Nguyen, M., Wilcox, P., & Lin, J. N. (2024). Guest Editors’ Introduction. The Good Life in Late Socialist Asia: Aspirations, Politics and Possibibilities. Positions Asia Crituque: 32, 1-25.

Tran, H., & Sandhya, A. S. (2024). Cutting down and stocking up: how migration brokers negotiate mobility disruptions. Applied Mobilities: 1-17.

Wilcox, P. (2024). (Not) on your bike: How Urban Laos doesn't move. Suomen Antropoloji: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society: 48(1), 26-42.

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

Kirsten W. Endres

Eating Out in Contemporary Hanoi: Middle-Class Food Practices, Capitalist Transformations, and the Late-Socialist Good Life

Arve Hansen

Not before Twenty-Five: Contesting Marriage and Looking for the Good Life in Contemporary Urban China

Roberta Zavoretti

Dancing and Rapping the Good Life: Sharing Aspirations and Values in Vietnamese Hip-Hop

Sandra Kurfürst

Philanthropy Fever from Below: On the Possibilities of a Good Life in Late-Socialist China

Jiazhi Fengjiang

The Good Life as the Green Life: Digital Environmentalism and Ecological Consciousness in China

Charlotte Bruckermann

Protecting the Body, Living the Good Life: Negotiating Health in Rural Lowland Laos

Elizabeth M. Elliott

Summer Happiness: Performing the Good Life in a Tibetan Town

Fan Zhang

Spirits with Morality: Social Criticism and Notions of a Good Life in Laos through the Bangbot Imaginary

Michael Kleinod-Freudenberg; Sypha Chanthavong

Afterword: What Good Life, and Why Now?

Li Zhang

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).

»Rural Life in Late Socialism: Politics of Development and Imaginaries of the Future« has been published by Brill as an open-access book. This is an updated version of the special issue with the same name, which was edited by Phill Wilcox, Jonathan Rigg, and Minh Nguyen. Catrina Schwendender contributed a chapter titled »A Good Life Postponed: Working in the Countryside, Retiring in the City in Contemporary China.« For more information and open access click here.

On October 15th Phill Wilcox participated in a workshop entitled: Infrastructural Narratives: An Interdisciplinary Workshop in London. 

For more information klick here. 

Phill Wilcox is travelling to Tallinn University, Estonia on a new Erasmus collaboration to connect with the anthropology department there, undertake some joint teaching activities and to give a public lecture on 6th October 2022 entitled  '“They cannot buy the land, but they will own the land”: Negotiating China in Laos' - Tallinn University Nova Building, room N-407 and also available via Zoom:https://zoom.us/j/98378116909.

Minh Nguyen and Phill Wilcox are convening a panel at the DGS conference entitled Rural Futures in Late Socialist Asia: the Countryside in a Globalising World. It features speakers from China, Vietnam and Germany. We are delighted to welcome a discussant, Professor Jonathan Rigg from Bristol University. Full details of our panel are available here.

Phill Wilcox has published a paper on events in Laos in 2021 as an invited contribution for the annual review of events in Southeast Asia published by Southeast Asian Affairs.  The title is: “Laos in 2021: (Im)mobility with infrastructure and Covid”.

Minh Nguyen (Bielefeld University) and Nicolas Lainez (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) will convene the panel The Financialization of Everyday Life in Vietnam in the 2022 EUROSEAS Conference. Allison Truitt will be the panel discussant. Minh Nguyen and Minh Ngoc Luong from Bielefeld University will present their papers in this panel. For further information please follow the link.

Phill Wilcox (Bielefeld University) and Simon Rowedder (Passau University) will convene the panel Negotiating China in Southeast Asia: (re)thinking development via infrastructure schemes in the 2022 EUROSEAS Conference. For further information please follow the link. 

Phill Wilcox has been invited to give comments on a keynote speech by Professor Tim Oakes (University of Colorado-Boulder) at a conference hosted by the Finnish Society for Development Research - Development Days 2022 on 17-18 February 2022.

We are delighted to announce the publication of the monograph "Heritage and the Making of Political Legitimacy in Laos: The Past and Present of the Lao Nation” by Phill Wilcox. This book takes a fresh look at issues of legitimacy, heritage, and national identity for different members of the Lao population. It argues that the political system has become sufficiently embedded to avoid imminent risk of collapse but suggests that it is facing new challenges primarily in the form of rising Chinese influence in Laos.

For further information please follow the link.

Researchers from the social anthropology working group attended the 12th International Convention of Asia Scholars convened (virtually) in Kyoto, Japan. Dr Jake Lin convened a panel entitled 'Migrant labour and Welfare Restructuring in China and Vietnam'. Dr Phill Wilcox co-convened a panel entitled 'Aspiring to the "Chinese dream": Local Perceptions of Chinese Globalisation and Development in Asia'. Both researchers also presented papers in their respective panels.

Social anthropology staff will also attend (online) the European Association of Southeast Asian Studies Conference in September 2021. Professor Minh Nguyen is an invited discussant for a panel entitled 'Between Perils and Promises of Mobility: Aspiration, Possibility and the "Good Life" in Southeast Asia'. Dr Phill Wilcox is convening a panel entitled: 'The Power of Gastronomy: Changing Urban Foodscapes in Southeast Asia' and is presenting her recently published article entitled 'Doing Coffee in Luang Prabang: Fusion and the Making of a World Heritage Space'.