Nasir Uddin (anthropologist)

Nasir Uddin
Born	Cox's Bazar
Nationality	Bangladeshi
Other names	Rahman Nasir Uddin
Occupation	Anthropologist

Nasir Uddin (Template:Lang-bn) is a cultural anthropologist, post-colonial theorist, and prolific writer on issues ranging from human rights, adivasi (indigenous people) issues, human rights, rights of non-citizens, refugees, and stateless people, everyday forms of discrimination, the state in people's everyday life, media and democracy, and the state-society relations in Bangladesh and South Asia. Currently, Uddin is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chittagong.

Education

Uddin graduated with a BSS with Honours in Anthropology in 1997 and a master's degree in Anthropology in 1998, from the University of Dhaka.

Later in his career, he studied at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies (ASAFAS) as a PhD student in area studies with a major of cultural anthropology at Kyoto University in 2004. From November 2005 to April 2007, he carried out ethnographic fieldwork in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) towards writing his dissertation for his PhD degree, which was eventually conferred in March 2008. Uddin's dissertation was about indigenous mobility, transitions in everyday life, politics of marginality, and engendering leadership among the marginalized adivasi of the CHT. Apart from his intensive works on indigeneity, Uddin has been actively involved in doing ethnographic research on the Rohingya people living in the borderland of Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Career

In January 2001, Uddin joined the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chittagong as a lecturer and was promoted to assistant professor in 2003. In 2004, he was awarded a Monbukagakusho Scholarship.

He was soon promoted to associate professor of Anthropology at Chittagong University in mid-year 2009. In the same year, Uddin was awarded a British Academy visiting fellowship 2009 to conduct postdoctoral level research in the University of Hull, United Kingdom. Soon after finishing his project in the country, Uddin conducted advanced research on "The State of Ethnic Minority in the State-formation in Post-colonial State: Experience from Bangladesh" as an affiliated fellow of the Department of Sociology at Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi in the first half of 2011.

In 2012, Uddin was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowship to do postdoctoral research at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany. During this time, Uddin has taught courses in the Faculty of Social Sciences from 2012 to 2013 whilst doing his own research on the anthropology of the state. He also did research at Heidelberg University, Germany and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands as a visiting fellow in 2013. Later Uddin joined the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE) as a visiting fellow to continue his research on indigeneity, state-making, and marginality in the context of Bangladesh and South Asia in January 2014. Then, Uddin joined the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) at the University of Oxford as a Visiting Research Fellow in 2018. At the same time, he worked as a Research Consultant of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. During his affiliation with Oxford University and SOAS, he worked on the ethnicity, identity and the representation of the Rohingya people. Uddin has been traveling across the world and giving lectures, and presentation on his research on indigeneity, the state in everyday life, and refugee studies (particularly on the Rohingya people) on regular basis in many renowned universities of many countries including the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and China.

Fields of research

His current fields of research include:

• Statelessness, (Non)Citizenship and Refugeehood
• Ethnicity and the Formation of Ethnic Category in De-territorialised world;
• Mobility and Transition in Identity and Cultural Entity;
• Indigeneity, Identity-politics and Belongingness;
• Subaltern Studies and the Politics of Marginality;
• Dialectics between Colonialism and Post-colonialism;
• Peace and Conflict Studies;
• Notions of Power and State in Everyday Life;
• Migration and Refugee Studies;
• (political) Islam and Secularism,
• Dynamics of Regionalism and Area Studies;
• Paradox of Modernity and Globalization;
• Interface of Local Wisdom and Global Doctrine.

Journal articles and edited books

Uddin has published numerous journal articles, edited volumes and written books on the Chittagong Hill Tracts, colonialism and post-colonialism, anthropology of the state, adivasi Issues, and Rohingya refugees issues among others. His recent edited books, Life in Peace and Conflict: Indigeneity and State in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2017) and Indigeneity on the Move: Varying Manifestation of a Contested Concept (Oxford & New York: Berghahn, 2017) have earned tremendous international attentions and recognition. Uddin along with Dr. Nasreen Chowdhury of Delhi University is editing another book titled Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movements in South Asia (UK: Springer, 2018). His forthcoming monograph title "The Rohingya: A Case of "Subhuman" from the Oxford University Press has meanwhile become the centre of attention of scholars working on refugees, stateless people, migration, transborder mobility, asylum seekers, camp people, and forcibly displaced people across the globe.

Theory of "Subhuman"

Uddin has been working for years to build a new theory what is called "Subhuman" theory to understand the people living in an acute marginalized and atrocious conditions. ‘Subhuman’ is a theory to understand an acute vulnerable condition of the people and the nature of the state. It could also provide a new framework of understanding genocide, ethnocide, ethnic cleansing and domicide. Uddin argues that ‘subhuman’ is a category of people who are born in human society, but have no space in human community. ‘Subhuman’ does not receive treatments what a human deserves, and does not lead a life like a human being. ‘Subhumans’ are born in the world, but the world does not own them in any state-structure. 'Subhuman' are treated as like o-manush (non-human) since they do not exist in the legal framework of any state. 'Subhuman' is a particular category of people who live in the borderland of 'life' and 'death'. 'Subhumans' are not human in their due dignity, rights and voice as are dealt with as if less than human beings. Towards establishing his theory of "Subhuman", Uddin is currently working on a monograph title The Rohingyas: A Tale of "Subhuman" which is scheduled to come out in the late 2018. His theory of "subhuman" is being widely spreading up across the world with huge appreciations. Recently, Uddin gave three consecutive talks on his theory of "Subhuman" at Asia Institute in the University of Toronto, International Migration Research Centre (IMRC) at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo and Centre for Refugee Studies at York University. He also gave lecture on his "subhuman theory" in the 8th Humboldt Foundation Winners Forum Meeting in Bonn, Germany on 18 October 2018. Uddin is scheduled give lectures on his "subhuman" theory at the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) of Oxford University, Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS and the Centre for Migration, Refugees, and Belonging at the University of East London (UEL) in November 2018.