The mass domestic migration of laborers from rural to urban areas is one of the most visible and significant aspects of “the rise of China.” Examining personal experiences can help us to describe and understand this phenomenon. As Arthur Kleinman (2006) has observed, life histories and personal voices demonstrate how people live a moral life amidst uncertainty and danger, and how they interpret what really matters to them. While recounting retired guojia ganbu Deik Bok’s life history and narratives, I discuss and elaborate on one individual’s experience of uncertainty and morality through China’s vicissitudes from the 1950s through the 2010s. I argue that this person’s experiences tell an important story about minorities in China through the socialist and reform periods, and specifically about the shifts in economic decisions and subjectivities that accompanied the rise of labor mobility. This ethnography builds on my friendship with Deik Bok that began in 1997 and was maintained through the many years I conducted ethnographic studies in Hmub villages in the highlands of southeastern Guizhou. Deik Bok represents a lively and vivid social actor of a particular time and place participating in China’s labor migration and social transformation since the 1950s, and his story provides a nuanced view of the transformation of China’s minority areas.

Despite a growing literature, market-oriented agrarian change in Southeast Asia continues to beg questions on the diversity of local experiences and trajectories of development. In this article, we examine the challenges faced by ethnic minorities in Vietnam’s northeast uplands during the process of agricultural transformation since the 1986 economic reforms. Drawing upon field research on a Tay commune in Lang Son Province and a Dao commune in Quang Ninh Province in 2016 and 2018, the article investigates their specific experiences with agrarian transformation. We suggest that local people have adapted their production systems according to the demands of the market but have not been able to compete successfully as market actors. Their main constraints are limited access to natural resources, lack of control over the market, and the ineffectiveness of state agricultural extension projects. Based on the analysis, the article provides suggestions for supporting upland farmers in overcoming their challenges.

In recent years, Japan’s long-term foreign residents have continued to increase; and among the communities that have settled, Filipinos constitute one of several aging groups of migrants. This paper focuses on how aging Filipina migrants reflect upon and negotiate their observations on how they age in Japan. It argues that their perceptions of aging arise from expectations of self-reliance and independence linked to a discourse of successful aging popular in current discussions on aging globally. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper shows how informants articulate their expectations through the management of finances, personal health, and the practice of transnational retirement. It ultimately shows that within a shifting neoliberal discourse that pressures citizens to age proactively, alleviating the burden on the Japanese state, Filipinas express counter-narratives through their personal worries, desires, and practices. These have implications for the discussion on aging migrants in Japan.

The unprecedented emergence of hagiographic Buddhist museums in Singapore in the 2000s superficially appears to be attempts by the Buddhist community to memorialize their deceased venerables. While this is undoubtedly true, the choice of modern museums rather than traditional memorial halls or stūpas signifies that other formative forces may be at work. This article argues that rather than being isolated commemorative events, the successive establishment of these museums points to certain etic socioreligious factors affecting the local Buddhist community in the preceding decades. Through a review of the historical evidence, interviews with crucial museum stakeholders, and surveys of museum visitors, I posit that the museums are a manifestation of the confluence of the effects of the community’s response to religious rivalry, Buddhist intellectual and pedagogical reforms, conjoined with the adoption of nontraditional methods for the memorialization of charismatic reformist monks. Lastly, I investigate hagiographic Buddhist museums as sites of didacticism, heuristics, and skillful means.

This article investigates the portrayal of masculinities represented in Indonesian literature for young adults in the 1950s. The period chosen is a significant marker in Indonesian history, as it was when the newly formed nation was solidifying its national cohesion. The increasingly nationalist and patriotic atmosphere resulted in the emergence of two opposing cultural tendencies: the nationalist and independent spirit that typically spread among citizens of a newly independent country versus the tendency to maintain Indonesian values, the latter requiring submission to collective societal norms. The cultural values—namely, the revolutionary spirit to be an independent nation and the nationalist enthusiasm that required young citizens to be restrained, loyal, and contributing to the nation—are reflected in the masculine norms of the literature. It can be argued that forms of masculinity constructed in a society are closely related to the dynamics of its sociocultural changes. In addition, this article challenges the monolithic association of masculine norms with domination, assertiveness, and individualism.

The New Year festival, or Songkran, is considered the most prominent festival in Chiang Mai, the former capital of the kingdom of Lan Na in Thailand’s Upper North. The festival, held over three days in mid-April, marks the earth’s entry into a new solar year. The authors seek to reconstruct the origins of the Songkran festival in Chiang Mai and its historical evolution by analyzing a variety of Northern Thai sources as well as missionary reports from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Special attention is given to the transformation of the state-sponsored dam hua ritual of the Lan Na kings into a ceremony under the auspices of the Thai state.