Sealing Cheng
Biographic Data
| ID | 3637765 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sealing Cheng |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sealing |
| FAMILY NAME | Cheng |
| SIGNATURE | CHENG S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Mobilizing Documents: Identification, Bureaucracy, and Policing in Transnational Mobility
This co‐authored essay builds on a growing anthropological literature that engages critically and creatively with idealized official and popular ideas about documents of/in migration regimes. Documents are often championed as a common and unquestionable good in transnational migration but they are intrinsically tied to inequalities and exclusions. As such they can be the source of hope for migrants, but are frequently also the source of violence,…
Echoes of victimhood: On Passionate Activism and 'Sex Trafficking
The sexually violated woman has become a salient symbol in feminist discourse, government policies, the media and transnational activism at this historical juncture. In this article, I seek to understand the conviction of anti-prostitution activists that all women in prostitution are victims (despite evidence to the contrary), and their simultaneous dismissal or condemnation of those women who identify as sex workers. The analysis identifies the …
Choreography of Masculinity: The Pursuit of Marriage by African Men in Forced Displacement in Hong Kong
Sealing Cheng, Choreography of Masculinity: The Pursuit of Marriage by African Men in Forced Displacement in Hong Kong, Feminist Studies, Vol. 47, No. 2, Global Intimacies: China and/in the Global South (2021), pp. 282-311
The Male Malady of Globalization: Phallocentric Nationalism in South Korea
In this article I analyze how masculinity has been co-constructed with sexual violence within a narrative of national and personal redemption in South Korea. In examining what I identify as phallocentric nationalism, I trace the symbolic construction of the penis-naturalized in its erect, penetrating form and its participation in heterosex-as a source of masculine power within a nationalist discourse of emasculation and recuperation in Korea. Tra…
Pikachu's Tears: Children's Perspectives on Violence in Hong Kong
216 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Sealing Cheng Pikachu’s Tears: Children’s Perspectives on Violence in Hong Kong How do children experience the sudden onset of massive unrest, violence, and police brutality? It has been difficult even for many adults to process how Hong Kong—a cosmopolitan city known for its stability and low crime rate—descended overnight, on June 12, 2019, into tear gas and violent confrontations…
Sexing the Globe
A critical engagement with the “pull and push” model
It has now become commonplace to use a set of &s;push-pull factors&s; to talk about cross-border movements, migration, smuggling, and human trafficking. Rooted in modernisation theory, scholars of migration in the 1960s developed the push-pull model to understand migration both within and across countries, as part of broader social, economic, and cultural transformations. This chapter argues that the push-pull model is not only limited in scope i…
Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture
As someone who learns about the Middle East primarily through news media, Israel-Palestinian hostilities have dominated my imagination of inequality and ethnic violence. So when I saw the subtitle
The violence of neoliberalism
Neoliberalizing sex, normativizing love - 1
A lost tribe in the city: Health status and needs of African asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong
The host government should have moral and ethical obligations to attend to the health needs of ASRs. Evidently a number of structural and health system factors have significantly impacted the health of African ASRs in Hong Kong. Changes to current policies regarding how African ASRs are handled whilst in Hong Kong but, more immediately, improvements in healthcare access are needed
Making visible the invisible-victimhood, violence, and voice in Tales of the Night Fairies
Private lives of public women: Photos of sex workers (minus the sex) in South Korea
We mostly learn about women in prostitution through representation by non-sex-workers: activists, policy-makers, journalists, and academics. What comes through are often hypersexualized and essentialized images of sex workers as either victims or agents. This dichotomy not only essentializes their lives but also undermines women as partners for engagement. Against this background, what could be learned from photographs taken by women in prostitut…
Sex work and the city: The social geography of health and safety in Tijuana, Mexico, by Yasmina Katsulis
Sexual Protection, Citizenship and Nationhood: Prostituted Women and Migrant Wives in South Korea
