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Introduction
Nasir Uddin is a cultural anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at Chittagong University. Uddin carried out research at Harvard University, Oxford University, LSE, Johns Hopkins University, SOAS, Heidelberg University, East-West Center, Washington DC, VU University Amsterdam, University of Sydney, Ruhr-University Bochum, Delhi University, the University of Hull, and Kyoto University. His research includes refugees, indigeneity, borders, the Rohingyas, the CHTs, and South Asia.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
October 2018 - December 2018
August 2018 - March 2019
January 2014 - April 2014
Publications
Publications (79)
Colonialism does not end with the withdrawal of colony from occupied territories but it exists across time. There is a constant dialogue between colonial domination and post-colonial transformation both in principle and practice. Doing ethnographic fieldwork therefore involves justifiable positioning of researcher in the interface between subjectiv...
This volume is about migration across South Asia and the complex negotiation of borders by people and the states in the process. A border is understood as a form of demarcation, but it also opens up the flow of people, goods, and ideas of legality and illegality. Borders are dynamic and dyadic in the interface of state and non-state actors involved...
The Rohingyas are one of the most persecuted ethnic minorities in the world. They used to live in the Arakan/Rakhine State of Burma/Myanmar for centuries, though it is a predominantly Buddhist country. Being victims of persecution as a result of ethnic cleansing and genocide, they started migrating to neighbouring countries from 1978, and after the...
This chapter is about the plight of “stateless” people, not recognised as nationals by any state, albeit the state in various forms regulates their everyday life committing severe injustice and practicing various inequalities by producing illegibility in state structure. In fact, the structure of modern nation-state has produced the concept of stat...
Discourses are formed on written or verbal texts of communication in a society where mediated ideas contribute at large (Dahlberg & Phelan, 2011). Therefore, the role of media in the production, and reproduction, of discourse is crucial and hence discourse analysis unfolds the hidden dynamics of social text. This chapter critically discusses two le...
The refugee crisis has progressively ripened as an unyielding reality in the 21st century around the world and consequently, hardly any country remains beyond the ambit of the refugee issue. Now, the globe hosts 35.3 million people as refugees out of 117 million forcibly displaced people (UNHCR, 2023). Following the Second World War (WW-II), the wo...
The media are the transporter of news and views in the modern world, largely constructing our knowledge about what is happening around the world. Our knowledge is therefore shaped by the way in which the media supplies ‘stories’ to us (see Entman, 1989). Consequently, the media plays a vital role in molding our perspective and understanding of a pa...
Discourses are formed on written or verbal texts of communication in a society where mediated ideas contribute at large (Dahlberg & Phelan, 2011). Therefore, the role of media in the production, and reproduction, of discourse is crucial and hence discourse analysis unfolds the hidden dynamics of social text. This chapter critically discusses two le...
It examines the various forms of myths and realities regarding Bhasan Char and the Rohingya relocation process. There is a serious dearth of knowledge about Bhasan Char among the international partners, the general public of Bangladesh and the Rohingya refugees. Besides, why human rights organizations are opposing this Rohingya relocation to Bhasan...
This handbook offers epistemologically and ontologically important personal accounts of academic and professional researchers having long-term intensive, comprehensive and ethnographic fieldwork in various social settings and versatile regional contexts across the globe. The accounts are cross-disciplinary including anthropology, sociology, geograp...
The methodology of social research has been transformed along with the metamorphosis of the socio-economic and political rhetoric and the reality across the globe. Because of its various experience and experiments depending on the subjects, contexts and regions, social research methodology itself has become an issue of research in the twenty-first...
A theoretical debate between activist standpoint and academic positioning has long been an issue in social research. The debate is closely associated with the methodological questions of subjectivity versus objectivity, emic versus etic, outsider versus insider, native versus foreigner, ‘self’ versus ‘others’ and so on. Social scientists, particula...
Research with groups prone to multiple vulnerabilities places academic researchers in a wide range of ethical dilemmas both methodologically and epistemologically. Drawing on our long-term research engagement with climate-vulnerable communities in coastal Bangladesh, this chapter presents dilemmas and challenges that a qualitative researcher faces...
Digital Arts-Refugee Engagement (DA-RE) is an exploratory research partnership between refugee youth, academics, practitioners and community activists. Arts-based activities were combined with digital literacy to develop the capabilities of refugee youth in Turkey and Bangladesh. DA-RE's participants co-created digital arts and connected with one a...
