Minwoo Jung

ABSTRACT SUBMITTED: This project examines the geopolitical construction of sexuality rights in global Asia through a multi-sited ethnographic study of Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea. It develops a relational framework for understanding LGBTQ politics as historically and geopolitically situated “rights projects” shaped by colonial legacies, authoritarian governance, neoliberal restructuring, racial capitalism, and contemporary geopolitical competition. Based on more than a decade of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, including over 230 interviews and participant observation at more than 300 activist events, the study shows that sexuality rights cannot be understood through universalist models that position Euro-American liberalism as the normative trajectory of sexual modernity. Instead, rights emerge through uneven and relational processes embedded in shifting global power structures. The book manuscript, Queer Geopolitics: Making Sexuality Rights in Global Asia, identifies four key dimensions shaping sexuality politics: authoritarian legacies, neoliberal transformations, geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China, and transnational circuits of influence and translation. The project contributes to anthropological and ethnographic scholarship on gender, sexuality, and global politics by offering a framework that situates sexuality rights within broader struggles over democracy, sovereignty, and global legitimacy in contemporary Asia.