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Jack Jin Gary Lee is Assistant Professor of Sociology at The New School for Social Research.

Gary's scholarship explores how race and law shape the social logics and processes of governance in modern empires and (post)colonial states. He is working on a book, Inventing Direct Rule, on the significance of law and race in the making of "direct rule" in the modern British Empire. Focusing on the reconstitution of Jamaica and the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang and Malacca) as Crown Colonies in the nineteenth century, this project examines the structures, practices, and mythologies of "direct rule" in relation to colonies marked as "plural societies."

His dissertation on this topic won the University of California, San Diego’s 2018 Chancellor’s Dissertation Medal (Social Sciences). More recently, his solo-authored article, which was based on the book's findings, was recognized with the American Sociological Association Global and Transnational Sociology Section's 2024 Best Scholarly Article Award.

Gary is collaborating with Professor Lynette J. Chua of the National University of Singapore on a historical-ethnographic project on the colonial and postcolonial governance of epidemics. This ongoing project, "Governing through Contagion," charts the origins and transformations of public health strategies, involving both human and nonhuman agencies, as colonial and postcolonial states in Asia fought the spread of contagious diseases. They convened an international workshop on the concept of governing through contagion in 2022. Its proceedings form the basis of an edited volume, Contagion, Technology, and Law at the Limits (Hart Publishing | Bloomsbury).

Degrees Held

PhD Sociology, University of California, San Diego, 2017
MA Sociology, University of California, San Diego, 2012
BA Sociology, University of Chicago, 2007

Recent Publications

Books

Chua, Lynnette J. and Jack Jin Gary Lee (editors). 2024. Contagion, Technology, and Law at the Limits. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing (Hart).

Articles and Book Chapters (selected)

Historical Sociology | Race and Ethnicity

Lee, Jack Jin Gary. 2025. “Anxieties of Whiteness: Evidence, Race, and Emotions in the (Non-)Prosecution of the “Malayan ‘Sexual Perversion’ Cases,” Pp. 262-283 in Legal Histories of Empire: Navigating Legalities, edited by Lyndsay Campbell and Shaunnagh Dorsett. New York: Routledge.

Lee, Jack Jin Gary. 2024. “Racialized Legalities: The Rule of Law, Race, and the Protection of Women in Britain’s Crown Colonies 1886-1890.” Law and Social Inquiry 49(3): 1396-1425.

• Winner of the American Sociological Association Global and Transnational Sociology Section’s 2024 Best Scholarly Article Award

Lee, Jack Jin Gary. 2015. “Plural Society and the Colonial State: English Law and the Making of Crown Colony Government in the Straits Settlements.” Asian Journal of Law and Society 2(2): 229-249.

Law and Society | Global Health

Lee, Jack Jin Gary and Lynette J. Chua. 2023. “Smallpox Vaccination and the Limits of Governing through Contagion in the Straits Settlements, 1868-1926.” Law and Policy 45(3): 331-352.

Chua, Lynette J. and Jack Jin Gary Lee. 2021. “Governing through Contagion.” In Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts, edited by Victor V. Ramraj. New York: Oxford University Press.

International Migration | Political Sociology

Lee, Jack Jin Gary. 2019. “Why Developmental States Accept Guest Workers: Bureaucratic Policy-making and the Politics of Labour Migration in Singapore.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45(13): 2508-2526.

Book Reviews and Encyclopedia Entries (selected)

Lee, Jack Jin Gary. 2024. “Racialized Citizenship." Chapter 23 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Citizenship Studies, edited by Thomas Faist and Marisol García Cabeza.

Lee, Jack Jin Gary, & Julián Gómez-Delgado. 2023. “Book review: Modernity’s Corruption: Empire and Morality in the Making of British India,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity (OnlineFirst).

Lee, Jack Jin Gary. 2021. “Book Review – Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies,” Law and Society Review 55(3): 525-527.

Public and Professional Writings (selected)

Lee, Jack Jin Gary. 2023. “Rule of Law as Imperial Theology.” The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere. Social Science Research Council.

Awards And Honors

2024-2025 Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography & Social Thought (GIDEST) Faculty Fellow

2023-2024 Mellon Initiative for Inclusive Faculty Excellence Faculty Fellow