Prior to the concluding conference of the ERC-funded 'WelfareStruggles' project, Minh Nguyen gave an interview to Manuela Lenzen from ZiF (Center for Interdisciplinary Research). The interview can be found here.
From March 26th to March 27th the final conference of the ERC funded project WelfareStruggles titled »The Politics of Care under Market Socialism: Labour Mobility, Global Capital and Changing Welfare System in Vietnam and China« will take place at ZiF. For more information click here.
We are pleased to announce the publication of the positions:asia critique special issue “The good life in late-socialist Asia: Aspirations, politics, and possibilities” guest edited by Minh T. N. Nguyen, Phill Wilcox and Jake Lin: https://read.dukeupress.edu/positions/issue. Below is the table of content of the issue.
This special issue emerged from a conference under the same title in Bielefeld in 2019 from which another special issue has been published by the European Journal of East Asian Studies, under the title “Rural Life in Late Socialism: Politics of Development and Imaginaries of the Future”: https://brill.com/view/journals/ejea/20/1/ejea.20.issue-1.xml, which later became an open-access book in updated form with Brill: https://brill.com/display/title/63621?rskey=s2AkuQ&result=4
Best regards,
The good life in late-socialist Asia: aspirations, politics, and possibilities
Guest Editors’ Introduction
Minh T. N. Nguyen; Phill Wilcox; Jake Lin
Articles
Plugged into the Good Life: Living Electrically through the Ages in Urban Vietnam
Dancing and Rapping the Good Life: Sharing Aspirations and Values in Vietnamese Hip-Hop
Philanthropy Fever from Below: On the Possibilities of a Good Life in Late-Socialist China
The Good Life as the Green Life: Digital Environmentalism and Ecological Consciousness in China
Protecting the Body, Living the Good Life: Negotiating Health in Rural Lowland Laos
Summer Happiness: Performing the Good Life in a Tibetan Town
Michael Kleinod-Freudenberg; Sypha Chanthavong
Afterword: What Good Life, and Why Now?
Nguyen, Minh T. N., and Lan Wei. 2023. “Peasant Traders, Migrant Workers and ‘Supermarkets’: Low-Cost Provisions and the Reproduction of Migrant Labor in China.” Economic Anthropology 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12292.
Wilcox, Phill, Rigg, Jonathan, & Nguyen, Minh T. N. 2023. Rural Life in Late Socialism: Politics of Development and Imaginaries of the Future. Brill. https://brill.com/display/title/63621?rskey=s2AkuQ&result=4.
Mao, Jingyu. 2023. “Doing Ethnicity—Multi-layered Ethnic Scripts in Contemporary China“. The China Quarterly 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741023000681.
Mao, Jingyu. 2023. “Bringing emotional reflexivity and emotional regime to understanding ‘the hukou puzzle’ in contemporary China. Emotions and Society“. https://doi.org/10.1332/263169021X16731871958851 (published online ahead of print 2023).
Mao, Jingyu. & Yan, Zhu. 2023. “Friends are those who can help you out: unpacking the understandings and experiences of friendships among young migrant workers in China“. Families, Relationships and Societies. XX(XX): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1332/204674321X16770752617895 (published online ahead of print 2023).
Lin, Jake. & Mao, Jingyu. 2023. “More equitable fiscal systems are needed to improve welfare provision for migrant workers in China and Vietnam“. Melbourne Asia Review. Edition 14. https://doi.org/10.37839/MAR2652-550X14.13 (Equal authorship).
Whereas the welfare state in the Global North has been a response to industrialization and the rise of the workers' movement, the Global South is characterized by different legacies of social policy that stem, among others, from their colonial histories and the influence of transnational actors such as international organizations. In recent decades, social policies have further expanded across the Global South, as international organizations such as the ILO have (re-)discovered global poverty and the widespread lack of social protection for certain groups in the so-called "developing world" as intertwined. In light of far-reaching societal transformations, there have certainly been large-scale social policy developments in these countries in recent decades.
This lecture series hosts eminent scholars of social policy, anthropology, development and related fields, who will present their work on new frontiers of research on welfare in the Global South. Overall, the lecture series enquires into the varying trajectories of welfare transformations in the Global South and their political, historical and social contexts.
All lectures, with exception of the first, will be hybrid events. To register to the Zoom events click here.