinese Singaporeans, however, Asia is a void concept; they tend to deny their “Asianness” while emphasizing the hybridity of their identification. For Japanese sojourners, conversely, Singapore awakens their Asian identification and solidarity, albeit temporarily. This paper argues that the foremost concern of people in both groups is not their affiliation with an ethnic group, a state, or “Asia,” but how to navigate their individual lives; moreover, their acceptance of Asianness depends on whether they find the category meaningful in specific situations in the course of their lives.