This article examines the making of two distinct groups of women—'prostituted women' and migrant wives—into citizen-subjects in South Korea at the turn of the twenty-first century. Though the lives of these women barely intersect, they become visible in the public sphere as victims of sexual violence and therefore in urgent need of state protection. Defined as such, prostitutes and migrant wives come under the gaze of the state and civil society …
The Paradox of Vernacularization: Women's Human Rights and the Gendering of Nationhood
This article extends Sally Merry's idea of "vernacularization" of human rights by examining its paradoxical effects. Specifically, it traces how international norms about trafficking in persons and women's human rights become vernacularized into anti-prostitution policies in South Korea, and how such universal ideas facilitate the re-articulation of authentic national culture and Korean womanhood. As nationhood is gendered with reference to women…
On the Move for Love: Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea
Following the lives of a group of migrant Filipinas who worked as entertainers in South Korea and then journeyed to other parts of Asia, Europe, and the U.S., this ethnography provides a look at how work, sex, love, and ambition in migrants' lives intersect with larger issues of transnationalism, identity, and global hierarchies of inequality
Questioning Global Vaginahood: Reflections from Adapting The Vagina Monologues in Hong Kong
Drawing on the author's experience in devising a localized version of The Vagina Monologues in Hong Kong, this paper critically appraises the 'global vaginahood' in the globalization of The Vagina Monologues and the V-Day movement that reproduces a core-periphery relationship in the transnational women's movement. As a theatrical performance and a worldwide movement, these productions are remarkable for the manner in which they raise awareness ab…
Popularising purity: Gender, sexuality and nationalism in HIV/Aids prevention for South Korean youths
This paper examines how HIV/AIDS gains its social meanings at the intersection of discourses about gender, sexuality and nationalism in Korea. It examines how a major Korean NGO reinforces media and government construction of HIV/AIDS as a national threat, and mobilises ‘purity’ as an indigenous value to resist the global onslaught. This Purity Campaign successfully draws on pre-existing narratives about Korean society and national development, c…
Interrogating the Absence of HIV/Aids Interventions for Migrant Sex Workers in South Korea
Sealing Cheng, Interrogating the Absence of HIV/AIDS Interventions for Migrant Sex Workers in South Korea, Health and Human Rights, Vol. 7, No. 2, Sexuality, Human Rights, and Health (2004), pp. 193-204
Assuming manhood: Prostitution and patriotic passions in Korea
Assuming manhood: Prostitution and patriotic passions in Korea
The Paradox of Vernacularization: Women's Human Rights and the Gendering of Nationhood
This article extends Sally Merry's idea of "vernacularization" of human rights by examining its paradoxical effects. Specifically, it traces how international norms about trafficking in persons and women's human rights become vernacularized into anti-prostitution policies in South Korea, and how such universal ideas facilitate the re-articulation of authentic national culture and Korean womanhood. As nationhood is gendered with reference to women…
Sexual Protection, Citizenship and Nationhood: Prostituted Women and Migrant Wives in South Korea
This article examines the making of two distinct groups of women—'prostituted women' and migrant wives—into citizen-subjects in South Korea at the turn of the twenty-first century. Though the lives of these women barely intersect, they become visible in the public sphere as victims of sexual violence and therefore in urgent need of state protection. Defined as such, prostitutes and migrant wives come under the gaze of the state and civil society …
The Male Malady of Globalization: Phallocentric Nationalism in South Korea
In this article I analyze how masculinity has been co-constructed with sexual violence within a narrative of national and personal redemption in South Korea. In examining what I identify as phallocentric nationalism, I trace the symbolic construction of the penis-naturalized in its erect, penetrating form and its participation in heterosex-as a source of masculine power within a nationalist discourse of emasculation and recuperation in Korea. Tra…
Private lives of public women: Photos of sex workers (minus the sex) in South Korea
We mostly learn about women in prostitution through representation by non-sex-workers: activists, policy-makers, journalists, and academics. What comes through are often hypersexualized and essentialized images of sex workers as either victims or agents. This dichotomy not only essentializes their lives but also undermines women as partners for engagement. Against this background, what could be learned from photographs taken by women in prostitut…
