AAS Call for Proposals

Panel Title: Intimate Ecologies in Southeast Asia

 

Co-organizers:

Lai Wo, PhD Candidate, University of Michigan (laiywo@umich.edu)

Chantal Croteau, PhD Candidate, University of Michigan (ccroteau@umich.edu)

 

This panel explores the intersections between kinship, intimacy, and ecology across Southeast Asia and is rooted in an understanding of the natural world as a social and political actor imbricated in systems of capital, labor, and the state. This panel examines the ways that ecological worlds, broadly construed, shape and transform patterns of intimacy within productive and reproductive relations. The papers in this panel investigate the kinds of intimacy -  as both affect and action (Ahmed 2003; Boris & Parreñas 2010; Hochschild 1983; Wilson 2016) - that are forged or contested in contexts of ecological change and precarity. At the same time, this panel grapples with how intimacy and intimate relations also reconfigure ecological worlds and the (re)productive relations therein. Just as heightened air pollution shapes the intimacy of how bodies are able to breathe together in Hong Kong (Choy 2011), and the arrival of corporate oil palm plantations threaten the reproductive kinwork of indigenous communities in Papua (Chao 2021), this panel explores how intimate kin relations and the natural environment are co-constitutive, particularly in contexts of precarious, extractive and dispossessed labor (Kirsch 2006; Li 2010, 2014, 2017; Peluso 1996). In a moment of global ecological uncertainty (Tsing 2015), the questions that this panel engages with take on even greater urgency, encouraging us to consider the entanglements of how kin and labor relations are embedded in and can continually shape and be shaped by the natural world. 

 

In attending to the layered entanglements of the natural world and the intimacy of sociopolitical lives, we seek papers that engage with but are not limited to the following questions:

• How does shifting labor practices or the use of new industry-related technologies impact ecologies and reconfigure intimate relational bonds? 

• In what ways do intimacy, intimate labor, and intimate relations transform ecologies or reorient labor dynamics, to both constructive and destructive ends? 

• What are the affective and embodied entanglements between the natural world and political or economic systems? 

• How do individuals, families, and communities grapple with creating and sustaining intimate ties in contexts of environmental precarity? 

• What new forms of kinship and intimate relations are being forged alongside changes in the environment? 

Please email a 200 word abstract to us by July 28, 2026. 

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Lai Wo
PhD Student
University of Michigan
laiywo@umich.edu
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hello,

       This is Suhasini D, a Doctoral Research Scholar form the Depratment of English Studies, Central University of Tamil Nadu, India. my academic work is situated within the field of area studies, with a particular focus on the Vandal region, encompassing the delta districts of Tamil Nadu. Major part of my research engages with regional narratives to examine the socio-cultural and historical dynamics of these landscapes. I'm especially interested in the writings of marginalized authors and critically exploring the representations of agrarian communities, with an emphasis on issues of labor, identity, and rural life. I would like to collaborate with your panel but since the title says only south east asia, I'm just confused because my research aligns  in the south asian life. Let me know if you are interested.

Thank You,

Suhasini D,

Email id : s649529@gmail.com

Doctoral Research Scholar,

Department of English Studies,

School of Social Sciences and Humanities,

Central University of Tamil Nadu,

Thiruvarur – 610005, India.

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Suhasini D
Central University of Tamil Nadu
suhasini25phd@students.cutn.ac.in
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