There are five basic features that constitute ‘subhuman’ life including (1) atrocious living conditions (which makes the place unliveable and forces people to leave); (2) illegal objects in the legal framework (which makes people legal entities instead of human beings, and hence, people are dealt with inhumanely);(3) homeless at home as there is no...
The Rohingyas have become a ‘crisis’ for all including the host countries, the international community and even for themselves. Much has been written about the clearance operation perpetrated by Myanmar military forces and vigilantes in 2017, forcing Rohingya survivors to migrate and seek refuge in other countries. How they have been surviving duri...
In 2017, the global community witnessed a massive influx of the Rohingyas, known as the most persecuted ethnic minority in the world, to Bangladesh as they fled unprecedented atrocities and unexplainable brutalities perpetrated by the Myanmar security forces and vigilantes. The denial of citizenship through the enactment of the Myanmar Citizenship...
“When the Borma military entered our house, I was trying my level best to save my two teenage daughters and kept them in a corner of our master bedroom. My husband was trying to resist them in the living room, but suddenly, one of the soldiers shot him on his forehead. He fell on the ground and died on the spot which profoundly shocked me. It was h...
Hundreds of people in the dread of being killed with wet, scanty, and torn clothes rushed to the Naf River to cross the border from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Many of them were running with extreme panic in the water, while some were holding infants on back and shoulder like ‘struggling for existence’. Some were carrying baskets full of babies and woun...
The book in its various chapters has presented some very powerful cases of genocidal attacks, violence against women and girls, the severity of brutality, and the intensity of atrocity perpetrated by the Myanmar security forces against the civilian Rohingyas. Most of the cases being presented here unfold the terrible scenario of genocide, ethnocide...
Doing social research always involves some sorts of challenges depending on the context of the research settings, complexities of the object of study, and the ontological and epistemological debates regarding the methodological tools themselves in the twenty-first-century empirical research. Besides, the researcher’s personal, political, ideologica...
“We were dealt with so inhumanly and mercilessly as if we were some unwelcome guests in this world. No one expected us but we arrived and emerged in this world against everyone’s will. We are not entitled to live in this world as everyone seems unwilling to receive us. That could be the reason why Myanmar security forces wanted to erase us from the...
“When my eight months kid (boy) was snatched from my holdings and thrown into the fire being set to our house, I felt as if my heart was taken out of my body for burning. I couldn’t believe that any human being could do this. My baby was burning alive in the fire and I was howling so loudly but they were enjoying watching my lamenting. I forgot for...
“It was August 26, the Borma military [Burmese military] and kichu moiggar poa [some Rakhine Buddhist youths] came to our village and started random killing, raping and burning house after houses. My wife and I were at home with my son of 10 and daughter of 13 years old. We locked our main door of the house, gathered together in fear at a corner of...
Book Project
(Re)presentation of Refugees in Media: Local and Global Perspectives
Edited By
Nasir Uddin & Delwar Hossain
Concept Note
The roles of media in shaping public opinion and formulating policy-concerns towards refugee and migrants’ politics have long been underscored by scholars across the disciplines. Media could provide both “sympath...
“Indigeneity” has become a prominent yet contested concept in national and international politics, as well as within the social sciences. This edited volume draws from authors representing different disciplines and perspectives, exploring the dependence of indigeneity on varying sociopolitical contexts, actors, and discourses with the ultimate goal...
The concluding chapter discusses the existing scholarship on the potential solution of the Rohingya problem with a critical examination of the roles of regional political dynamics, South and Southeast Asian geopolitics, bilateral and multilateral interstate relations, and the roles of the global communities such as the United Nations (UN) (and its...
Chapter 4 examines the state of stateless people who are born in one state but live in another, neither of which recognizes them as full citizens. This practice is in sharp contrast with the individual right to citizenship. In an era characterized by people’s increasing mobility, while moving across borders is becoming a universal right, albeit slo...
Chapter 3 discusses the crises of social integration of Rohingya refugees in the host societies of south-eastern Bangladesh. It argues that hosting the refugees is always problematic and troublesome from the perspective of the host society, whereas refugees think of it as hurting. State-level perception and local-level realities are strikingly diff...
