Events

This workshop is organized by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS); with support from the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

This workshop focuses on military labour since the decolonizing decades of the 20th century (1950s to the present) in both inter-and intra-Asian contexts. By using military labour as a generative lens, we aim to explore the fundamental interplay between security institutions and societal dynamics in Asia. Our inquiry includes a diverse range of state security institutions and actors, such as the Cold War-era Thai Border Police, the resettled Kuomintang soldiers in Taiwan, the pervasive presence of Gurkha soldiers within South and Southeast Asian militaries and police forces, the dynamics of the postcolonial Indian army and paramilitaries etc. We are also interested in how these state security institutions blur with a range of other actors, infrastructures, imaginaries, and connections in their everyday lives, shaped by sociocultural and historical dynamics. The workshop will bring together scholars from different fields in the social sciences and humanities to discuss situated cases of military labour and explore the inter-Asian and global circulations of ideas, people, and technologies, and legacies of war. Through this exploration, we aspire to transcend conventional, limited notions of military history and strategic studies, revealing military labour as a dynamic ethno-historical field that extends beyond traditional security perspectives and narrow frontline narratives.

By placing empirically grounded research projects on the labours of soldiering in conversation with theoretical work on militarism, imperialism, decolonization, and nationalism, the workshop will center questions of labour, gender, race, class, and citizenship in the understanding of security state formation and legacies of war and colonialism in Asia. In decentering both a 9/11-centered genealogy of contemporary security regimes and a traditional strategic studies approach to security, the workshop thus invites explorations grounded in regional histories, lived experiences, and gendered political economies in/of Asia. As such, the workshop and its resultant publications seek to rethink the sites, relations, and stakes of military labour.

We invite original and previously unpublished submissions that explore themes and subjects related to soldiering in Asia within the broad context of historical and post-colonial linkages; transnational interactions; gender and family dynamics; everyday experiences; emotions and affect; visual cultures, and, citizenship, belonging and identity. Papers need not be limited to but should seek to address one or more of the following questions:

• How do ethnicity, race, class, caste, and gender shape roles, trajectories, and experiences within security institutions and popular understandings of them?
• In what ways are security institutions and military labor sites of producing identity and belonging, including those tied to citizenship?
• How are everyday lives in spaces of dwelling such as military camps, family quarters, and translocal households constitutive of soldiering and security institutions? What are the wider social, economic, legal and political implications for families who become connected to soldiering?
• How are various security institutions (e.g., army, police, paramilitaries, third country nationals, etc) connected to postcolonial nation-state formation, possibly involving inter-Asian connections?
• What role does affect (e.g., loyalty, love, grief) play in shaping the value of military labour and linking it to citizenship?
• What role does visuality and visual cultures play in making meaning and value in relation to military labor?
• How can we understand the intersections between civilian and military spheres, and in what ways does it produce inequalities and impact rights, entitlements, welfare benefits, and citizenship pathways?
• Within the context of inter-Asian expertise and flows, what are the trans/national economies, connections, and politics that shape training, technologies, governance, and experiences of soldiering as well as antimilitarism and anti-war struggles?

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on participating in this hybrid workshop have been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event.

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Dr Hema Kiruppalini | Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Asst Prof Sahana Ghosh | Department of Sociology & Anthropology, National University of Singapore