As the Asian region experiences an extraordinary period of wealth differentials, migration flows, gender and class conflicts, racial tensions, interethnic relations, and intergenerational frictions all as a result of neoliberal globalization's encroachment into both public and private lives, this volume offers rich insight into the local practices and situated experiences of these phenomena. The nine chapters across South and Southeast Asia draw upon qualitative methods, including ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, longitudinal studies, digital ethnography, and analysis of news reports, to provide a compelling backdrop in which to examine the rapidly changing economic and social landscape of the region. Together, the volume challenges conventional ideas about the locations and placements of contemporary Asia as a geographical given by foregrounding the circulation and manifestation of Western neoliberal doctrines. The chapters, thereby, emphasize how the region is part of a larger, interconnected, and interdependent world, where individual competition, entrepreneurship, and free markets are becoming valorized ever more and stimulating the transnational movement and diasporic settlement of people.

At the same time, the chapters present the different ways that neoliberalism has been localized in their particular country settings as well as its appropriation by a range of individuals, families, communities, markets, cities, and states. From the new moral regime of economy, work, and labour that is enacted, three key contributions of the volume arise. First is the recognition that the new market economies of Asia are infused with neoliberal policies and ideals that increasingly underscore the importance of self-governance and place responsibility on individuals for their own well-being. For instance, from Singapore's cosmopolitan leisure economy of the casino resort to the economy of prosperity in megachurches, these profitable markets and business models are able to reshape people's moral attitudes and behaviours towards what constitutes ‘good work’ by drawing upon the promises of economic development and growth.