Publication


2025
Livelihood Transformation among Indigenous Communities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.
Haque, Md. Ashadul
International Journal of Anthropology, Journal, 163-178, November - 2025
The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is the home of eleven indigenous communities with their diverse cultural background, distinctively different from mainstream Bengali community residing in the plains of Bangladesh. Conventionally, jhum cultivation is the main means of subsistence livelihood to the indigenous communities, and widely regard as the basis of their ‘cultural identity’. However, in recent times jhum has been decline and untenable for various socio-economic, political and environmental reasons. In the midst of this changed situation, indigenous communities as whole have been undergoing a wide range of transformations. The narratives of this transformation ranges from growing aspirations of social and cultural mobility to rapidly expanding of cash crop production, non-farm employment, financial inclusion, development initiatives and indigenous natural resurgence with the changes in the character of local politics and so on. This paper explores the dynamics of changes affecting indigenous communities and their transformation, assessing their existing livelihood situations as well as potentials of new opportunities and challenges. Drawing from the insights of multi-sited ethnography with empirically grounded research conducted in different regions of CHT, the paper highlights the complexity of livelihood diversification in order to explain the multi-faceted meanings of transformation and its effects on the lives of indigenous peoples. It argues that locally informed ‘livelihood diversifications’ has much to offer understanding of indigenous transformation, since there is a constant interplay between the forces of larger change and the tendencies of desire to the persistence of local traditions.
The Predicament of Rohingya Life in Bangladesh: In-Camp Insecurity, Repatriation Conundrum, and Anxiety About the Future. In: Uddin, N. (eds) Scattered Lives of ‘Stateless’ People.
Nasir Uddin and Daiyan Belal
Springer, Singapore, 35-47, October - 2025
Abstract: The current plight of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh is determined by three fundamental challenges: escalating inter-group conflicts and infighting within the camps, the blurred prospects for repatriation, and a grim future for the younger generation. Apart from the everyday struggles for food, clothes, shelter, sanitation, healthcare, education, water supply, nutrition, and camp management, these three issues shape the recurrent conditions of the Rohingya people.
Understanding Waterborne Disease Vulnerability of Day Labourers: A Qualitative Exploration in Rajshahi City, Bangladesh
Golam Sarwar, Ashadul Haque, M., Arif Eftakhar, S. M., Fozla Rabbi, M.
Journal of Science Academic Research, Journal, 10463-10472, August - 2025
Reshaping Rohingya Futures: Coping Strategies and Emerging Agencies
Nasir Uddin (Editor)
Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 248, June - 2025
This edited book presents many hitherto unaddressed aspects of post-genocide Rohingya lives in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Amid an everyday struggle for daily essentials, violent tensions within and outside the camps, growing anti-Rohingya sentiment in the host community as well as the decreasing international support during the repatriation process, Rohingya adolescents and youths show strategies of coping and agency to alter their present and reshape their future. An upsurge in digital literacy, mounting transnational connectivity, growing engagement with diaspora Rohingya activism and a cumulative presence in social media for sentiment mobilisation on a local and global scale has motivated them to bring about change for themselves and their community within the camps. This book accommodates such fresh and high-quality research on the Rohingya refugees living in the borderland of Bangladesh and Myanmar, conducted by acclaimed academics, professional researchers, and committed activists from across the world, for researchers and students of migration, sociology of race and ethnicity, anthropology, diaspora studies, peace and conflict studies and social work.
Bridging science and society: the integration of indigenous and scientific knowledge management
Muhammad Kazim Nur Sohad and Elisabetta Mafrolla
Emerald Publication, Journal of Knowledge Management, May - 2025
The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Cultural Change : Balancing Innovation with Heritage Preservation.
Sadaka Tamanna
The Department of Marketing, Chittagong University Marketing International Conference 2025, January - 2025
I presented my article with this title on January 8–9, 2025.
