December 3 (M), December 5 (W)

Read: Harms, Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon (Available as an open-access ebook: http://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/detail/20/luxury-and-rubble/), Introduction, then read either Chapter 3 or Chapter 6

1. Harms writes, "In this situation, where neoliberal economics mingle with illiberal politics and free-market expansion coexists with persistent political unfreedoms, master-planned urban development projects become important sites for imagining and contesting new ideas about urban life" (4). In what ways? With what consequences?

2. What notions of private citizenship and public good are associated with plans to create a modern, beautiful city?

3. What form of civic consciousness is developing in Phu My Hung? How is that form of civic consciousness founded on dispossession?

4. What language of rights do Thu Thiem residents use to resist their eviction? Harms notes the irony that this same language of rights has been used to dispossess them. What conclusions should we take from that situation?

 

Topic for RESPONSE PAPER #10 (2-3 pages, double-spaced, due on December 7 by email before class to Professor Leshkowich.) Please remember to submit your paper as a Microsoft Word document named lastname10.docx.

Property Rights and Personhood
Over the past few weeks, we have explored how changing lifestyles associated with modernity and globalization also involve changing notions of subjectivity or personhood. Harms shares this interest: "This is precisely what I have described taking place in contemporary Vietnam: the emergence of people whose very conception of self is tied to their sense of themselves as property-owning subjects, and whose understanding of 'rights' is entangled with ideas of private property" (220). Pick one concrete example from the book of either a person who benefits from this changing notion of personhood or someone who does not. Based on this example, how should we understand the effects of the association between personhood and private property? As with all response papers, be sure to use your discussion to establish a central argument analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, or significance of Harms' analysis.