Join UCSC SEACoast Center for their upcoming slow seminar, as participants read and discuss Andrew Alan Johnson's Mekong Dreaming: Life and Death Along a Changing River. The reading and discussion are aimed at exploring an ethnographic insight into the impact of infrastructural changes on a river and on its humans and nonhuman inhabitants:

"The Mekong River has undergone vast infrastructural changes in recent years, including the construction of dams across its main stream. These projects, along with the introduction of new fish species, changing political fortunes, and international migrant labor, have all made a profound impact upon the lives of those residing on the great river. It also impacts how they dream. In Mekong Dreaming, Andrew Alan Johnson explores the changing relationship between the river and the residents of Ban Beuk, a village on the Thailand-Laos border, by focusing on the effect that construction has had on human and inhuman elements of the villagers' world. Johnson shows how inhabitants come to terms with the profound impact that remote, intangible, and yet powerful forces—from global markets and remote bureaucrats to ghosts, spirits, and gods—have on their livelihoods. Through dreams, migration, new religious practices, and new ways of dwelling on a changed river, inhabitants struggle to understand and affect the distant, the inassimilable, and the occult, which offer both sources of power and potential disaster.." (Duke Press)

Although the book is not available in the library catalogue, UCSC affiliates can access a PDF of the book through the UCSC library via the Duke University Press database. Sign into the library with your CruzID, search for "Duke University Press", enter the database, and then search the book title. Or, sign into your CruzID and then follow this link.

RSVP to seacoast@ucsc.edu by April 25 to receive a Zoom link. For security reasons, the Zoom link will be sent out at least 30 minutes before the start of the event.