Kirsten W Endres
Biographic Data
| ID | 111280 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kirsten W Endres |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kirsten W |
| FAMILY NAME | Endres |
| SIGNATURE | ENDRES K W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3026-4106 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 73 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Plugged into the Good Life: Living Electrically through the Ages in Urban Vietnam
With Vietnam's countrywide electrification rate approaching 100 percent, electricity has become ever more indispensable and essential to the quality of everyday life. The steady upsurge in household electricity consumption over the past years has been driven by a growing technification of the domestic sphere. Modern households are increasingly equipped with a variety of electric appliances that not only provide convenience and comfort but also se…
City of lights, city of pylons: Infrastructures of illumination in colonial Hanoi, 1880s-1920s
This article traces the early stages of urban electrification in the French protectorate of Tonkin (in Vietnam's north) from the late 1880s to the late 1920s. It focuses on Hanoi, where in 1895 the French entrepreneurs Hermenier and Planté secured a concession for lighting the streets of the soon-to-be capital of French Indochina. Before long, the city's fast-paced development and the concomitant rise in demand for both public and private lightin…
The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond
SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthrop…
Traders versus the State: Negotiating Urban Renewal in Lào Cai City, Vietnam
In recent years, Vietnam has intensified programs aimed at building "civilized, rich, and beautiful" cities. The modernization of urban markets forms part of these efforts. This essay focuses on the contestations and negotiations surrounding the upgrade of a state-run market in the northern border city of Lào Cai. In order to retain their stall use rights in the new market building, the traders were required to invest a sum that many felt was bey…
Traders in Motion: Identities and Contestations in the Vietnamese Marketplace
Markets and traders in Vietnam are on the move, literally and figuratively. The chapters in this volume offer rich ethnographic exploration of daily interactions among small-scale traders, suppliers, customers, family members, neighbors, and officials within contemporary Vietnam and across its borders. These quotidian encounters occur within contested spaces, through expanding and contracting circuits of mobility, and across physical and conceptu…
Traders in Motion: Identities and Contestations in the Vietnamese Marketplace
With essays covering diverse topics, from seafood trade across the Vietnam-China border, to street traders in Hanoi, to gold shops in Ho Chi Minh City, Traders in Motion spans the fields of economic and political anthropology, geography, and sociology to illuminate how Vietnam's rapidly expanding market economy is formed and transformed by everyday interactions among traders, suppliers, customers, family members, neighbors, and officials. The con…
Markets
Anthropologists generally agree that markets are embedded in wider social and political institutions, albeit to differing degrees and in historically and culturally distinct ways. Their perspectives on markets thus differ from those of neoclassical economists and challenge the view that human economic behavior is guided by universal principles. Anthropological studies of markets are typically grounded in research conducted in actual marketplace s…
Bazaar
In economic anthropology, the term “bazaar” is most commonly associated with the works of Clifford Geertz who used the notion of the bazaar economy to study the peculiarities of peasant market systems. Geertz conceived of the bazaar as an overcomplicated and underorganized economic institution that lacked the capacity to contribute to economic progress
Shoddy, Fake, or Harmful
In the late 1980s, after more than ten years of hostility, Vietnam and China resumed normal relations and reopened their border for trade. New livelihood opportunities opened up, drawing many lowland settlers to the region. This chapter details the illegal, semi-legal, and informal flow of goods across the Vietnam–China border and how Kinh small-scale traders and market vendors in Lào Cai City perceive and legitimize their smuggling and selling o…
Constructing the Neighbourly Other: Trade Relations and Mutual Perceptions across the Vietnam–China Border
The normalization of post-war relations in the late 1980s has transformed the Vietnam-China border from a line of demarcation between two hostile neighbours into a zone of profitable economic opportunities.At the Lào Cai central market, Vietnamese small-scale traders and Chinese citizens interact with one another on a daily basis.Their narratives reveal that processes of constructing self-identity and otherness at the Vietnam-China border are amb…
LộcBestowed by Heaven: Fate, Fortune, and Morality in the Vietnamese Marketplace
