Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Courtney Wittekind, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

Abstract
Why has speculation become a dominant way of engaging with the future in moments of profound political uncertainty? This talk takes up this question through Myanmar’s proposed 20,000-acre “New Yangon City,” launched during the country’s democratic transition of 2011-2021. Drawing on ethnographic research in peri-urban Yangon, I show how farmers living in the shadow of this urban project turned to speculation when democratic and developmental promises repeatedly faltered. I argue that this vernacular speculation was less about profit than about acting on uncertainty amid compounding crises. Over time, speculative practices reshaped political participation and shifted collective demands toward individualized wagers structured by unequal access to land, capital, and time. Extending my analysis into Myanmar’s post-coup moment, I conclude by highlighting speculation as a defining feature of political life across Southeast Asia today.

About the Speaker
Courtney Wittekind is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University, where she researches uneven urban development, speculative investment, and digital technologies. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice, from Harvard University in 2022. From 2022 to 2024, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University with the Program in Agrarian Studies and the Council on Southeast Asia Studies. Her publications include articles in leading journals such as Cultural Anthropology and Antipode, as well as her forthcoming book, City of Speculation: Unsettled Futures in UrbanMyanmar (Stanford University Press).