Popularising purity: Gender, sexuality and nationalism in HIV/Aids prevention for South Korean youths
This paper examines how HIV/AIDS gains its social meanings at the intersection of discourses about gender, sexuality and nationalism in Korea. It examines how a major Korean NGO reinforces media and government construction of HIV/AIDS as a national threat, and mobilises ‘purity’ as an indigenous value to resist the global onslaught. This Purity Campaign successfully draws on pre-existing narratives about Korean society and national development, c…
Questioning Global Vaginahood: Reflections from Adapting The Vagina Monologues in Hong Kong
Drawing on the author's experience in devising a localized version of The Vagina Monologues in Hong Kong, this paper critically appraises the 'global vaginahood' in the globalization of The Vagina Monologues and the V-Day movement that reproduces a core-periphery relationship in the transnational women's movement. As a theatrical performance and a worldwide movement, these productions are remarkable for the manner in which they raise awareness ab…
Interrogating the Absence of HIV/Aids Interventions for Migrant Sex Workers in South Korea
Sealing Cheng, Interrogating the Absence of HIV/AIDS Interventions for Migrant Sex Workers in South Korea, Health and Human Rights, Vol. 7, No. 2, Sexuality, Human Rights, and Health (2004), pp. 193-204
Echoes of victimhood: On Passionate Activism and 'Sex Trafficking
The sexually violated woman has become a salient symbol in feminist discourse, government policies, the media and transnational activism at this historical juncture. In this article, I seek to understand the conviction of anti-prostitution activists that all women in prostitution are victims (despite evidence to the contrary), and their simultaneous dismissal or condemnation of those women who identify as sex workers. The analysis identifies the …
Choreography of Masculinity: The Pursuit of Marriage by African Men in Forced Displacement in Hong Kong
Sealing Cheng, Choreography of Masculinity: The Pursuit of Marriage by African Men in Forced Displacement in Hong Kong, Feminist Studies, Vol. 47, No. 2, Global Intimacies: China and/in the Global South (2021), pp. 282-311
Assuming manhood: Prostitution and patriotic passions in Korea
Interrogating the Absence of HIV/Aids Interventions for Migrant Sex Workers in South Korea
Sealing Cheng, Interrogating the Absence of HIV/AIDS Interventions for Migrant Sex Workers in South Korea, Health and Human Rights, Vol. 7, No. 2, Sexuality, Human Rights, and Health (2004), pp. 193-204
Popularising purity: Gender, sexuality and nationalism in HIV/Aids prevention for South Korean youths
This paper examines how HIV/AIDS gains its social meanings at the intersection of discourses about gender, sexuality and nationalism in Korea. It examines how a major Korean NGO reinforces media and government construction of HIV/AIDS as a national threat, and mobilises ‘purity’ as an indigenous value to resist the global onslaught. This Purity Campaign successfully draws on pre-existing narratives about Korean society and national development, c…
Questioning Global Vaginahood: Reflections from Adapting The Vagina Monologues in Hong Kong
Drawing on the author's experience in devising a localized version of The Vagina Monologues in Hong Kong, this paper critically appraises the 'global vaginahood' in the globalization of The Vagina Monologues and the V-Day movement that reproduces a core-periphery relationship in the transnational women's movement. As a theatrical performance and a worldwide movement, these productions are remarkable for the manner in which they raise awareness ab…
On the Move for Love: Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea
Following the lives of a group of migrant Filipinas who worked as entertainers in South Korea and then journeyed to other parts of Asia, Europe, and the U.S., this ethnography provides a look at how work, sex, love, and ambition in migrants' lives intersect with larger issues of transnationalism, identity, and global hierarchies of inequality
Sex work and the city: The social geography of health and safety in Tijuana, Mexico, by Yasmina Katsulis
Sexual Protection, Citizenship and Nationhood: Prostituted Women and Migrant Wives in South Korea
This article examines the making of two distinct groups of women—'prostituted women' and migrant wives—into citizen-subjects in South Korea at the turn of the twenty-first century. Though the lives of these women barely intersect, they become visible in the public sphere as victims of sexual violence and therefore in urgent need of state protection. Defined as such, prostitutes and migrant wives come under the gaze of the state and civil society …
The Paradox of Vernacularization: Women's Human Rights and the Gendering of Nationhood