Drawing on six months of fieldwork in Lào Cai City at the Vietnam-China border, this paper explores how the intersecting notions of fate, fortune and luck play out in the Vietnamese marketplace and intertwine with moral ideas expressed in economic choices and ethical conduct. Whereas small-scale traders agreed that one needs to work hard in order to prosper, the ways in which economic success is conceptually framed reveal that discipline, rationa…
Introduction to 'Risks, Ruptures and Uncertainties: Dealing with Crisis in Asia's Emerging Economies
Asia's ongoing economic transformation has created a variety of unexpected ruptures, discontinuities and opportunities in the lives of local citizens across the region. Th e introduction to this special section of the journal frames the contributions that follow with a brief review of current scholarly discussions regarding the interrelated concepts of crisis, risk and uncertainty. It then provides an overview of the articles in this collection a…
Downgraded by Upgrading: Small-scale Traders, Urban Transformation and Spatial Reconfiguration in Post-reform Vietnam
This article examines some of the ruptures and contestations that have emerged in the context of urban restructuring and market redevelopment policies in Hanoi, Vietnam. Public markets have become sites of contestation and struggle over the commoditization and use of public urban space: large plots of state-owned real estate in the inner city are handed over to private investment companies for development, in the process of which small-scale trad…
Making Law: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border
In Vietnam's postreform era, the proliferation of profiteering opportunities have, in addition to creating new forms of corruption, transmuted previously prevailing types of corrupt acts in multiple ways across different levels of state-society relations. Everyday corrupt practices have thus become an essential means of economic survival for many. Starting from the metaphorical framing of petty bribery as "making law," I propose the notion of wha…
Engaging the Spirit World
In many parts of the contemporary world, spirit beliefs and practices have taken on a pivotal role in addressing the discontinuities and uncertainties of modern life. The myriad ways in which devotees engage the spirit world show the tremendous creative potential of these practices and their innate adaptability to changing times and circumstances. Through in-depth anthropological case studies from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and…
Performing the Divine: Mediums, Markets and Modernity in Urban Vietnam
Vietnam in the last two decades has experienced not only market reform and significant economic growth but also a related, symbiotic revival of popular religion. It is no surprise, then, that popular beliefs and rituals that once were attacked as wasteful and superstitious have again become a conspicuous feature of contemporary urban and rural life. A new blossoming of spirit mediumship has been part of this revival, not least that involving ritu…
Psychic Experience, Truth, and Visuality in Post-war Vietnam
During the Vietnam War, unprecedented numbers of dead soldiers were buried in unmarked graves and remain missing today. Starting in the mid-1990s, the services of psychics came into high demand, prompting the establishment of a state-approved Center for Research into Human Capabilities that continues to offer grave-finding assistance for the general public. This article discusses the cases of two well-known female psychics. As the case studies de…
Fate, Memory, and the Postcolonial Construction of the Self: The Life-Narrative of a Vietnamese Spirit Medium
Life-history and narrative research have a long tradition as insightful methods in anthropology. This article presents the life-story of an elderly Hanoian spirit medium who does not conform to dominant ideals of Vietnamese femininity, exploring how cultural concepts and religious imageries shape female notions of fate and agency. By applying Bakhtin's concept of dialogism, the analysis illustrates how the creative act of self-narrative interweav…
Engaging the spirits of the dead: Soul-Calling Rituals and the Performative Construction of Efficacy
Focusing on the issue of ritual efficacy in relation to the prior intentions (or agendas) of the ritual agents, this article probes the usefulness of Humphrey and Laidlaw's concept of 'ritualized action as non-intentional mode of behaviour'. The article describes and analyses a specific set of Vietnamese commemorative rites held with the purpose of communicating with the souls of the dead and smoothing the deification process of ten young heroine…
Local Dynamics of Renegotiating Ritual Space in Northern Vietnam: The Case of the Dinh
Before the revolution swept through the villages of Northern Vietnam, the village communal house (dinh) was the centre of male-dominated power and the place where the status hierarchy of village society was ritually reproduced. With the advent of the revolution, the dinh became a major target of socialist ritual reform aimed at building a new egalitarian and just society. This paper looks at the failures and attainments of ritual reforms, and the…
Making Law: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border
