Casey James Miller is a cultural anthropologist whose work to date has focused on the intersections between queer anthropology, medical anthropology, and the anthropology of Chinese culture and society. His research has been supported by numerous grants and awards including from the Fulbright Program, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. Inside the Circle: Queer Culture and Activism in Northwest China (Rutgers, 2023) is his first book.

Inside the Circle is the first book to explore queer (tongzhi 同志) culture and activism in northwest China. Drawing on ethnographic data collected over a decade of fieldwork in urban northwest China from 2007–2019 involving over 70 people from local queer communities, civil society organizations, and government agencies, the book offers a novel, compelling, and intimately personal perspective on Chinese queer culture and activism.

The book tells the stories of two courageous and dedicated groups of queer activists in the city of Xi’an: a grassroots gay men’s HIV/AIDS organization called Tong’ai and a lesbian women’s group named UNITE. Taking inspiration from “the circle” (quanzi 圈子), a term used to imagine local, national, and global queer communities, the book shows how everyday people in northwest China are taking part in queer culture and activism while also striving to lead traditionally moral lives in a rapidly changing society.

The queer stories in this book broaden our understandings of gender and sexuality in contemporary China and show how taking global queer diversity seriously requires us to de-center Western cultural values, historical experiences, and theoretical perspectives.

What People Are Saying

“There are many meaningful contributions throughout Inside the Circle, from its central findings to its smaller observations. The discussion of romantic/passionate versus companionate/familial love; the inclusion of Buddhist faith perspectives that are still rare in studies of queer China; the compassionate and critical analysis of how an organization grew, deteriorated, and was rebirthed/reimagined—these and more will stick with me long after reading this work.”

— Amy Brainer, author of Queer Kinship and Family Change in Taiwan

“Inside the Circle challenges understandings of queer personhood in China. Tracing the struggles of queer activists in northwest China to reconcile their sexual identities with their deeply held beliefs about what it means to be a moral person, Miller convinces the reader with his rich ethnography that in postsocialist China, queer activism from the margins challenges reductive ideas about homonormativity, expands the public sphere without directly opposing state power, and helps us to imagine new forms of transnational solidarity.”

— Lisa Rofel, author of Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture

Other Publications

  • “Dying for Money: The Effects of Global Health Initiatives on NGOs Working with MSM and HIV/AIDS in Northwest China.”

    Drawing on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork (2007–2011), this article critically examines the consequences of two global health initiatives (GHIs), the Global Fund and the Gates Foundation, on NGOs engaged in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment among gay men in northwest China.

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  • “We can only be healthy if we love ourselves: Queer AIDS NGOs, kinship, and alternative families of care in China.”

    In this article, I draw from recent developments in the anthropological literatures on kinship and care to complicate and extend analyses of Chinese queer NGOs and AIDS activism. By highlighting the practical, moral, and political dimensions of daily life and work within Chinese queer NGOs, I argue that they constitute what I call “alternative families of care.”

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