Engaging with Fast Money:

The Anthropology of Rapidly

Reconfiguring Social Fields
Dates October 30 - November 2, 2019

Organizer(s) Prof. Bettina Beer, UNILU

Speakers Prof. Mette High, St. Andrews, UK

Description Whether from the opening of new extractive frontiers and the proliferation of new
access to credit and hurried circulations of tourists, local life-worlds face change res
more regional flows of money. To anthropologists studying such changes, the sub
and political landscapes are both globally resonant and highly particular to the conte
local forms of engagement with these flows and how are local processes of change
through negotiation, exploitation, resistance, or despair? How are different strategies
in place and by the imagination of social fields to come? Anthropological approache
the micro-level processes that constitute people's engagement with and understa
showing how these speak to broader debates about globalization, financializ
commodification, resistance, and resource management. Workshop participants a
the populations they study relate to this fast money, under the stimulation of experts

Whether from the opening of new extractive frontiers and the proliferation of new cash crops, or
expanding access to credit and hurried circulations of tourists, local life-worlds face change resulting
from both global and more regional flows of money. To anthropologists studying such changes, the
subsequent economic, social, and political landscapes are both globally resonant and highly
particular to the context in question. What drives local forms of engagement with these flows and
how are local processes of change actually produced, whether through negotiation, exploitation,
resistance, or despair? How are different strategies shaped by the social fields in place and by the
imagination of social fields to come? Anthropological approaches can be vital in dissecting the micro-
level processes that constitute people's engagement with and understanding of 'fast money', and
showing how these speak to broader debates about globalization, financialization, 'friction',
capitalism, commodification, resistance, and resource management. Workshop participants are
invited to reflect on how the populations they study relate to this fast money, under the stimulation
of experts in this area of research.

Rural Tourism and Local Perceptions of Change (In Yunnan, China)

Author Seraina Hürlemann

Summary of thesis:

This dissertation project analyses local perceptions of change related to tourism development in
Lashi Hai, a wetland conservation area in north-west Yunnan (China). My research is located in the
field of social and cultural anthropology. By exploring local narratives that create places for tourists
and at the same time recreated them for the narrators themselves, this research aims at
understanding processes of social, economic or cultural change from an inside (emic) perspective. To
contextualize this understanding, the narratives are analysed within the geographic and historical
settings of the area. Thus regional, national as well as international discourses on environmental
conservation or ethnic minority issues for example are taken into account. A special interest of this
research is to find out how local perspectives are related to those narratives produced by different
government levels, international organisations or NGOs. Hence it aims at better understanding how
different narratives interact, create discourses and influence (and are influenced by) local changes.