In Vietnam's postreform era, the proliferation of profiteering opportunities have, in addition to creating new forms of corruption, transmuted previously prevailing types of corrupt acts in multiple ways across different levels of state-society relations. Everyday corrupt practices have thus become an essential means of economic survival for many. Starting from the metaphorical framing of petty bribery as "making law," I propose the notion of wha…
Local Dynamics of Renegotiating Ritual Space in Northern Vietnam: The Case of the Dinh
Before the revolution swept through the villages of Northern Vietnam, the village communal house (dinh) was the centre of male-dominated power and the place where the status hierarchy of village society was ritually reproduced. With the advent of the revolution, the dinh became a major target of socialist ritual reform aimed at building a new egalitarian and just society. This paper looks at the failures and attainments of ritual reforms, and the…
Engaging the spirits of the dead: Soul-Calling Rituals and the Performative Construction of Efficacy
Focusing on the issue of ritual efficacy in relation to the prior intentions (or agendas) of the ritual agents, this article probes the usefulness of Humphrey and Laidlaw's concept of 'ritualized action as non-intentional mode of behaviour'. The article describes and analyses a specific set of Vietnamese commemorative rites held with the purpose of communicating with the souls of the dead and smoothing the deification process of ten young heroine…
LộcBestowed by Heaven: Fate, Fortune, and Morality in the Vietnamese Marketplace
Drawing on six months of fieldwork in Lào Cai City at the Vietnam-China border, this paper explores how the intersecting notions of fate, fortune and luck play out in the Vietnamese marketplace and intertwine with moral ideas expressed in economic choices and ethical conduct. Whereas small-scale traders agreed that one needs to work hard in order to prosper, the ways in which economic success is conceptually framed reveal that discipline, rationa…
Constructing the Neighbourly Other: Trade Relations and Mutual Perceptions across the Vietnam–China Border
The normalization of post-war relations in the late 1980s has transformed the Vietnam-China border from a line of demarcation between two hostile neighbours into a zone of profitable economic opportunities.At the Lào Cai central market, Vietnamese small-scale traders and Chinese citizens interact with one another on a daily basis.Their narratives reveal that processes of constructing self-identity and otherness at the Vietnam-China border are amb…
City of lights, city of pylons: Infrastructures of illumination in colonial Hanoi, 1880s-1920s
This article traces the early stages of urban electrification in the French protectorate of Tonkin (in Vietnam's north) from the late 1880s to the late 1920s. It focuses on Hanoi, where in 1895 the French entrepreneurs Hermenier and Planté secured a concession for lighting the streets of the soon-to-be capital of French Indochina. Before long, the city's fast-paced development and the concomitant rise in demand for both public and private lightin…
Downgraded by Upgrading: Small-scale Traders, Urban Transformation and Spatial Reconfiguration in Post-reform Vietnam
This article examines some of the ruptures and contestations that have emerged in the context of urban restructuring and market redevelopment policies in Hanoi, Vietnam. Public markets have become sites of contestation and struggle over the commoditization and use of public urban space: large plots of state-owned real estate in the inner city are handed over to private investment companies for development, in the process of which small-scale trad…
Fate, Memory, and the Postcolonial Construction of the Self: The Life-Narrative of a Vietnamese Spirit Medium
Life-history and narrative research have a long tradition as insightful methods in anthropology. This article presents the life-story of an elderly Hanoian spirit medium who does not conform to dominant ideals of Vietnamese femininity, exploring how cultural concepts and religious imageries shape female notions of fate and agency. By applying Bakhtin's concept of dialogism, the analysis illustrates how the creative act of self-narrative interweav…
Traders versus the State: Negotiating Urban Renewal in Lào Cai City, Vietnam
In recent years, Vietnam has intensified programs aimed at building "civilized, rich, and beautiful" cities. The modernization of urban markets forms part of these efforts. This essay focuses on the contestations and negotiations surrounding the upgrade of a state-run market in the northern border city of Lào Cai. In order to retain their stall use rights in the new market building, the traders were required to invest a sum that many felt was bey…
Introduction to 'Risks, Ruptures and Uncertainties: Dealing with Crisis in Asia's Emerging Economies
Asia's ongoing economic transformation has created a variety of unexpected ruptures, discontinuities and opportunities in the lives of local citizens across the region. Th e introduction to this special section of the journal frames the contributions that follow with a brief review of current scholarly discussions regarding the interrelated concepts of crisis, risk and uncertainty. It then provides an overview of the articles in this collection a…
