ABSTRACT In 1907, after months of prospecting across India, the little-known and remote hamlet of Sakchi in Singhbhum was chosen by Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904), founder of the Tata Group, as the location for India’s first indigenously owned iron and steel works. This paper examines the construction of an institutional cultural memory of what would become the planned city of Jamshedpur as an integral part of India’s industrial heritage, steeped in ideas of progress, modernity and cosmopolitanism. The article juxtaposes this cultural memory with the lived experiences and memories of Jamshedpur inhabitants who have witnessed its transformation in response to and beyond the institutional narrative of the ideal steel city. Finally, the article discusses the immediate and long-term impacts of communal riots in 1964 and 1979 and the ways in which this violence is remembered or forgotten. In doing so, the article argues that public and private histories and memories of Jamshedpur intersect, overlap, and negotiate with each other in ways that complicate and contradict a carefully cultivated discourse of model industrial urbanism that has been erected on a foundation of manufactured cosmopolitanism.

ABSTRACT This article examines the dynamics of clientelism within Dayak communities in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, focusing on how ethnic institutions sustain long-term intermediary networks that operate beyond electoral cycles. In contrast to mainstream scholarship, which often emphasizes transactional and temporary forms of electoral clientelism, this study focuses on the role of the Dayak Customary Council (Dewan Adat Dayak or DAD) as a social network structure that mediates access to state resources and consolidates local elite power through institutional capture. The study examines how DAD integrates customary structures into the state’s bureaucratic hierarchy, from the village to provincial levels as well as through customary law (kedamangan) institutions. The findings reveal that political actors capitalize on their Dayak ethnic identity to secure investment flows and long–term political support within bureaucratic arenas. This article expands understanding of clientelism by showing that institutionalized ethnic networks in Indonesia can generate stable patronage arrangements in which ethnic organizations function as permanent intermediaries within the country’s decentralized governance system.

ABSTRACT When I applied for Truku Indigenous status in 2022, I discovered that my mother had never been officially registered as Indigenous in Taiwan and my application was therefore denied. Only through an arduous bureaucratic process was I able to obtain state recognition of my Truku Indigenous identity. This experience led me to ask what epistemic and ideological foundations structure Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples Status Act (IPSA). Drawing on narrative inquiry and combining autoethnographic reflection with legal and policy analysis, this article identifies two ideologies underlying the Act: post-colonial dossierism and patriarchal governance. Taiwan’s recognition regime privileges colonial archives over Indigenous self-determination while operating through patriarchal norms of descent and identity transmission. This study contributes to the literature on postcolonialism in two ways. First, it identifies dossierism and patriarchal governance as mechanisms through which colonial epistemology is reproduced in law. Second, it shows that once colonially produced documents are codified as mandatory state law, it legitimized the colonial way of seeing and, in turn, shapes how colonized subjects come to understand themselves.

ABSTRACT Scholars have characterized Cambodia as a weak state, strong party governance system in which administrative institutions are subordinated to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). This article argues that since 2013 Cambodian governance has taken a significant technocratic turn, as party rule has become increasingly dependent on a stronger and more capable administrative state. It traces a reform pattern involving selective creation and upgrading of institutional nodes that expand overall state administrative capacity without disrupting the party-political order. Through three cases — the transformation of the National Bank of Cambodia through the Bakong digital payment system, the restructuring of public–private partnership frameworks to fund the Techo International Airport, and the creation of executive-linked agencies such as the Techo Startup Center — the article shows how new centers of administrative capacity have emerged and been positioned at the core of the state’s developmental agenda. These institutions have enhanced the party-state’s capacity to mobilize revenue, coordinate and develop mega infrastructures, and formalize the economy, producing a more capable but still party-embedded state. The Cambodian case illustrates a particular trajectory within broader contemporary developmental state-making under global capitalism, in which strengthened administrative states and political authoritarianism are mutually reinforcing.