2024
Understanding ‘Refugee Resettlement’ from Below: Decoding the Rohingya Refugees’ Lived Experience in Bangladesh
Nasir Uddin
ELSEVIER, World Development, May - 2024
While the resettlement of displaced people often denotes rehabilitation in one way or another, the paper illuminates the paradox of resettlement between repatriation and relocation with the case of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. The Rohingya, considered the most persecuted ethnic minority in the world at present as per the United Nations (UN), are an ethnolinguistic and religious minority of Myanmar but at present most of them are living in Bangladesh as refugees. About 750 thousand Rohingyas fled a deadly genocidal attack perpetrated by the Myanmar security forces in 2017 and took refuge in Bangladesh. Combining with the previously living ones, Bangladesh now hosts more than 1.3 million Rohingyas as refugees in 34 temporary camps in Ukhia and Teknaf, two south-eastern sub-districts of Cox’s Bazar. This massive Rohingya presence has heavily impacted the local lives and resources and thereby the local community gradually became reluctant, though not yet hostile, to host them anymore. To accommodate the local pressure, Bangladesh made two consecutive repatriation attempts (the first one on November 15, 2018, and the second one on August 22, 2019) to send the Rohingya back to Myanmar but failed since none willingly returned to their ‘homeland’. The refusal was interpreted as non-cooperation of the international community, and non-preparation on Myanmar's part to accept the Rohingyas back and let them resume their lives safely in the Rakhine state where they used to live. Since the repatriation attempt did not work and local pressures started mounting, Bangladesh initiated a program to relocate a few thousand Rohingya families to Bhasan Char, a newly emerged island located in the Bay of Bengal under Noakhali district. Empirical data reveal that the physical facilities of Bhasan Char seem far better than the same of Ukhia and Teknaf. Still, Rohingya refugees remain reluctant to move due to their entrenched fear of cyclones, floods and tidal surges which, they believe, could wash them away anytime. The entire process of Rohingya relocation to Bhasan Char has created huge debates about whether the Island is safe-liveable for the Rohingya people since it is a twenty-year-old island and there was no experience of people living there. Still, it does not appear to be a convincing plan to resolve the displacement problem of the Rohingya refugees. Given the background, what the Rohingya people articulate their aspiration in the name of resettlement is completely missing in the entire planning and action to redress the Rohingya crisis. Empirical findings show that the majority of Rohingyas are willing to return ‘home’ if three conditions are met: legal recognition amid conferring citizenship, social safety through the deployment of UN peace troops, and human dignity so that they can enjoy all forms of human rights. So, the Rohingya perception of resettlement is repatriation with aforesaid conditions. Therefore, the paper argues that beyond the populist idea of resettlement in the form of rehabilitation or relocation, the whole discourse of resettlement could come up from the bottom and people’s perspectives which could be both crucial and instrumental in policy framing and action planning. The Rohingya refugees desire dignified repatriation with legal recognition and social safety which is largely absent in the activism of the human rights bodies and the action of the international communities as well as the state-level movements. Given the matrix of relocation and repatriation, resettlement takes a central point of discussion and debates whether resettlement could settle the Rohingya crisis in the place of migration. The paper with the experience of decade-long ethnographic research intends to rearticulate the people’s perception and ground-level view of (re)settlement to redress the Rohingya crisis in the interface of repatriation and relocation.
সমতলবাসী বাঙালি জনগোষ্ঠীর পাহাড় নির্ভর জীবন ও জীবিকা: প্রেক্ষিত মীরসরাইয়ের মধ্য-মঘাদিয়া গ্রাম।
মাহ্জেবীন, ফারিয়া এবং হক, মোঃ আসাদুল
চট্টগ্রাম বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় সমাজ বিজ্ঞান অনুষদ জার্নাল।, চৌত্রিশতম সংখ্যা, ৮৩-১০২, 2024
The Border as a Humanised Space: (Un)making Territoriality and Spatiality of State Boundary
Nasir Uddin
Taylor & Francis, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2024
The classical notion of the border essentially denotes a state boundary as a spatial and territorial entity that connects and separates two states in terms of a physical lineup. However, many scholars believe in its fixity while others point out its mobility. Some think of the border as a vibrant space while others look at it as zones of limited statehood. Some advocate the idea of the border to overcome the social and political division while others sense the border in terms of territoriality to retain the division. Some researchers look upon it as a form of practice terming it “borderscape” while others say the border is a method to understand intersectionality. Some focus on the border as a force for controlling people and goods across borders. Given the background, the paper intends to redefine and retheorize the border proposing an alternative lens to see its humanitarian role in rescuing and saving lives in atrocious and deadly conditions with the case of the Rohingya experience in the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. This paper argues that the border is not only a territorial and spatial entity with strict authority, power and force but also a humanized space for people in atrocious conditions.
Rethinking Global Responsibility: Toward an Alternative Humanitarianism in the Rohingya Crisis
Ala Uddin
Bangladesh Development Initiative (BDI), USA., Journal of Bangladesh Studies, 26(1), 12–26, 2024
Refugees and the Media: Local and Global Perspectives
Nasir Uddin & Delaware Arif (Edited)
Palgrave Macmillan (USA), 340, 2024
Media and refugees rhetorically live together and practically complement each other. Yet, it involves plenty of hidden political agendas and ethical issues in the (re)presentation of refugees in media. This collection raises questions: Should the media stand by refugees or maintain deliberate ‘neutrality’? Should the media dehumanize the refugees further in their humanitarian conditions? Are the media entitled to publish photographs of refugees without informed consent? Should the media stand by the state being responsible for generating refugee crisis or should the state be accountable for rendering its people refugees? What effective roles can media play in redressing the refugee ‘crisis’ in the world? The book brings together scholars across disciplines and continents who reflect on the nexus between media and refugees in contexts around the world. It engages in cutting-edge methodological and theoretical discussions and challenges regarding the reciprocal engagement between media and refugees from both local and global perspectives.
