Non ARKARAPRASERTKUL

Non Arkaraprasertkul is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Harvard University. He was a Fulbright Scholar and a recipient of the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he studied architecture and urban design. He also taught at MIT as a Visiting Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Design (2007-2008) and is a member of the global MIT-SIGUS Alumni Group. He is interested in modern Chinese history, urban anthropology, anthropology of China, urbanism and housing, urban political economy, Marxism, and history and theory of modern architecture.

Current Research Interests: Urban anthropology; modern Chinese history and society; modern architecture and urban design; Asian cities and cultural study in East Asia (focusing on ever-emerging Asian mega-cities); urbanism and housing; built forms and their cultural construction; urban morphology & theories; history theory criticism of architecture; visualizing cultures and sensory ethnography; sexuality and modern urbanism

Current research projects: Poised between the disciplines of architectural history and anthropology, my scholarship work stands as a fine example of how urban planning can set the stage for a fuller understanding of both the architectural and social present of a city. The placement of urban planning in a greater socio-political web gives context to our everyday built environment, raising an important awareness regarding the tactile and layered nature of the urban fabric. An emphasis on the symbolic aspects of urbanism calls to anthropology as it analyzes the tension, dynamic, and negotiation between the people living there and the symbolic image that the developers could foster whether that is hegemonic powers or the authority.Methodologically, I aim at opening up an interdisciplinary way of understanding planning history. By complementing intensive archival study with comprehensive use of literature from multiple fields of analysis as well as through historical ethnographies of urban life, I want to show how planning history can benefit from fieldwork and the researcher’s immersion with the field site. The contribution of my doctoral research will lie in its skillful negotiation of politically charged terrain to make sense of the process of urbanization in China in a broader sense through the understanding of the planning process both in a larger realm of planning cultures and a more focused case study of local communities in Shanghai. Its discussion of the theoretical frameworks of urbanization will takes into account various disciplines, including history, geography, architecture, sociology, and anthropology, shedding new light on the conflicts and tensions over urban space brought about by the sort of transformations that have been seen in Shanghai in recent years.

Current publication on my research project:  “Spatial Change and Housing in Shanghai: An Ethnography of the New Urban Middle-Class and an ‘Old’ Post-Colonial City,” 110th American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting: Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies, Montreal, QC, Canada (November 2011)