Speaker: Trang X. Ta, University of Maryland Baltimore County

In most instances there is a lone, tragic-looking figure with head bowed before an accompanying sign making a silent public appeal. However, to stand out in the midst of urban activity, narration has increasingly included accouterments—boomboxes, microphones, printed posters, photographs, and a moving repertoire that weaves storytelling, emotional appeal, social commentary, and entertainment such as heartfelt singing and dancing—to draw the attention of passersby or even a small audience. These scenes of affliction in the Chinese public sphere feature “cruel circumstances” to gain financial assistance and claim social recognition. But this form of soliciting aid is fraught with suspicion and quickly dismissed as ploys to manipulate sentiment. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork primarily in Beijing and Guangzhou, this talk explores the conditions of affliction, suffering as resource, the ethics of veracity, and the compositional labor of communicating “cruel circumstances” to an anonymous public.    

Trang X. Ta is a cultural and medical anthropologist. This book represents her ongoing interests in urban social infrastructures and political ecologies, moral economies, unacknowledged labor, and creative resilience. Her current research project studies how the elderly and working poor in Hong Kong engage in waste reclamation as a livelihood strategy. She currently teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Zoom meeting link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/94120080608