ABSTRACT This article examines how Pakistan's local government gender quota policy, aimed at improving women's political representation, has been undermined by entrenched patriarchal structures in rural Punjab. Based on longitudinal ethnographic research, including fieldwork conducted in 2005-2006 and 2019, with follow-up observations in 2024, the study highlights the problem of proxy representation. In this scenario, elected women often act as figurehead councilors while their male relatives wield actual decision-making power. The analysis indicates that the apparent increase in female representation often amounts to mere symbolic inclusion, offering little genuine empowerment for women. By drawing on feminist theories of representation and agency, along with concepts of patriarchal bargains and a governmentality perspective, the article argues that state-led “empowerment” reforms can be co-opted and reshaped by local kinship norms concerning honor and authority. In practice, rather than fundamentally disrupting male dominance, Pakistan’s gender quota has largely been transformed into a new form of patriarchy—one that maintains male control while creating a façade of female representation. These findings contribute to discussions on feminist governance by illustrating that efforts to democratize gender relations must confront deeply entrenched social structures.

ABSTRACT This study investigates how Acehnese women experience, remember, and transmit narratives about prolonged armed conflict and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. In-depth interviews were conducted with women across two generational categories: those who had directly experienced these events (experiential narrators) and those who have learned the stories through familial or community transmission (post-memory narrators). The study situates narratives as a social practice, exploring how women’s experiences, survival, and resilience are interpreted, negotiated, and passed on. The study reveals a striking divergence in how these two crises are remembered and narrated. The tsunami, often seen as a divine test, has been spiritualized, moralized, and publicly commemorated through museums, school drills, and religious discourse. This structured and didactic form of storytelling fosters intergenerational compassion and preparedness. In contrast, conflict memories are fraught with moral complexity, silence, and fear. These narratives, often fragmented, emotionally restrained, and selectively told, have been shaped by past surveillance, suspicion, and unresolved trauma. The study underscores the importance of integrating women-centered approaches into post-disaster and post-conflict recovery. It also shows how the recognition and protection of women’s voices is vital to understanding long-term resilience, collective memory, and processes of social repair.

ABSTRACT Air pollution has emerged as a major public health and economic threat in Southeast Asia, yet Laos has received limited attention in scholarly and policy debates despite significant mortality and economic losses. This article analyses the drivers, lived experiences, and governance of air pollution in Luang Prabang, Laos’ premier tourist destination and a UNESCO World Heritage city. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, field observations, and satellite data, our findings challenge dominant policy narratives that attribute haze primarily to traditional swidden cultivation. Instead, commercial agrarian change, particularly cassava expansion, grass cultivation, and cattle pasture expansion linked to regional and Chinese cattle demand and a prolonged urban landfill fire, drove air pollution in 2023. These sources stem from labor shortages, economic insecurity, poor urban waste planning, and a reliance on fire as a low-cost management tool. Despite significant health, livelihood, and tourism impacts, haze remains underappreciated and underfunded. Weak monitoring infrastructure, fragmented institutional responsibilities, and the absence of disaggregated health data render air pollution uncertain and socially normalized. The article argues that air pollution in Luang Prabang represents a form of slow violence, maintained by epistemic gaps and administrative silence within a development model that prioritizes expanded agriculture and tourism over environmental protection.

ABSTRACT This article examines the shifting dynamics of Uyghur diaspora activism, tracing its trajectory from widespread silence before 2017 to a surge of family-centered mobilization between 2017 and 2020, followed by a subsequent ebb and re-fragmentation. We argue that family has simultaneously functioned as the Chinese state’s most effective lever of transnational repression and the diaspora’s most effective tool of activist mobilization. Threats to relatives at home created a climate of fear that silenced Uyghurs abroad; yet the sudden severing of contact with family after 2017 undermined that control and compelled thousands to speak out. This rupture precipitated the emergence of a family-centric form of campaigning that altered the global visibility of the Uyghur issue and legitimacy of Uyghur activism within and beyond the diaspora. Since 2020, the resumption of tightly monitored contact with family members has re-muted many voices, even as others remain engaged. This arc in Uyghur political mobilization offers insights into how family ties can simultaneously constrain and propel diaspora activism – an area that remains understudied – and foregrounds the intimate scales through which transnational repression operates and diaspora activism can emerge and take shape.