Indigeneity, Marginality and the State in Bangladesh
Nasir Uddin
Routledge (UK & USA), 280, 2024
This book explores the critical linkages between indigeneity, marginality, and the state in Bangladesh. Indigeneity is progressively gaining currency in politics and thereby becoming an active force in the larger context of national activism with transnational patronage and international support. Drawing on comprehensive and solid ethnographic accounts, the book offers a broader understanding of the process of marginalisation and the emergence of new leadership among the Khumi, an indigenous group of Bangladesh. It illuminates how the Khumi have realised their position on the margin of the state within the socioeconomic, political, and ethnic history of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. It also looks at how kin-based social organisations and non-kin-based social relations become bases of power and authority as well as cooperation and reciprocity in Khumi society. Lucid and topical, the book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of indigenous studies, anthropology, social anthropology, sociology, political sciences, international relations, border studies, and South Asian studies, especially those concerned with Bangladesh.
Border Culture in the South-Eastern Region of Bangladesh: A View from the Ground.
Hoque, N. S.
Chittagong University Journal of Social Sciences, 34, 39-62, 2024
2023
Factors determining migration intentions in Bangladesh: from land to factory
Muhammad Kazim Nur Sohad, Giuseppe Celi, Edgardo Sica
Emerald Publishing Limited, Journal of Economic Studies, October - 2023
Palgrave Handbook of Social Fieldwork
Nasir Uddin & Alak Paul (eds)
Palgrave Macmillan, USA, 462, April - 2023
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, geography, political sciences, gender studies, forestry and environmental studies, economics, and international relations. They are also trans-regional, covering the globe including South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America. The book offers a comprehensive portrait of multifaceted challenges that social researchers experience while doing fieldwork in various social settings. The accounts provide both challenges of doing fieldwork in the 21st century and the ways how to address/redress them in the field by complying with the codes of ethics, and the politics of fieldwork. Readers will benefit from the handbook by understanding methodological issues from both disciplinary relevance and regional specificity across time and spaces.
Kick Me Out or Not: The Lingua Franca and the Indigenous Languages of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh
Ala Uddin and Shahid Ullah
Lexington Books, 249-268., 2023
Indigenous Language for Development Communication in the Global South (Edited by T. B. Molale, A. Salawe, E. Uribe-Jongbloed, & M. S. Ullah).
Methodological Issues in Social Research: Experience from the Twenty-First Century
Nasir Uddin
Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Handbook of Social Fieldwork, 2023
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 century. The fieldwork challenges vary from discipline to discipline and from region to region because every discipline in social sciences, despite having some identical broader frameworks, has its distinctive tone of interpretation and every region has its own social, political, historical and ecological settings. Social research involves the researcher’s engagement, interpersonal attachment, and impersonal affection in dealing with persons; the object of study. Since social research and its methodologies tend to change and evolve from time to time, new and newer fieldwork experiences are needed to reformulate the model and module of social research methods and methodologies. Hence, a new form of methodology could be framed that reflects the researcher’s personal, political, social, cultural and emotional holdings being developed and formed throughout the researcher’s socialization and socio-cultural upbringing across time and space. Consequently, social research is not simply a typical ‘academic practice’ that follows an innocent ‘professional genre’ and ‘research rituals’; rather it heavily entangles with the researcher’s lived experiences of dealing with the object of research, which define and redefine the tools, techniques, notions and application of methodologies in a particular social setting, on the one hand. Amid the researcher’s series of engagement and re-engagement in the ‘rites of passage’ of research, on the other hand, the methodology takes its shape which substantially contributes to the established practices of doing social research with renewed interpretation, transient experiments and upcoming challenges in research methodologies. Since social research takes on pains and pleasures, problems and potentials, challenges and solutions, and hard and soft memories, the personal experience becomes an impersonal subject and an indispensable part of research methods and methodologies. Therefore every research context in the field provides a distinctive and unique experience and understanding which in the end enriches the established genus of social research methodologies. Social research methodologies have thus continuously changed over the decades and continue to change in response to changing socio-economic and political rhetoric and realities on a local and global scale. This introductory chapter sets out all trends and tendencies of methodological issues in social research based on the experience of top researchers’ personal experience of doing fieldwork in different social settings across the world. It 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 contain regional and local specificity including South Asia, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Southern Africa and Middle Eastern countries. Since personal experience holds collective importance and academic significance, the field experience of a galaxy of scholars across disciplines and regions enables them to contribute a distinctive framework to the existing body of scholarship on social research methodologies.
Between an Activist and Academic: Contested (Re)positioning of Ethnographers in Refugee Research
Nasir Uddin
Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Handbook of Social Fieldwork, 2023
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, particularly, ethnographers often struggle to uphold a sensible equilibrium of a dichotomized positioning between attachment versus detachment, and engagements versus disengagement with the object of study while doing fieldwork. It turns more critical when it comes to the question of refugee research since refugees are often depicted with various negative connotations by the host society, but the researchers tend to stand by the refugees due to perceived vulnerable conditions of refugeehood. This contested representation takes shape and is articulated amidst the dynamics of refugee management. When a researcher stands for the refugee rights, they become more an activist than an academic in the eyes of the host society. When a researcher, on the other hand, does mere research without paying attention to the sufferings, needs and struggles, the refugees look upon them as meaningless academic. Given the context, the chapter illuminates the ways how an ethnographer could make an intelligent balance between being politically sensitive without being an activist and being deeply committed to the object of study by maintaining a maximum degree of academic neutrality.