Chapter 2 places the Rohingyas in the historical, political, and cultural context of Burma/Myanmar. Who they are, where did they come from, and how did they appear in the demographic composition of Burma, now Myanmar; and the human geography of Arakan or what is now called the Rakhine State. It brings in the historical trajectory of Muslim settleme...
Chapter 1 grounds a foundation to enter into the realm of the Rohingyas with a critical reconsideration of the ethnic, regional, and political history of the Arakan/Rakhine State across time. It lays down the central argument of the book with an extensive literature review on the Rohingyas in particular and the stateless people, refugees, asylum se...
Chapter 6 presents 10 fresh ethnographic details that contain the personal narratives of the recently arrived Rohingyas in Bangladesh, following the horrifying campaign by the Myanmar security forces and vigilantes. This chapter builds on the 10 representative cases that unfold the ground reality of what is happening with the Rohingyas in Rakhine S...
Chapter 5 focuses on the vulnerable conditions of stateless people because the state regulates their everyday lives in various forms, committing severe injustices and producing various inequalities by yielding illegibility in the state structure. The modern nation-state has produced the concept of citizenship rendering some stateless. Since the sta...
Chapter 7 discusses people’s critical ‘living conditionality’ created by the state. Besides, rather than looking at such vulnerable conditions as taken for granted for the stateless people, this chapter critically engages with the body of scholarship on citizenship, asylum seekers, stateless people and refugees, arguing whether these theories gener...
Indigeneity, a concept and construct, is increasingly gaining currency in academia, in the political sphere, and in public debates. Indigeneity as an active political force with international support has become a resource in identity politics. This article focuses on the dynamics of how the transnational idea of indigeneity has been nationally inst...
The state, border and people’s mobility have an intimate but a complex relation in globalised world because the states’ roles become catalysts in making people mobile across borders. The states produce borders as much as borders reproduce the states in terms of territoriality, while “deterritorialisation” features the contemporary globalised world....
“Indigeneity” has become a prominent yet contested concept in national and international politics, as well as within the social sciences. This edited volume draws from authors representing different disciplines and perspectives, exploring the dependence of indigeneity on varying sociopolitical contexts, actors, and discourses with the ultimate goal...
A life of football': The vulnerabilities of Rohingya caught between Myanmar and Bangladesh blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2018/01/09/a-life-of-football-the-vulnerabilities-of-rohingya-caught-between-myanmar-and-bangladesh/ As Myanmar and Bangladesh discuss the possible repatriation of over half a million Rohinya refugees, many of the Rohingya population...
Education in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Islands is a critical reference guide to development of education in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Comoros Islands, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zanzibar. The chapters provide an overview of the education system in each country, focusing particularly on contemporary education polici...
While popular images tend to depict indigenous people as having lived a “simple” and unspoiled lifestyle before they became threatened by the “evils” of modernity and (neo)colonial exploitation, there is evidence for the argument that, in many parts of the world, indigenous people were neither “locally locked” in the deep forest or remote hills, no...
Reconsidering the trend in anthropology to conceptualize the multifaceted nature of the state and to focus on the local social dynamics beneath the institutional framework of the state, we argue that “state” is not a single governing entity but rather a multilayered body of practices at various levels of the society. We configure “state” as constru...
Development is conventionally understood in various ways including economic growth, increase of gross domestic product (GDP), rise of per-capita income, improvement of social facilities, political stabilities, and women's empowerment and many other issues, but it finally means bringing positive changes in the life of people. However, development is...
This article analyses the formation of an ethnic category and its relations with the marginalisation of ethnic minorities in the context of upland-lowland relations in Bangladesh. Three central concerns are highlighted. First, it examines the political and historical trajectories of the South Asian subcontinent which has laid down various identitie...
The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh has long been represented as a region of multi-ethnic setting, ethnic conflict and ethnic movement in South Asia. However, inter-ethnic relationship through the practice of unequal power and positions among the ‘Pahari’ (hill-people), the inhabitants of the CHT, has largely been ignored in the deeper u...
Kyoto University (京都大学) 0048 新制・課程博士 博士(地域研究) 甲第13962号 地博第55号 新制/地/18 UT51-2008-C878 2008-03-24 京都大学大学院アジア・アフリカ地域研究研究科東南アジア地域研究専攻 (主査)教授 速水 洋子, 准教授 安藤 和雄, 准教授 石川 登, 准教授 田辺 明生 学位規則第4条第1項該当
