| Professors in the Field |
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Ken MacLean, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of International Development and Social Change
Email: kmaclean@clarku.edu |
Education
Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (2005)
M.S. School of Natural Resources and Environment, U. Michigan-Ann Arbor (2004)
B.A. Anthropology, Princeton University (1990)
Research Interests
states and state-effects, political violence, extractive industries, displacement and irregular migration, humanitarian interventions, (late- and post-) socialism, legal regimes, science and technology studies, and comparative cartographies
Biography
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 a range of issues since 1990.
Selected Publications
2008 “In Search of Kilometer Zero: Digital Archives, Technological Revisionism, and the Sino-Vietnamese Border,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50(4): 862-894.
2008 “The Rehabilitation of an Uncomfortable Past: Remembering the Everyday in Vietnam during the Subsidy Period (1975-1986),” History and Anthropology 19(3): 281-303.
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 “Manifest Socialism: The Labor of Representation in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1956-1959),” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 2(1): 27-79.
2007 “Spaces of Extraction: Actually Existing Governance along the Riverine Networks of Nyaunglebin District,” in Myanmar: the State, Community and the Environment, eds. Monique Skidmore and Trevor Wilson, pp. 246-267 (Canberra: Asia-Pacific Press, Australian National University).
2004 “Reconfiguring the Debate on Engagement: Burma and the Changing Politics of Aid,” Critical Asian Studies 36(3): 323-54.
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
2009 “Maritime Nationalism and the Vietnamese Geo-body,” Biennial Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies Conference (UBC-Vancouver)
2009 “The Cultural Politics of Lines: Territorial Disputes in the South China / Eastern Sea,” invited lecture (Harvard University).
2009 “Performing Sovereignty in the South China / Eastern Sea,” invited lecture (Yale University).
2009 “Sabotage in the Countryside: Rethinking the ‘Transition’ to State Socialism in the Left Bank Region (1956-1959),” Conference on Property and Property Rights in Vietnam (Harvard University).
2009 “The Ban and its Exceptions: Forced Labor and the Reconfiguration of Impunity in Burma,” Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies.
2009 “Audit Regimes and the Rituals of Compliance in Contemporary Vietnam,” Soyuz Annual Symposium on Global Socialisms and Post-socialisms (Yale University).
Courses
Graduate
Missionaries, Mercenaries, and Messiahs: The History and Politics of Development Theory (Fall 2008)
Trafficking: Globalization and Its (Il)licit Commodities (Spring 2008, Fall 2009))
Seeing Like a Humanitarian Agency (Fall 2007, Spring 2009))
Critical Cartographies: Mapping Culture, History, and Power (Spring 2009)
Theoretical Approaches to the State (Fall 2009)
Undergraduate
Tales from the Far Side: Development and Underdevelopment during the Age of Globalization (Spring 2008, Spring 2009))
Research Methods for International Development and Social Change (Fall 2007, Fall 2008, Fall 2009))
States of Violence: Culture, Trauma, and Identity in Asia (Spring 2009)
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