Dilemmas and Challenges in Qualitative Fieldwork with Climate-Vulnerable Communities
Nasir Uddin (co-authored with others)
Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Handbook of Social Fieldwork, 2023
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 while undertaking fieldwork. We find that dilemmas and risks arise from listening to distress stories, knowing participants’ problems, balancing demands made by the participants, and benefits available to the participants during fieldwork. A researcher takes from the communities in the form of information but gives nothing material which is deeply needed for the climate-vulnerable communities in the global south. Research is not essentially a task of ‘give and take’, yet a researcher needs to be aware of the ethical challenges and find out strategies to deal with them. We suggest broadening the purview of formalised research ethics to minimise researchers’ dilemmas in qualitative research.
2022
Problematizing tourism for conservation: An eco-cultural critique on sustainability
S M Sadat al Sajib, Francesco Nicoli and Alfredo Alietti
Frontiers, European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy, December - 2022
Voices of the Rohingya People A Case of Genocide, Ethnocide and 'Subhuman' Life
Nasir Uddin
Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 205, March - 2022
This book offers a comprehensive depiction of the causes and consequences of the Rohingya crisis, based on detailed ethnographic narratives provided by hundreds of Rohingya people who crossed the border following the Clearance Operation in 2017. The author critically engages with the identity politics on both sides of the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar, and the categorisation of the Rohingya as the people of ‘no-man’s land’ amidst the socio-political and ethno-nationalist dynamics of colonial and postcolonial transition in the region. He then interrogates the role of the international community and aid industry, before providing in-depth policy recommendations based on his own experience working with Rohingya refugees. The book will be of interest to students, scholars, policymakers and NGOs in the fields of migration studies, anthropology, political science and international relations.
The Rohingya Crisis: Human Rights Issues, Policy Concerns and Burden Sharing
Nasir Uddin (ed)
SAGE Publications, USA, 424, February - 2022
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 during the post-2017 period has largely been left out in academic literature. The Rohingya Crisis: Human Rights Issues, Policy Concerns and Burden Sharing addresses the many aspects of Rohingya lives in Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, Southeast Asian countries and in the West. This book studies the transforming public discourse about Rohingyas, the blame-game of ecological costs of Rohingya presence, and the declining relationship between the host communities and the refugees. It examines causes for escalating intra-group conflicts, decreasing international support and repatriation failures. It analyses the critical roles of the international community, global civil society and diaspora activism, and discusses what the future might hold. ‘Burden’ sharing should be seen as sharing responsibilities for global justice. It is not the Rohingyas who are the burden.
Rohingya Influx and Socio-environmental Crisis in Southeastern Bangladesh.
Muhammad Kazim Nur Sohad (Co-authored by S M Sadat al Sajib and S. A. M. Ziaul Islam)
Sage Publication, The International Journal of Community and Social Development, 89-103, January - 2022
Rohingya Influx and Socio-Environmental Crisis in South-eastern Bangladesh
S M Sadat al Sajib, S A M Ziaul Islam and Muhammad Kazim Nur Sohad
SAGE Publications, International Journal of Community and Social Development, 89-103, January - 2022
Can Digital Banking Promote Alternative Livelihood Opportunities in Rural Bangladesh? (Book Chapter) In Rethinking Development in South Asia: Issues, Perspectives and Practices
Nasrullah, Amir Mohammad, Haque, Md. Ashadul and Mazumder, Sumon Kumer.
Cambridge Scholars Publishing. UK., 98-117, 2022
People who are leaving in rural area in Bangladesh traditionally have limited access in formal banking process because of structural barriers and informational dearth. Even, most of them have some sort of reservations regarding the traditional banking systems. As result more than half of the adult population still remained unbanked. But at present, digital banking systems through modern communication technologies are generating scopes for all the people to get into the formal banking process. Digital banking system has transformed the livelihood of rural people into a new dimension from the traditional livings and created a new horizon of livelihood. Especially, mobile banking as a latest form of digital banking system has made drastic changes towards the financial attitude and behavior of the rural poor people. In this paper we have explored how digital banking system generated alternative livelihood opportunities for the rural people in Bangladesh. It has revealed that digital banking system as an alternative livelihoods options has created a positive livelihood opportunities for all the rural people. Specifically, the online or internet banking as well as mobile banking as digital banking system has opened up an alternative livelihood opportunity for them. The paper has developed based on empirical data, adopting an interactive research technique with ethnographic approach.
