Aihwa Ong

Aihwa Ong is a trailblazing anthropologist whose work has profoundly reshaped how we understand globalization, citizenship, and the politics of identity in the modern world. With a sharp analytical lens and a deep engagement with transnational movements, Ong has consistently challenged static notions of culture and statehood. Her concept of “flexible citizenship”-a framework that explores how individuals navigate national borders and neoliberal economies-has become a cornerstone in global and political anthropology.

Born in Malaysia and educated in the United States, Ong brings a unique insider-outsider perspective to her research, which spans Southeast Asia, China, and diasporic communities. Her ethnographies are not confined to the traditional village field site but extend into factories, laboratories, free-trade zones, and high-tech urban landscapes, where the complexities of identity, governance, and power unfold in surprising ways.

Ong’s interdisciplinary approach bridges anthropology, political theory, science and technology studies, and global studies. Through her writing, she urges scholars to rethink what it means to be a citizen, a migrant, or a subject of modern governance in a world increasingly shaped by market logics and biopolitical strategies.

Early Life and Education

Aihwa Ong was born in Penang, Malaysia, and her early life was shaped by the region’s complex colonial legacy, multicultural society, and post-independence transformations. Growing up amid ethnic diversity and political change, she became acutely aware of how power and identity intersect-a perspective that would later drive much of her anthropological work.

She moved to the United States for higher education and earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University in 1982. Her doctoral research laid the groundwork for her first major ethnographic study on gender, labor, and industrialization in Malaysia. During this period, she studied under influential figures in sociocultural theory and began developing her signature approach: combining ethnographic insight with critical political economy.

Her early academic influences include Marxist anthropology, feminist theory, and Michel Foucault’s ideas on power and governmentality, all of which she would synthesize in groundbreaking ways in her later work.

Academic Career and Positions

Aihwa Ong began her academic career at UC Santa Cruz and later joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where she became a professor in the Department of Anthropology. At Berkeley, she also became affiliated with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Science, Technology, and Society Center, and other interdisciplinary programs.

She has held visiting positions at institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford, and various Asian universities, reflecting the global resonance of her scholarship. Her research interests and teaching focus span globalization, transnationalism, neoliberalism, and the anthropology of modernity.

Ong has conducted extensive fieldwork in Malaysia, Indonesia, China, and among Southeast Asian diasporas in North America. Her ability to analyze local transformations within global contexts has made her a vital figure in debates about the future of anthropology in a globalized world.

Theoretical Contributions

Aihwa Ong is best known for introducing the concept of “flexible citizenship”, a term she coined in her 1999 book Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. This concept explores how individuals, especially elites and migrants, adapt to and exploit national and global structures for economic and social mobility. She argued that in an age of globalization, traditional notions of citizenship rooted in loyalty to one nation-state are increasingly giving way to strategic, multi-sited affiliations.

Another of Ong’s major theoretical contributions is her work on “neoliberalism as exception,” developed with Stephen Collier in the influential volume Global Assemblages (2005). Here, she interrogates how neoliberal practices are unevenly applied across spaces, populations, and institutions, and how state sovereignty is reconfigured in the process.

Her work is also deeply informed by Foucauldian biopolitics, especially in her analysis of how governance targets the human body through health, education, and economic policy. Ong’s approach reimagines anthropology not as the study of bounded cultures, but as an analysis of power-laden assemblages that operate across borders and scales.

Ethnographic and Regional Work

Aihwa Ong’s ethnographic research spans several countries and contexts, all unified by a central concern: how globalization reshapes subjectivity, governance, and everyday life. Her first major fieldwork in Malaysia focused on female factory workers in export-oriented industries, leading to her groundbreaking book Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline (1987). In this study, Ong revealed how young Malay women navigated the pressures of industrial labor and Islamic values by engaging in spirit possession rituals-acts she interpreted as both cultural expression and subtle resistance.

Later, Ong expanded her field sites to China, particularly coastal regions like Shanghai and Shenzhen, where she explored the rise of special economic zones and “neoliberal experiments.” In works like Neoliberalism as Exception (2006), she analyzed how Chinese governance blends authoritarianism with market logics, using zones of exception to test policies that may later be extended across the country. This nuanced look at state power and experimentation challenged Western assumptions about capitalism and democracy.

Ong also examined urban spaces, scientific innovation, and biomedical regulation in Asia. In her studies of Southeast Asian cities and global health regimes, she illustrated how science and technology are embedded in local political and ethical frameworks. Her fieldwork often includes elite subjects-scientists, entrepreneurs, migrants-marking a deliberate shift from anthropology’s traditional focus on marginalized communities to a broader investigation of global power networks.

Influence and Interdisciplinary Impact

Ong has had a lasting impact not only in anthropology but across multiple disciplines. She helped shape transnational and diaspora studies, especially by moving beyond binary categories like “host” and “home” or “migrant” and “citizen.” Her work has been widely adopted in geography, urban studies, science and technology studies (STS), and globalization studies for its innovative methods and theoretical rigor.

She is also a key figure in the anthropology of the state, emphasizing how sovereignty and governance are enacted in flexible and experimental ways. Her analysis of “graduated sovereignty” in China, for example, has been used by scholars studying developmental states and non-liberal regimes.

Ong’s influence extends to debates in feminist anthropology and cultural studies, particularly through her attention to how gender, ethnicity, and class intersect in global capitalism. Rather than framing subjects as mere victims of neoliberalism, Ong highlights how they actively navigate-sometimes even exploit-these systems, producing new forms of identity and agency.

Selected Publications and Recognitions

Major Books

• Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia (1987)
• Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (1999)
• Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (2005, co-edited with Stephen Collier)
• Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (2006)
• Asian Biotech: Ethics and Communities of Fate (2010, co-edited)

Honors and Positions

• Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
• International keynote speaker and advisor on global policy and urban governance
• Regular contributor to interdisciplinary journals and global conferences

Aihwa Ong’s work continues to influence scholars who seek to understand how global processes shape local lives and vice versa. Her voice remains critical in conversations about citizenship, migration, and the anthropology of power.

Conclusion

Aihwa Ong stands as one of the most original and far-reaching thinkers in contemporary anthropology. Her scholarship has continually redefined the field’s boundaries, pushing it beyond static notions of culture toward a dynamic understanding of how people, technologies, and ideologies circulate across the globe. With concepts like flexible citizenship, graduated sovereignty, and neoliberal exception, Ong has equipped scholars with powerful tools to analyze the complexities of global capitalism, governance, and subject formation.

Ong’s ethnographic reach-from Malaysian factory floors to Chinese urban zones and biotech labs-exemplifies her ability to interrogate the lived experiences of globalization at every level. Her work resonates far beyond anthropology, influencing debates in political science, urban studies, gender studies, migration research, and science and technology studies. Rather than offering tidy conclusions, she embraces complexity, asking tough questions about who governs, who benefits, and who adapts in a world defined by mobility and inequality.

As the world faces intensifying global crises-from forced migration and urban precarity to pandemic biopolitics-Ong’s insights remain deeply relevant. Her commitment to situating the local within the global, and the personal within the political, ensures that her intellectual legacy will continue to inspire critical and compassionate scholarship for years to come.

References

1. Franklin Humanities Institute – Duke University
   Contributor profile highlighting her interdisciplinary research focus.
   https://humanitiesfutures.org/contributors/aihwa-ong/
2. ResearchGate – Aihwa Ong
   Academic profile listing her publications and research areas.
   https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aihwa-Ong