Prisms of Globalization Lecture Series

In contemporary accounts of transnational human smuggling out of Fuzhou, China, debt and theft commonly appear as figure and shadow, sometimes working in tandem and other times at odds, to configure the moral project of money accumulation overseas. While it is easy to see thefts relationship to debt as simply one of crisis, this paper aims to show how such a relation with all its polarizing tensions and slippery confusions can be seen as mundane, immanent or even ontological to the making and managing of fortunes among Chinese transmigrants straddling rural Fuzhou and the United States.

Previous evaluations of infrastructure leases have focused on the privatization process and the terms of the arrangements negotiated by the public sector and the private concessionaires. In this research, we argue that these approaches fall short by failing to investigate the significant repositioning of the local state relative to financial markets produced by the rise of high-priced asset lease deals. We develop this argument through a case study of the institutional transformation of the City of Chicago, the U.S.'s most aggressive instigator of infrastructure asset sales, with analysis identifying several dimensions along which the remapping of the local state has progressed.

This talk is part of the 2nd Biennial Symposium on Vulnerable Families: Cross-National Perspectives on Practice Innovations and Challenges. Dr. Pei-Chia Lan will discuss her current research of family relationships in contemporary Taiwan under the impact of global trade competition and financial downturn. The widening inequalities in economic and cultural resources as they affect the social reproduction of family as the embodiment, operation and reproduction of social differences and inequalities will also be addressed.