Digital arts -refugee engagement
Nasir Uddin (Co-authored with others)
Taylor & Francis, Media Practice and Education, 2022
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 another across the two settings in a digital third space to share narratives from their situated perspectives and lived experiences. In these ways, they developed skills of engagement and agency through the project, but at the heart of DA-RE was the intention to explore the links between refugee youths’ own creative agency, harnessed in new contexts enabled by the project, and their existing digital literacies. DA-RE sought to identify, with a theory of change, potential opportunities for refugee youth to both use this capability in the host community and provide a platform for their digital arts to offer a counter-narrative to ‘othering’ discourses at work in both their host communities and in the UK, where the project was coordinated, in so doing converting (digital) literacy into capability with positive consequences for social good.
Ageism and Stigma: The Pandemic Pressure on the Elderly in Bangladesh
Ala Uddin
BiomedGrid, Am J Biomed Sci & Res. 15(4), 374-76, 2022
American Journal of Biomedical Science and Research
An Anthropological Study on New Lifestyle of Trafficked Females: The Case of Bangladesh.
Hoque, N. S.
Chittagong University Journal of Social Sciences, 33, 35-46, 2022
Indigenous People and Climate Change: Perceptions, Awareness and Adaptation Practices in Bangladesh.
Hoque, N. S., & Kamran, C. A. K. M.
Journal of the Institute of Bangladesh Studies, 43, 159-174, 2022
2021
Nicknaming Tourism as Development: Commercialization of Nature and Culture in CHT, Bangladesh
S M Sadat al Sajib
Taylor & Francis: Routledge, UK, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 273-285, August - 2021
The Meaning of Marriage to the Rohingya Refugees and their Survival in Bangladesh
Ala Uddin
Journal of Refugee Studies, 34(2), 2036–2051, 2021
The Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Religious Identity as a Source of Expulsion, Hospitality and Solidarity
Ala Uddin
Routledge (New York), Routledge Handbook of Religion and Cities (Edited by K. Day and E. M. Edwards), 372-387, 2021
Indigenous Belief Systems in the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Ala Uddin
Brill (Leiden), 507–519, 2021
Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous People of South Asia
Street vending: exploring an excluded economic sector in Chittagong city, Bangladesh
Ala Uddin
Routledge (UK), Development in Practice, 31(3), 66-94, 2021
The Plight of the Bangladeshi Women Migrants in the Middle East
Ala Uddin
Villanova University, USA, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 44 (2), 66-94, 2021
Rohingya Relocation to Bhasan Char: Myths and Realities
Nasir Uddin
SAGE, The Rohingya Crisis: Human Rights Issues, Policy Concerns, and Burden Sharing, 2021
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 during the post-2017 period has largely been left out in academic literature. The Rohingya Crisis: Human Rights Issues, Policy Concerns and Burden Sharing addresses the many aspects of Rohingya lives in Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, Southeast Asian countries and in the West. This book studies the transforming public discourse about Rohingyas, the blame-game of ecological costs of Rohingya presence, and the declining relationship between the host communities and the refugees. It examines causes for escalating intra-group conflicts, decreasing international support and repatriation failures. It analyses the critical roles of the international community, global civil society and diaspora activism, and discusses what the future might hold. ‘Burden’ sharing should be seen as sharing responsibilities for global justice. It is not the Rohingyas who are the burden.
Impacts of Fourth Industrial Revolution on Cultural Changes: The Challenges Faced in Striking Balance in Innovation and Prevention of Heritage.
Sadaka Tamanna
Volume 35, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Chittagong, ISSN: 2231-4843, The Chittagong University Journal Of Business Administration., 299-330, 2021
Submission: 17.11.2024 Revision: 13.01.2025 Acceptance: 20.02.2025
2020
The Rohingya: An Ethnography of "Subhuman" Life
Nasir Uddin
The Oxford University Press, 259, November - 2020
The Rohingya are known as the most persecuted minority population in the world. They do not belong to any state as Myanmar striped of the citizenship rendering them stateless and Bangladesh does not recognise them even as refugees. With the case of Rohingya people, the book offers a comprehensive portrait of the hidden transcript of statelessness, non-citizenship, transborder movements and refugee-hood in the legal structure of modern nation-state. It illuminates pains, sufferings, and struggle of carrying out the state of statelessness and refugee-hood at home-state and host-state across the world in general and the Rohingya people in the borderland of Bangladesh and Myanmar in particular. The book with ethnographically informed analysis critically engages with the existing scholarship on migration and refugee studies, asylum seekers and camp-people, and citizenship and human-rights issue with proposing a new theoretical perspective called “subhuman” life. It could be used for a better understanding of an extreme vulnerability and deep uncertainty of human life apart from the broad spectrum of genocide, ethnocide, ethnic cleansing, homicide and domicide. The idea of "subhuman life" offers a new frame of thought towards an understanding of the life in the struggle for existence and the process of extinction. The book thus offers both an appealing theoretical potential and a solid piece of ethnography regarding refugee situation, stateless people, asylum seekers, transborder movements, and camp people with the case of Rohingya.
