Dates
- Day 1: Monday 26 July 2021 from 7:30 pm-9:30 pm (Cambodia Time)
- Day 2: Friday 30 July 2021 from 7:30 pm-9:30 pm (Cambodia Time)
Requirements:
- Open to Cambodian Nationals ONLY!
- Very good English (for reading an academic text, and for listening and speaking to actively participate in the discussion)
- Be available to fully participate for the full two hours on both days
- A willingness to engage in scholarly debate, eagerness to ask questions
What you can expect and what you will learn:
- Professor Erik Harms is the Author of Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon. You will have free access to pdf copies of his book!
- A very interactive and open discussion seeking to engage with you all and be very dynamic and lively!
- You will improve your critical reading techniques
- You will learn more about the methods and theories of urban anthropology
- You will also learn how best to bring your fieldwork research into a book!
Workshop Description
Cambodian students and scholars interested in urban anthropology and ethnography are invited to join a free workshop in which participants will read a book and then discuss it with the author. The book, Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon, is an ethnography of urban development in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It describes the building of modern, master-planned housing and commercial areas in the city called New Urban Zones. Part of the book focuses on the hopes and aspirations people imagine these developments will help bring to the city, and the other part focuses on the political struggles and challenges produced by these developments, as they lead to mass-evictions, controversies over real estate value, and more. The workshop is reading intensive, thus participants in the workshop will be asked to download free open-access pdf copies of the book, and expected to read several chapters in advance of each meeting of the workshop. The workshop will then take place over two days, spread over a week, where the participants will engage with open, seminar-style discussions of the text with the author, Erik Harms, professor of anthropology at Yale University. In addition to engaging with the subject matter of the book, the workshop goal is to openly discuss techniques for close critical reading of academic works on Southeast Asia, to learn more about the methods and theories of urban anthropology, and to discuss the process through which research moves from fieldwork into a book.
Workshop Facilitator
Erik Harms is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Council on Southeast Asian Studies at Yale University. He has been teaching anthropology at Yale since 2008. He is the author of Saigon’s Edge: On the Margins of Ho Chi Minh City, and Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon, as well as numerous peer-reviewed academic articles. He is also the director of graduate studies in anthropology at Yale.
How to register
If you are interested in participating in this great opportunity, please register here no later than 20 July 2021 at 5.00 pm Cambodia Time. Available spots are limited!
