INFORMATION AND CONFERENCES: From Cambridge to Vietnam: Teaching and learning Anthropology in today’s global world
From Cambridge to Vietnam:
Teaching and learning Anthropology in today’s global world
(Page 138-139)
Tran Van Kham
As part of the
regular series of seminars organized by Faculty of Anthropology, on April 12th,
2016, Prof. Susan Bayly from Cambridge University (United Kingdom) delivered a
speech entitled “From Cambridge to Vietnam: Teaching and learning Anthropology
in today’s global world”. In the first part of her presentation,
Prof. Susan Bayly shared her experiences in teaching and researching
Anthropology at Cambridge University; the shifting approaches to Anthropology
in the world, from emphasizing macro issues such as social structures or
systems to focusing on human’s experiences, the voice of the researched
community, and the close ties between field research and theory as they are two
indispensable parts of Anthropological studies. In the next part, Prof. Susan Bayly
shared her personal experiences after more than 15 years working in Vietnam,
especially her interest in a range of interesting topics in contemporary
Vietnam, such as the experiences of intellectual families in Hanoi since the
August revolution and the social conception of “achievement” in Vietnam
nowadays. Prof Bayly especially highlighted the importance of the life-long
cooperation between her and the Faculty of Anthropology at Cambridge University
and the USSH’s Division of Ethnology back then and Faculty of Anthropology
today. In her opinion, although the two countries’ traditions of Anthropology
somewhat differ in their approaches, they share a common theme, which is the
belief in Anthropology as a distinct discipline that is particularly relevant
to human’s experiences and the ways human adapts to an ever-changing world,
which are always viewed with a sympathetic, respectful and understanding
sentiment.
In the Q&A
session, Prof. Susan Bayly openly shared her opinions with the scholars and
students that were listening on various issues such as the role of
anthropologists in devising policies and advising their governments, the
correlations between Ethnology and Anthropology, the various schools in
Anthropology and the relationship between social and cultural Anthropologies,
and other relevant issues concerning global and Vietnamese Anthropology
today.
Prof Susan
Bayly is a Professor of Historical Anthropology, Director of Graduate Studies
and Chair of the PhD Committee for the Division of Social Anthropology,
University of Cambridge. Her research interests include the South Asian caste
system. Her selected published works include: How to Forge a Creative
Student-Citizen: Achieving the Positive in Today’s Vietnam Modern Asian Studies
48, no. 3: 493-523 (2014); ‘Mapping Time, Living Space: The Moral Cartography
of Renovation in Late-Socialist Vietnam’, Cambridge Anthropology 31:2,
pp. 60-84 (2013); ‘For Family, State and Nation: Achieving Cosmopolitan
Modernity in Late-Socialist Vietnam’, in N. Long and Henrietta Moore, eds. The
Social Life of Achievement: Berghahn (2013); Anthologised versions of my
‘French anthropology and the Durkheimians in colonial Indochina’, Modern
Asian Studies 34,3 July 2000, in a volume on French colonialism from
Nebraska University Press, and in Engaging Colonial Knowledge (Palgrave), eds.
R. Roque and K. Wagner (2012); ‘From History to Anthropology: Reflections on
Caste from South India & Vietnam’, in D.S. Babu & R. S. Khare, eds., Caste
in Life: Experiencing Inequalities (New Delhi: Pearson) (2010); ‘Hanoi
intellectuals as contributors to the cultural life of the Vietnamese
Revolution’, in Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of
Vietnamese Studies 2008, Hanoi. (in Vietnamese) (2010); Asian
Voices in a Post-Colonial Age: Vietnam, India and Beyond. Cambridge University
Press (2007); Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century
to the Modern Age. The New Cambridge History of India. Cambridge University
Press (2001); Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South
Indian Society, 1700-1900. Cambridge University Press (1989).
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