চট্টগ্রামে খাদ্য সংস্কৃতির পরিবর্তন: একটি নৃবৈজ্ঞানিক বিশ্লেষণ।
নাঈম, জান্নাতুল এবং হক, মোঃ আসাদুল
চট্টগ্রাম বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় সমাজ বিজ্ঞান অনুষদ জার্নাল।, বত্রিশতম সংখ্যা, ২০২-২১৮, 2020
Man, Medicine and Foods in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh
Ala Uddin
Sage, 109-126., 2020
Food and Power: Expression of Food-Politics in South Asia (Edited by K. Mukhopadhyay).
Local Response to the Global Pandemic (COVID-19) in Bangladesh
Ala Uddin
European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), UK, Social Anthropology, 28(2), 369-70, 2020
2019
Paper presented in an International Workshop on “Studying Indigenous Communities: India & Brazil
Co-authored
Rabindra Bharati University, Kalkata, West Bengal, India, Department of Human Rights and Human Development, Center for Studies on Indigenous People, Bankim Chandra Center for Comperative Indian Literature, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Studies Center, January - 2019
The Local Translation of Global Indigeneity: A Case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Nasir Uddin
Cambridge University Press, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2019
The State, Transborder Mobility, and Deterritorialised Identity in South Asia
Nasir Uddin
Springer Nature, Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movements in South Asia, 2019
The State, Vulnerability and Transborder Movement: The Rohingya in Bangladesh and Myanmar
Nasir Uddin
Springer Nature, Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movements in South Asia, 2019
2018
Contested Peace: The Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord.
Muhammad Kazim Nur Sohad (Co-authored by S M Sadat al Sajib)
Sage Publication, Journal of Social Change, 192-212, June - 2018
Contested Peace: The Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord
S M Sadat al Sajib and Kazim Nur Sohad
Center Social Development, New Delhi, Sage Publications, Journal of Social Change, 192-212, June - 2018
Paper presented in the International Seminar on ‘North-East India and its International Neighbors: New Directions
Co-authored
Department of Political Science as part of UGC-SAP, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India, March - 2018
Tourism as an Alternative Livelihood in the Face of Climate Change in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh.
Haque, Md. Ashadul.
Chittagong University Journal of Social Sciences., Chittagong University Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. XXXI (A), 87-110, 2018
Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is a home of diversified indigenous communities with various livelihood opportunities, but they have been traditionally living on jhum cultivation with poverty over the years. This paper has tried to explore an alternative livelihood as a means to reduce poverty among the local communities in the face of climatic changes. The paper has developed based on the intensive empirical study in Ruma, Bandarban. The study has found that there are lots of natural resources in Ruma and CHT as a whole to accelerate the native economic growth. Tourism industry could be the best alternative livelihood possibility to utilize those resources. But poor infrastructure, lack of awareness and investment, impact of climate changes and most importantly absence of proper planning make the journey difficult so far. In this circumstance, to build up a feasible platform for a world class tourism industry in Ruma and CHT a comprehensive effort is needed by the local community, Government organizations as well as NGOs which we would like to called here the ‘participatory community based tourism’.
গারো সম্প্রদায়ের জীবনে সামাজিক বনায়নের প্রভাব।
মজুমদার, সুমন কুমার এবং হক, মোঃ আসাদুল
চট্টগ্রাম বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় সমাজ বিজ্ঞান অনুষদ জার্নাল।, একত্রিশতম খন্ড (বি), ২০১-২১৬, 2018
বাংলাদেশের হরিজন সম্প্রদায়ঃ ঐতিহাসিক প্রেক্ষাপট ও প্রাত্যহিক বাস্তবতা
হক, মোঃ আসাদুল
Culture and Society: Rajshahi University Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 1, 129-140, 2018
There have been enormous writings produced about 'Dalit' both in India and Bangladesh over the years. Although the Harijan in wider sense is the part of 'Dalit' community, visibly there are not much writings about Harijan particularly in Bangladeshi context. Harijan is seen to be the most neglected community in our society. Main stream population treats them as 'untouchable' and 'polluted' considering their job as lower caste vocation. Their identity is determined by their inherited profession which in turn appeared as reasons of their continuous sufferings, inequality, deprivation and exclusion from the society. As a result they have lack access to the rights such as housing, education, health, mobility, social security and so on. This article has examined the way in which the 'Harijan of Rajshahi' has been struggling to ensure their basic necessities of livelihood. I have argued that the nature and the process of sufferings and deprivation has become part of their everyday reality. In explaining the reality and towards understanding their life and livelihood I have done intensive fieldwork at the Harijan Palli (community) in the Rajshahi city.
Bangladesh: Generation, Education and Nation
Nasir Uddin
Bloomsbury, Education in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Islands, 2018
2017
Indigeneity on the Move: Varying Manifestations of a Contested Concept
Eva Gerharz, Nasir Uddin & Pradeep Chakkarath
Berghahn, 344, December - 2017
"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 of investigating the concept's scientific and political potential.