Local Dynamics of Renegotiating Ritual Space in Northern Vietnam: The Case of the Dinh
Before the revolution swept through the villages of Northern Vietnam, the village communal house (dinh) was the centre of male-dominated power and the place where the status hierarchy of village society was ritually reproduced. With the advent of the revolution, the dinh became a major target of socialist ritual reform aimed at building a new egalitarian and just society. This paper looks at the failures and attainments of ritual reforms, and the…
Fate, Memory, and the Postcolonial Construction of the Self: The Life-Narrative of a Vietnamese Spirit Medium
Life-history and narrative research have a long tradition as insightful methods in anthropology. This article presents the life-story of an elderly Hanoian spirit medium who does not conform to dominant ideals of Vietnamese femininity, exploring how cultural concepts and religious imageries shape female notions of fate and agency. By applying Bakhtin's concept of dialogism, the analysis illustrates how the creative act of self-narrative interweav…
Engaging the spirits of the dead: Soul-Calling Rituals and the Performative Construction of Efficacy
Focusing on the issue of ritual efficacy in relation to the prior intentions (or agendas) of the ritual agents, this article probes the usefulness of Humphrey and Laidlaw's concept of 'ritualized action as non-intentional mode of behaviour'. The article describes and analyses a specific set of Vietnamese commemorative rites held with the purpose of communicating with the souls of the dead and smoothing the deification process of ten young heroine…
Performing the Divine: Mediums, Markets and Modernity in Urban Vietnam
Vietnam in the last two decades has experienced not only market reform and significant economic growth but also a related, symbiotic revival of popular religion. It is no surprise, then, that popular beliefs and rituals that once were attacked as wasteful and superstitious have again become a conspicuous feature of contemporary urban and rural life. A new blossoming of spirit mediumship has been part of this revival, not least that involving ritu…
Psychic Experience, Truth, and Visuality in Post-war Vietnam
During the Vietnam War, unprecedented numbers of dead soldiers were buried in unmarked graves and remain missing today. Starting in the mid-1990s, the services of psychics came into high demand, prompting the establishment of a state-approved Center for Research into Human Capabilities that continues to offer grave-finding assistance for the general public. This article discusses the cases of two well-known female psychics. As the case studies de…
Engaging the Spirit World
In many parts of the contemporary world, spirit beliefs and practices have taken on a pivotal role in addressing the discontinuities and uncertainties of modern life. The myriad ways in which devotees engage the spirit world show the tremendous creative potential of these practices and their innate adaptability to changing times and circumstances. Through in-depth anthropological case studies from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and…
Introduction to 'Risks, Ruptures and Uncertainties: Dealing with Crisis in Asia's Emerging Economies
Asia's ongoing economic transformation has created a variety of unexpected ruptures, discontinuities and opportunities in the lives of local citizens across the region. Th e introduction to this special section of the journal frames the contributions that follow with a brief review of current scholarly discussions regarding the interrelated concepts of crisis, risk and uncertainty. It then provides an overview of the articles in this collection a…
Downgraded by Upgrading: Small-scale Traders, Urban Transformation and Spatial Reconfiguration in Post-reform Vietnam
This article examines some of the ruptures and contestations that have emerged in the context of urban restructuring and market redevelopment policies in Hanoi, Vietnam. Public markets have become sites of contestation and struggle over the commoditization and use of public urban space: large plots of state-owned real estate in the inner city are handed over to private investment companies for development, in the process of which small-scale trad…
Making Law: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border
In Vietnam's postreform era, the proliferation of profiteering opportunities have, in addition to creating new forms of corruption, transmuted previously prevailing types of corrupt acts in multiple ways across different levels of state-society relations. Everyday corrupt practices have thus become an essential means of economic survival for many. Starting from the metaphorical framing of petty bribery as "making law," I propose the notion of wha…
Constructing the Neighbourly Other: Trade Relations and Mutual Perceptions across the Vietnam–China Border
