Syllabus
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?
Annotation
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)
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.
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.