Book Chapter: 'Text and Context of Peace in the CHT' in 'Life in Peace and Conflict: Indigeneity and State in the Chittagong Hill Tracts', edited by Nasir Uddin
Kazim Nur Sohad, S M Sadat al Sajib, Faruk Hossen and Mokter Ahmed Chy
New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 81-99, June - 2017
Book Chapter: Text and Context of Peace in the CHT
Muhammad Kazim Nur Sohad, S.M. Sadat al Sajib, Mokter Ahmad Chowdhury and Md. Faruk Hossain
Orient BlackSwan, 81-99, May - 2017
Life in Peace and Conflict: Indigeneity and State in the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Nasir Uddin (ed)
Orient BlackSwan, 272, February - 2017
Across the world, the modern nation-state has paid little attention to indigenous people, and excluded them from the mainstream development process. The state has even deprived indigenous people of their legitimate claims to land, civil rights and legal recognition of their ethnic identity. Life in Peace and Conflict is a collection of nine essays, many of which are empirically grounded, on the conflict and peace-building measures between various indigenous groups and the state in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. Home to eleven indigenous groups of people collectively known as the Pahari, the CHT lies at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia, and shares borders with Myanmar and the Indian Northeast. As such, it is geo-politically vital in South Asia. The policies of both the colonial and postcolonial states, which privileged the dominant Bengali community over the Pahari, resulted in violent conflict. After years of armed conflict, a peace accord was officially signed in 1997 between the State and the representatives of indigenous Pahari people. Two decades on, however, peace still eludes the CHT the region is still apparently militarised, cross-border insurgency continues to haunt Indo-Bangladesh relations, and the influx of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar has complicated an already fraught landscape. While the book discusses the politics of indigeneity, it also documents everyday forms of discrimination and resistance among dispossessed communities, and critiques the developmental efforts of international agencies and NGOs to resolve conflict in an understudied region of the world. Students and scholars of political science, international relations, anthropology, sociology, South Asian studies, public administration and development studies will find this book useful.
Exploring Indigeneity: Introductory Remarks
Nasir Uddin (Co-authored with others)
Berghahn, Indigeneity on the Move: A Varying Manifestation of a Contested Concept, 2017
In Search of Self: Identity, Indigeneity, and Cultural Politics in Bangladesh
Nasir Uddin
Berghahn, Indigeneity on the Move: A Varying Manifestation of a Contested Concept, 2017
Living with the State: State of Peace and Conflict in Southeastern Bangladesh
Nasir Uddin
Orient BalckSwan, Life in Peace and Conflict: Indigeneity and the State in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, 2017
Continuing Conflict: Critical Transition to Peace in the Post-Conflict Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh
Ala Uddin
Anthropos Institut (Germany), Anthropos, 112 (1), 63-74., 2017
2016
Paper presented in 2nd International conference on ‘Inclusive Economic Growth and Sustainable Development
Author
by Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management development (sdmimd), Mysore, India, November - 2016
Participated in the one day workshop on “Social Responsibility and Sustainability – Strategic Dimensions
Author
Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management development (sdmimd), Mysore, India, Inclusive Economic Growth and Sustainable Development, November - 2016
Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movement in South Asia
Nasir Uddin & Nasreen Chowdhory (eds)
Spinger, 228, January - 2016
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 in border operations. Consequently, transborder movement becomes a complex web involving concerns of security, trade, militancy, and questions of citizenship, along with discourses of ghettoisation, belonging and otherness. Since the mid-20th century, the South Asian region has witnessed growing social and political instability and breakdown of regional cooperation. In this context, the volume casts a wide, interdisciplinary lens across South Asia and discusses economic migration as well as forced migration due to persecution and natural disasters. It looks at how understandings of ‘territoriality’ and ‘border’ become blurred due to increasing transborder migration in the region: how states in South Asia address transborder movements at both policy level and on the ground; and how borderlands become spaces for illegal trade and informal economy in South Asia and for negotiations between states and refugees on identity and citizenship. This highly topical volume is for a wide group of scholars and students interested in South Asia, ranging from sociology, anthropology, political science, history, to interdisciplinary fields like migration studies, peace and conflict studies, and development studies.
Dynamics of Strategies for Survival of the Indigenous People in Southeastern Bangladesh
Ala Uddin
Routledge (UK), Ethnopolitics, 15(3), 319-338, 2016
2015
Paper presented in an international conference on ‘Global Economic Growth and Sustainability: Prospects and Challenges
Co-authored
Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management development (sdmimd), Mysore, India, November - 2015
Conceptualization of Cultural Practice and Legal Framework on “Childhood”: Glances through an Anthropological Lens.
Muhammad Kazim Nur Sohad & S.M. Sadat al Sajib
The Chittagong University Journal of Social Sciences, The Chittagong University Journal of Social Sciences, 209-228, January - 2015
The Use of Insecticide Bed Nets in Preventing Kala-Azar Fever in Rural Bangladesh: A Field-Based Assessment
Karim, A. H. M. Zehadul and Haque, Md. Ashadul.