The normalization of post-war relations in the late 1980s has transformed the Vietnam-China border from a line of demarcation between two hostile neighbours into a zone of profitable economic opportunities.At the Lào Cai central market, Vietnamese small-scale traders and Chinese citizens interact with one another on a daily basis.Their narratives reveal that processes of constructing self-identity and otherness at the Vietnam-China border are amb…
LộcBestowed by Heaven: Fate, Fortune, and Morality in the Vietnamese Marketplace
Drawing on six months of fieldwork in Lào Cai City at the Vietnam-China border, this paper explores how the intersecting notions of fate, fortune and luck play out in the Vietnamese marketplace and intertwine with moral ideas expressed in economic choices and ethical conduct. Whereas small-scale traders agreed that one needs to work hard in order to prosper, the ways in which economic success is conceptually framed reveal that discipline, rationa…
Shoddy, Fake, or Harmful
In the late 1980s, after more than ten years of hostility, Vietnam and China resumed normal relations and reopened their border for trade. New livelihood opportunities opened up, drawing many lowland settlers to the region. This chapter details the illegal, semi-legal, and informal flow of goods across the Vietnam–China border and how Kinh small-scale traders and market vendors in Lào Cai City perceive and legitimize their smuggling and selling o…
Traders in Motion: Identities and Contestations in the Vietnamese Marketplace
Markets and traders in Vietnam are on the move, literally and figuratively. The chapters in this volume offer rich ethnographic exploration of daily interactions among small-scale traders, suppliers, customers, family members, neighbors, and officials within contemporary Vietnam and across its borders. These quotidian encounters occur within contested spaces, through expanding and contracting circuits of mobility, and across physical and conceptu…
Traders in Motion: Identities and Contestations in the Vietnamese Marketplace
With essays covering diverse topics, from seafood trade across the Vietnam-China border, to street traders in Hanoi, to gold shops in Ho Chi Minh City, Traders in Motion spans the fields of economic and political anthropology, geography, and sociology to illuminate how Vietnam's rapidly expanding market economy is formed and transformed by everyday interactions among traders, suppliers, customers, family members, neighbors, and officials. The con…
Markets
Anthropologists generally agree that markets are embedded in wider social and political institutions, albeit to differing degrees and in historically and culturally distinct ways. Their perspectives on markets thus differ from those of neoclassical economists and challenge the view that human economic behavior is guided by universal principles. Anthropological studies of markets are typically grounded in research conducted in actual marketplace s…
Bazaar
In economic anthropology, the term “bazaar” is most commonly associated with the works of Clifford Geertz who used the notion of the bazaar economy to study the peculiarities of peasant market systems. Geertz conceived of the bazaar as an overcomplicated and underorganized economic institution that lacked the capacity to contribute to economic progress
The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond
SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthrop…
Traders versus the State: Negotiating Urban Renewal in Lào Cai City, Vietnam
In recent years, Vietnam has intensified programs aimed at building "civilized, rich, and beautiful" cities. The modernization of urban markets forms part of these efforts. This essay focuses on the contestations and negotiations surrounding the upgrade of a state-run market in the northern border city of Lào Cai. In order to retain their stall use rights in the new market building, the traders were required to invest a sum that many felt was bey…
Plugged into the Good Life: Living Electrically through the Ages in Urban Vietnam
With Vietnam's countrywide electrification rate approaching 100 percent, electricity has become ever more indispensable and essential to the quality of everyday life. The steady upsurge in household electricity consumption over the past years has been driven by a growing technification of the domestic sphere. Modern households are increasingly equipped with a variety of electric appliances that not only provide convenience and comfort but also se…
City of lights, city of pylons: Infrastructures of illumination in colonial Hanoi, 1880s-1920s
This article traces the early stages of urban electrification in the French protectorate of Tonkin (in Vietnam's north) from the late 1880s to the late 1920s. It focuses on Hanoi, where in 1895 the French entrepreneurs Hermenier and Planté secured a concession for lighting the streets of the soon-to-be capital of French Indochina. Before long, the city's fast-paced development and the concomitant rise in demand for both public and private lightin…
Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (14 works) · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies (13 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Political economy (6 works) · Geography (5 works) · Art (4 works) · China (4 works)