Srdečně zveme na kurz hostujícího profesora na oboru vietnamistika na Ústavu asijských studií FF UK, dr. Lau Minh Chaua (Vietnamská národní univerzita). Kurz nese název Late-/post-socialist marketisation and livelihood change in Asia: Vietnam, China, and beyond. Koná se dne 11. a 14. dubna 2023. Je sice primárně určen pro studenty vietnamistiky, avšak mohl by být zajímavý i pro sinology. Bohužel se přednášku podařilo domluvit až po období zápisů předmětů v SISu, ale o zapsání lze požádat zpětně. Případní zájemci ať se ozvou dr. Barboře Novákové, e-mail: barbora.novakova@ff.cuni.cz. Sylabus kurzu je následujcící:
Late-/post-socialist marketisation and livelihood change in Asia:
Vietnam, China, and beyond.
Lam Minh Chau, PhD.
Associate Professor and Chair of Social and Economic Anthropology
Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
Email: lamminhchau86@gmail.com
Time: April 11th (9:10-12:25) and 13th (14:10-17:25)
Venue: room CM207
Course description/Content
This course explores the experiences and diverse livelihood strategies of Asian communities who have negotiated one of the greatest social and economic transformations of the 20th century: the transition from socialist to marketised economic systems in Europe, Asia and Africa. The focus is on Asia, where the marketisation process has played out in ways that are both similar to and at the same time remarkably different from what has been observed in other settings of post-socialist change, notably in Eastern Europe. We examine what marketisation entails in China, Vietnam, India, Mongolia and beyond, its impact on the lives of Asian communities, and the diverse and creative livelihood strategies they have devised in response to this complex transformation. Students will have the opportunity to look at major aspects of livelihood change, notably in agriculture, land use, trade, and industrial wage employment. The course will also engage with major scholarly debates on marketisation, notably the role of the state, the moral economy-rational peasant question, forms of resistance, and whether marketisation should be perceived as a positive transformation or destructive change.
Course Objectives/Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, students should acquire an overview of key concepts and debates on late-/post-socialist marketisation and the major aspects of livelihood change engendered by this complex transformation in contemporary Asia and beyond.
Students should also develop the capacity to ‘think anthropologically’ when facing and trying to explain a problem/question related to late-/post-socialist transformation, particularly a sensitivity for the factors that have shaped this process in diverse and unexpected ways: local contexts, cultural differences, unique histories, and human agency.
Students should also be able to make use of such knowledge in the construction of their own anthropological questions related to late-/post-socialist changes elsewhere.
Course Requirements
Students are required to attend all lectures and seminars, read the suggested literature before class (a minimum of two articles or book chapters per lecture/seminar), complete seminar assignments and submit the final essay on time.
All students are expected to participate actively in seminar discussions (it is expected that everybody says something at a seminar).
Teaching arrangements
4 lectures (45 minutes) and 4 seminars.
For one in-class hour, a workload of two hours should be considered in order to include preparation, studying and processing its content.
The language of instruction will be English, and written work will be submitted in English and sent to my email address, lamminhchau86@gmail.com.
In a nutshell, in each lecture/seminar, we will explore together three questions:
– What happens/has changed under post-/late-socialism (particularly in terms of structural contexts, state policies, macro-economic processes).
– The actual impact of the transformations on local lives and livelihood choices.
– People’s responses and the livelihood strategies they have devised in negotiation of the transformations.
For each of these questions, we will try to capture:
– Variations across contexts (both structural changes and on-the-ground transformations and responses).
– The factors that shape the impact and experiences of transformations: structure and agency, socialist legacies and post-socialist conditions, past and present, rational and moral.
I will use Vietnam as a focus of discussion, and to a lesser extent, China. Yet a variety of contexts will be included in the discussions for the purpose of comparison as we see fit: India, Mongolia, Eastern Europe, and beyond.
Assessment
TBC
Course summary
Lecture 1. Marketisation in contemporary Asia: An overview.
Seminar 1. Discussion: Marketisation and the state.
Lecture 2. Agricultural transformations in the context of market transition.
Seminar 2. Discussion: Marketisation and the moral economy/rational peasant debate.
Lecture 3. Market, agrarian change, and land grabbing.
Seminar 3. Discussion: Land grabbing and forms of resistance in today’s marketised Asia.
Lecture 4. Trade, industrial wage employment, and beyond.
Seminar 4. Discussion: Marketisation – for better or worse?
Background reading
Note: Students should read a minimum of two books and five articles/book chapters
Books
Burawoy, M. & K. Verdery (ed.) 1999. Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in
the Postsocialist World. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Hann, C. (ed.) 2002. Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies, and Practices in Eurasia. London: Routledge.
Mandel, R. & C. Humphrey (ed.) 2002. Markets and Moralities: Ethnographies of
Postsocialism. Oxford: Berg.
West, H. & P. Raman (ed.) 2009. Enduring Socialism: Explorations of Revolution and Transformation, Restoration and Continuation. New York: Berghahn Books.
Articles and book chapters
Luong, H.V. & J. Unger 1998. Wealth, Power, and Poverty in the Transition to Market
Economies: The Process of Socio-Economic Differentiation in Rural China and Northern
Vietnam. The China Journal 40, 61-93.
Kerkvliet, B. & M. Selden 1998. Agrarian Transformation in China and Vietnam. Annual
Review of Anthropology 30, 139-61.
Beresford, M. 2008. “Doi Moi in Review: The Challenges of Building Market Socialism in Vietnam.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 38 (2): 221–243
Schwenkel, C. & A. Leshkowich 2012. Guest Editors‘ Introduction: How Is Neoliberalism
Good to Think Vietnam? How Is Vietnam Good to Think Neoliberalism? Positions 20(2),
379-401.
Kerkvliet, B. 2014. ‘Protests over Land in Vietnam: Rightful Resistance and More’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 9(3), 19-54.
Pieke, F. 1995. Bureaucracy, Friends, and Money: The Growth of Capital Socialism in
China. Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(3), 494-518.
Nonini, D. 2008. Is China Becoming Neoliberal. Critique of Anthropology 28(2), 145-76.
Yep, R. 2012. “Containing Land Grabs: A Misguided Response to Rural Conflicts Over Land.” Journal of Contemporary China 80: 273–291.
Sneath, D. 2002. Mongolia in the ‘Age of the Market: Pastoral Land-use and the
Development Discourse. In Markets and Moralities: Ethnographies of Postsocialism ed. C.
Humphrey & R. Mandel. Oxford: Berg.
Walker, K. 2009 Neoliberalism on the Ground in Rural India: Predatory Growth, Agrarian
Crisis, Internal Colonization, and the Intensification of Class Struggle. Journal of Peasant
Studies 35(4), 557-620.
Levien, M. 2012. ‘The Land Question: Special Economic Zones and the Political Economy of Dispossession in India’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2012, 933-69.