South Asian Anthropologist., South Asian Anthropologist., Vol. 15. Part -2., 2015
Kala-azar is one of the most acute vector-borne diseases which has been identified as the second-largest parasitic killer-disease causing deadly impact on human health, and if left untreated, it can cause true fatalities. To be protected from it, the World Health Organization has very recently innovated and suggested using the insecticide-treated, dipped- in bed nets in those regions where kala-azar exists most notoriously among rural communities. This paper is an utcome of a field-based research conducted in a few affected villages in Godagari Upazila of Rajshahi District in the northern part of Bangladesh where the insecticide-treated, dipped-in bed nets are put to use as part of steps taken to prevent the disease. Based on the results, the paper finally provides a few alternative suggestions to the concerned authorities responsible for the implementation of preventive measures for kala-azar who may consider these for their own ameliorative purposes.
State of Stateless People: The Plight of Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh
Nasir Uddin
The University of Pennsylvania Press, Human Rights to Citizens: A Slippery Concept, 2015
2014
2013
Field experience from a multiethnic setting of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh
Ala Uddin
Routledge (UK), Asian Ethnicity, 14 (3), 354–375., 2013
Peace Building in South Asia and the Youth
Azim, S. & Hoque, N. S.
Social Science Review, 30(2), 165-178, 2013
The Plights of Small Town in Bangladesh: Responses and Challenges.
Hoque, N. S.
Man and Life, 39(3-4), 55-66, 2013
2012
To Host or To Hurt: Counter-narratives on Rohingya Refugee Issue in Bangladesh
Nasir Uddin (ed)
Institute of Culture and Development Research (ICDR), February - 2012
This book is about ‘Rohingya’, a group of religious, ethnic and linguistic minority people of Myanmar but now large in numbers live in Bangladesh as refugees. Currently the Rohingya belong to no state; neither Bangladesh nor Myanmar. They became stateless people when Government of Myanmar constitutionally excluded them as its citizens in 1982 enacting ‘Myanmar Citizenship Law.’ Besides, Government of Bangladesh has always been reluctant in accepting them even as refugees in its land. Therefore, the Rohingya now hold the identity of statelessness in Myanmar and bear the fate of refugee-hood in Bangladesh. The book presents a comprehensive picture by giving critical look, and re-look, at the popular narratives regarding the Rohingya refugee problem that both Bangladesh and Myanmar have been dealing with for decades. By so doing, the book provides a counter-narrative to understand the Rohingya refugee issue from wider, deeper and holistic perspectives.
Theories in Anthropology (in Bengali)
Ahmed Fazle Hasan Choudhury and Muhammad Ala Uddin
Novel Publishing House, 2012
2011
Decolonising Ethnography in the Field: An Anthropological Account
Nasir Uddin
Taylor & Francis, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2011
2010
Human Trafficking Problem in Bangladesh: An Anthropological Perspective.
Hoque, N. S.
Journal of South Asian Anthropologist, 10(1), 87-95, 2010
Road Users’ Culture and Traffic Congestion in the Port City of Chittagong: An Urban Anthropological Study.
Hoque, N. S.
Chittagong University Journal of Social Sciences, 25, 249-261, 2010
Female Child Trafficking from Bangladesh: A New Form of Slavery.
Hoque, N. S.
Canadian Social Science, 6(1), 45, 2010
2008
2007
Local Perceptions of Natural Resource Conservation in Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary
Ala Uddin & A. S. A. Foisal
East-West Center, USA., 84–109, 2007
Making Conservation Work: Linking Rural Livelihoods and Protected Areas in Bangladesh (Jefferson Fox & Others)
2006
Mahr (dower): A Symbol of Aristocracy
Islam, Z. & Hoque, N. S.
Bangladesh Journal of Islamic Thought, 2(2), 29-37., 2006
The Emerging Nature of Empowerment of Women in Rural Bangladesh: A Query From Feminist Anthropological Perspective.
Sharmeen, S. & Hoque, N. S
Journal of Social Development, 18(1), 79-94, 2006
2005
Pond Fish Culture in Bangladesh: An Anthropological Investigation at Begumgonj Thana in Noakhali District.
Hoque, N. S.
Journal of Socioeconomic Research and Development, 2(1), 43-49, 2005
Impact of Traffic Congestion on the Way of Life in Dhaka City: An Anthropological Perspective.
Islam, Z. & Hoque, N. S.
Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 3(4), 661-673, 2005
Road Users Behavioral Culture of Capital Dhaka, Bangladesh: An Anthropological Perspective.
Islam, Z. & Hoque, N. S.
Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 3(4), 693-699, 2005
Application of Indigenous Knowledge: A Case of the Shampan Boatmen.
Rahman, A., Akter, M. & Hoque, N. S.
Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 3(6), 846-849, 2005