This article extends Sally Merry's idea of "vernacularization" of human rights by examining its paradoxical effects. Specifically, it traces how international norms about trafficking in persons and women's human rights become vernacularized into anti-prostitution policies in South Korea, and how such universal ideas facilitate the re-articulation of authentic national culture and Korean womanhood. As nationhood is gendered with reference to women…
Making visible the invisible-victimhood, violence, and voice in Tales of the Night Fairies
Private lives of public women: Photos of sex workers (minus the sex) in South Korea
We mostly learn about women in prostitution through representation by non-sex-workers: activists, policy-makers, journalists, and academics. What comes through are often hypersexualized and essentialized images of sex workers as either victims or agents. This dichotomy not only essentializes their lives but also undermines women as partners for engagement. Against this background, what could be learned from photographs taken by women in prostitut…
The violence of neoliberalism
Neoliberalizing sex, normativizing love - 1
A lost tribe in the city: Health status and needs of African asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong
The host government should have moral and ethical obligations to attend to the health needs of ASRs. Evidently a number of structural and health system factors have significantly impacted the health of African ASRs in Hong Kong. Changes to current policies regarding how African ASRs are handled whilst in Hong Kong but, more immediately, improvements in healthcare access are needed
A critical engagement with the “pull and push” model
It has now become commonplace to use a set of &s;push-pull factors&s; to talk about cross-border movements, migration, smuggling, and human trafficking. Rooted in modernisation theory, scholars of migration in the 1960s developed the push-pull model to understand migration both within and across countries, as part of broader social, economic, and cultural transformations. This chapter argues that the push-pull model is not only limited in scope i…
Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture
As someone who learns about the Middle East primarily through news media, Israel-Palestinian hostilities have dominated my imagination of inequality and ethnic violence. So when I saw the subtitle
Sexing the Globe
Pikachu's Tears: Children's Perspectives on Violence in Hong Kong
216 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Sealing Cheng Pikachu’s Tears: Children’s Perspectives on Violence in Hong Kong How do children experience the sudden onset of massive unrest, violence, and police brutality? It has been difficult even for many adults to process how Hong Kong—a cosmopolitan city known for its stability and low crime rate—descended overnight, on June 12, 2019, into tear gas and violent confrontations…
Echoes of victimhood: On Passionate Activism and 'Sex Trafficking
The sexually violated woman has become a salient symbol in feminist discourse, government policies, the media and transnational activism at this historical juncture. In this article, I seek to understand the conviction of anti-prostitution activists that all women in prostitution are victims (despite evidence to the contrary), and their simultaneous dismissal or condemnation of those women who identify as sex workers. The analysis identifies the …
Choreography of Masculinity: The Pursuit of Marriage by African Men in Forced Displacement in Hong Kong
Sealing Cheng, Choreography of Masculinity: The Pursuit of Marriage by African Men in Forced Displacement in Hong Kong, Feminist Studies, Vol. 47, No. 2, Global Intimacies: China and/in the Global South (2021), pp. 282-311
The Male Malady of Globalization: Phallocentric Nationalism in South Korea
In this article I analyze how masculinity has been co-constructed with sexual violence within a narrative of national and personal redemption in South Korea. In examining what I identify as phallocentric nationalism, I trace the symbolic construction of the penis-naturalized in its erect, penetrating form and its participation in heterosex-as a source of masculine power within a nationalist discourse of emasculation and recuperation in Korea. Tra…
Mobilizing Documents: Identification, Bureaucracy, and Policing in Transnational Mobility
This co‐authored essay builds on a growing anthropological literature that engages critically and creatively with idealized official and popular ideas about documents of/in migration regimes. Documents are often championed as a common and unquestionable good in transnational migration but they are intrinsically tied to inequalities and exclusions. As such they can be the source of hope for migrants, but are frequently also the source of violence,…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Sex work and related issues (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (8 works) · Human sexuality (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Criminology (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works)