| Professors in the Field |
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Ken MacLean, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of International Development and Social Change
Email: kmaclean@clarku.edu |
Ph.D., University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Research interests: violence, displacement, extractive industries, the state and transnational organizations, governance and governmentality, (late and post-) socialism, legal regimes, anthropology and history, science and technology studies, cartography
Ken MacLean joined IDCE in 2007 as a professor of International Development and Social Change. Previously, he was at the Institute for Comparative and International Studies (ICIS), Emory University, where he held a two-year post-doctoral fellowship (2005-2007).
MacLean received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (2005), a M.S. in Natural Resources and a M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan (2004), and a B.A. in Anthropology from Princeton University (1990). In addition to his academic training, MacLean has extensive experience in mainland Southeast Asia, where he has conducted field and archival research in Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia and collaborated with NGOs operating in the region on human rights, environmental, and development issues.
MacLean is also working on several related projects that explore how spatial, temporal, cultural, and legal boundaries affect relations of power and violence at different scales in Southeast Asia. His current research on Burma analyzes how: 1) these shifting boundaries contribute to the formation of different suspect populations (e.g. dissidents, refugees, and internally displaced persons); and 2) the ways communication technologies and bureaucratic practices shape how “violations” are documented and contested by actors and institutions differently positioned within transnational networks concerned with evolving norms of “rights” and “justice.” His research on Vietnam focuses on how the Internet enables transnational publics to emerge and to shape state policy on issues of concern, e.g.: the rule of law, corruption, popular participation in decision-making processes, and the territorial integrity of the country, including its maritime regions.
Selected Publications
In press “In Search of Kilometer Zero: Digital Archives, Technological Revisionism, and the Sino-Vietnamese Border,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50(4).
2007 “Manifest Socialism: The Labor of Representation in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1956-1959),” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 2(1): 27-79.
2004 “Reconfiguring the Debate on Engagement: Burma and the Changing Politics of Aid,” Critical Asian Studies 36(3): 323-54.
- Chapters in edited volumes
2008 “Sovereignty after the Entrepreneurial Turn: Mosaics of Control, Commodified Spaces, and Regulated Violence in Contemporary Burma,” in Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities: Nature, and People in a Neoliberal Age, eds., Nancy Peluso and Joe Nevins, pp. 140-157 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
2007 “Spaces of Extraction: Actually Existing Governance along the Riverine Networks of Nyaunglebin District,” in Myanmar: the State, Community and the Environment with eds., Monique Skidmore and Trevor Wilson, pp. 246-267 (Canberra: Asia-Pacific Press, Australian National University).
2000 “Constructing Civil Society: Assessing Participatory Development in Contemporary Vietnam.” In Globalization and the Asian Economic Crisis: Indigenous Responses, Coping Strategies and Governance Reform in Southeast Asia), ed. Geoffrey Hainsworth, pp. 473-483 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia).
Selected Presentations
2008 “Benchmarking Transparency: The Emergence of Audit Culture in Vietnam,” Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies (Atlanta).
2007 “Commemorating Everyday Life before Normalization,” The International Conference on the Anthropology of Vietnam (Binh Chau, Vietnam).
2007 “‘We Eat the State and It Eats Us’: Historical Materialism, Corruption, and the Party/state,” Annual Meeting of the Anthropological Association (Washington D.C.).
2007 “Beyond the Saffron: Hungry Bodies and State Violence in Burma,” Invited talk (IDCE, Clark University)
2007 “Enclosure and the Emergence of Regulatory Authority along Burma's Riverine Systems” Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (San Francisco).
2007 “Flows of Enclosure: Actually Existing Governance along Burma’s Riverine Systems,” Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies (Boston).
2007 “Liquefying Sovereignty: Sino-Vietnamese Relations and the Historical Force of Maritime Baselines Demarcating the Greater South China Sea,” Invited talk (Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UC-Berkeley).
Recent Courses
Missionaries, Mercenaries, and Messiahs: The History and Politics of Development Theory (Fall 2008)
Trafficking: Globalization and Its (Il)licit Commodities (Spring 2008)
Tales from the Far Side: Development and Underdevelopment during the Age of Globalization (Spring 2008)
Seeing Like a Humanitarian Agency (Fall 2007)
Research Methods for International Development and Social Change (Fall 2007, Fall 2008)
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