Email: ivan.small@fulbright.edu.vn
Fields of Interest: Migration, Remittances, Transnationalism, Development, Diaspora, Mobility, Transportation, Technology, Infrastructure, Markets
Education:
Ph.D.: 2012, Cornell University, U.S.A.
PostDoc: 2014, University of California Irvine, U.S.A.
Bio: Ivan V. Small is a sociocultural and economic anthropologist, associate professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston, and visiting professor at Fulbright University. Dr. Small’s research considers mobility, circulation and capital transformations in a trans-Pacific context, with particular attention to linkages between Vietnam and the United States. He has held fellowships and academic appointments at the Yusof Ishak Institute for Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Connecticut State University, the University of California, The New School, and Vietnam National University. He has also worked and consulted for nonprofits, foundations, and think tanks including the Smithsonian, Ford Foundation, and World Policy Institute. Dr. Small completed graduate work in International Affairs and Anthropology at Columbia and Cornell Universities. His work has been published in a range of disciplinary and area studies journals including the Journal of Cultural Economy, TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, Journal of Consumer Culture, Mobility in History, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, and Visual Anthropology, as well as in numerous edited volumes. He is author of the book Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam (Cornell University Press 2019), and co-editor of Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion and Design (Berghahn Press 2018). Dr. Small is from the United States but also partially grew up living abroad – including Vietnam, the Philippines and Sri Lanka – experiences that shaped his interests in cultural anthropology.
Select Publications:
Books
Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019).
Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion and Design, co-edited with Bill Maurer and Smoki Musaraj (New York: Berghahn, 2018).
Peer Reviewed Articles
2022: “Driving is Terrifying: Auto-Mobile Horizons, Projections and Networks in Vietnam and ASEAN”, Journal of Cultural Economy https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17530350.2022.2058060
2021: “Wandering Money: Valuating and Mediating Remittances in Vietnam”, TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia 9(1), 31-43.
2021: “Challenges Facing Vietnam’s Emerging Automobility Landscapes”, Perspective 83. Singapore: ISEAS Press.
2019: “Remitting Desire: Trans-Pacific Migration, Returns and Imaginaries in Vietnam”. Perspective 56. Singapore: ISEAS Press.
2018: “Affecting Mobility: Consuming Driving and Driving Consumption in Southeast Asian Emerging Markets”, Journal of Consumer Culture 18(3), 377-396.
2018: “Remittance Channels and Regulatory Chokepoints”, Limn 10, 53-58.
2016: “Framing and Encompassing Movement: Transportation, Migration, and Social Mobility in Vietnam”, Mobility in History 7(1), 79-90.
2014: “Betwixt & Between: Tragedies and Memories of the Vietnamese Exodus, in Film and Audience”, Visual Anthropology 27(1-2), 197-200.
2012: “Over There: Imaginative Displacements in Vietnamese Remittance Gift Economies”, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 7(3), 157-183.
2012: “Embodied Economies: Vietnamese Transnational Migration & Return Regimes”, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 27(2), 234-259.
Chapters in Books
2023: “Vietnamese Americans and Their ‘Homeland’: Transnational Advocacy Efforts and Diasporic Ties”, Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory, Linda Ho Peche, Alex Thai Vo and Tuong Vu, ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 116-132.
2023: “Emplacing Multiculturalism: Southeast Asian Migrant Linguistic Acculturation Programmes and Community Building in South Korea”, Demography and Diversity in Southeast Asia: Challenges and Issues Amidst a New Normal, Kevin Tan and Steve Chan, ed. Singapore: ISEAS Press, 68-83.
2022: “Capitalist Lack: Vietnamese American Remittances as Cultural Supplement and Political Critique”, The Vietnamese Diaspora in a Transnational Context: Contested Spaces, Contested Narratives, Victor Satzewich and Anna Vu, ed. Leiden: Brill Press, 123-142.
2020: “Ecologies of Immateriality: Remittances and the Cashless Allure”, Who’s Cashing In? Contemporary Perspectives on New Monies and Global Cashlessness, Atreyee Sen, J. Lindquist and M. Kolling, ed. Oxford: Berghahn, 57-72.
2019: “Vexed Returns: Vietnamese Returnee Interactions with Home and State”, Governance and Internal Migration, William Ascher and Shane Barter, ed. New York: Peter Lang, 129-146.
2018: “Anticipating the Automobile: Transportation Transformations in Vietnam”, Consumer Culture Theory, Research in Consumer Behavior 19, Russell Belk, Alladi Venkatesh, Samantha Cross and Cecilia Ruvalcaba, ed. Emerald Group Publishing, UK, 145-161.
2013: “The Vietnamese Transnational(s)”, Figures of Modernity in Southeast Asia, Joshua Barker, Erik Harms, and Johan Lindquist, ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 72-75.
Courses:
Theories of Culture
