Episode 147: Courtney Wittekind, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Purdue University

In this episode, host Namfon Narumol Choochan speaks with Courtney T. Wittekind, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University. Together, they discuss Dr.Wittekind's lecture, which is part of her forthcoming book, City of Speculation: Unsettled Futures in Urban Myanmar (Stanford University Press), and explore how speculation unfolds amid political, economic, and social instability. Focusing on Southwest Yangon, Dr. Wittekind examines everyday practices of speculation and gambling in a suburb where the Myanmar government proposed a plan to build a new city that never came to fruition. The conversation reflects on navigating the unexpected and uncertainty during fieldwork, especially the pandemic, and how these challenges reshaped her methodology and her scholarly work. Tune in to learn more!  Lightning round (Lecture Summary): 1:15 Main interview: 6:36 6:50 – What did you do before you started a PhD, and what made you pursue a doctoral degree?  9:54 – Did you have a topic in mind when entering grad school, and how did it change? 14:21 – Did you intend to choose Southwest Yangoon as your research focus in your first fieldwork, or did it come afterward? 25:43 – Your research deals with instability. Meanwhile, speculation involves futurity. How do you think of speculation in Southeast Asia, which is fraught with political instability? 31:55 - Who speculates? What does this speculation reveal about Southwest Yangon? 35:03 – Your lecture mentioned the organizing movement advocating for the New City plan. This challenges my understanding of the grassroots movement, which usually organizes against real estate developers. What does this organizing movement reveal about the politics of urbanization in the context of Myanmar? 39:42 – One audience member asked about how to identify the people's desire in the movement, and you admitted that it is hard to identify the real agrarian desire, and one of your chapters discusses the two categories of authentic and inauthentic farmers. How do you distinguish between the two? Are the lines fixed, or are they more fluid? And how do you examine whether the movement stemmed from the real agrarian desire? 44:13 – How did the Coup in 2021 complicate the speculation you're looking at?  47:44 - Since speculation is about futurity, it is always a process involving hope. Given the context of political instability, would speculation be possible without hope? Advice Advice for researchers and recommendations: 50:28 Dr. Wittekind's top recommendations:  Yangon Film School: an institution based in Myanmar, making cutting-edge films Purin films:  a film fund that supports independent cinema in Southeast Asia Don't forget to check out Dr. Wittekind's forthcoming book: City of Speculation, Unsettled Futures in Urban Myanmar. Description:  In 2018, amidst a celebrated political transition, Myanmar's first democratically elected government since 1962 proposed a built-from-scratch "new city" just outside Yangon, the country's former colonial capital and current economic center. 20,000 acres of once-barren rice fields became the site of extraordinary developmental dreams. Farmers on Yangon's outskirts traded cultivation for speculation on land and property, betting on uncertain futures and weighing what, exactly, was worth risking for a chance at transformation. As plans for the new city stalled amid political turmoil, economic liberalization, a pandemic, and a military coup, speculation became both a source of hope and a means of survival when urban dreams faded. Drawing on three years of site-based fieldwork and digital ethnography, Courtney T. Wittekind shows how speculation reshapes citizens' contemporary demands and forward-looking dreams—for themselves as well as their country—in times of crisis. Adopting the lens of "vernacular speculation," she reveals how ordinary people create value, interpret ambiguity, and act on possible futures, even as the promises of democracy and development collapse around them. A powerful account of how hope, anticipation, and uncertainty reconfigure everyday life, City of Speculation captures what it means to imagine—and gamble on—the future in the wake of profound upheaval. The music on the podcast is from "14 Strings!", a Filipino-style Rondalla group established at Cornell University. Check them out here.   Produced by Neen Yada Tangcharoenmonkong, Adam Farihin, and Cecilia Liu