The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

New Economies of Sex and Intimacy in Vietnam

Over the past two decades, scholars have paid particular attention to the growth of global sex tourism, a trade marked by convergence between the global and local production and consumption of sexual services. In the increasingly global economy, the movement of people and capital around the world creates new segments of sex work, with diverse groups of consumers and providers. This dissertation examines the dialectical link between intimacy and political economy. I examine how changes in the global economy structure relations of intimacy between clients and sex workers; and how intimacy can be a vital form of currency that shapes economic and political relations. I trace new economies of sex and intimacy in Vietnam by moving from daily worlds of sex work in Ho Chi Minh City [HCMC] to incorporate a more structural and historical analysis. Drawing on 15 months of ethnography (2009-2010) working as a bartender and hostess I analyze four different bars that cater to wealthy local Vietnamese men and their Asian business partners, overseas Vietnamese men living in the diaspora, Western expatriates, and Western budget travelers. Drawing on 180 informal interviews with 90 clients and 90 sex workers across four niche markets of HCMC's sex industry, my dissertation incorporates three levels of analysis.I show how contemporary processes of globalization re-stratify an already stratified sex industry in HCMC, as well as how the industry is a vital player in the generation of business. Vietnam's opening to foreign direct investment since Doi Moi in 1986 has created a domestic super-élite, connected to the levers of political power, who channel incoming foreign capital to specific projects in real estate and manufacturing. For this super-élite, conspicuous consumption provides both a lexicon of distinction and a means of communicating hospitality to potential investors from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other East Asian countries -- and, using a different symbolic vocabulary, to Western investors. A new, ultra-high-end tier of sex workers has emerged in tandem with the emergence of this new group of clients. These sex workers only succeed to the extent that they can deploy the right vocabularies of consumption and sexuality in an elaborate symbolic dance tailored to the needs of individual capital deals. They are valued not only for their beauty, but also for their ability to help their clients project masculinity, deference, and collegiality in the specific context of entertaining foreign investors: they must also be able to modify this performance for East Asian clients as well as white clients. As a result, racialized desires, social status, business success, and hope for upward mobility are all played out in the bars of HCMC. The same is true in the middle and lower tiers of the industry, but in radically different ways. In short, HCMC's sex industry is not just a microcosm of the global economy, but also a vector shaping financial globalization itself. I examine how sex workers, male clients, bar owners, mommies (formally known as madams), and the police all work to create and maintain certain types of raced and gendered hierarchies according to the niche in which they are involved. I also focus on the practices of everyday life in the bars and examine how men and women construct their relations with each other, which lead to different kinds of intimate and emotional relationships that sometimes allow women to experience mobility, but at other times are self-destructive. Sex work, I argue, provides a unique lens through which to examine not only how transformations in the global economy reshape intimate life but also how the emotional intimacy (and not merely sex) provided by sex workers serves as an important currency in transnational business deals. Comparing four niche markets within HCMC's sex industry, I found that local Vietnamese men and their Asian business partners participate in business-related entertainment while Western expatriates, in contrast, participate in HCMC's sex industry for recreational purposes outside of work. Racialized desires, status, business success, and hope for upward mobility are all played out in the bars of HCMC, where dreams and deals are traded. This sex industry is not just a microcosm of the global economy; it also helps fuel its growth

Money Movers: Ethnography of Desire in Gray Economies in Southeast Asia [Video]

Kimberly Kay Hoang is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where she teaches courses in Sociological Theory; Ethnography; States, Markets, and Bodies; Power, Identity, and Resistance; and Economy and Ethnography. Having earned her Ph.D. in 2011 from the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2012 she won the Best Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association. Before joining the faculty at the University of Chicago, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rice University (2011-13) and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston College (2013-15). Dr. Hoang is the author of Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work, published by the University of California Press in 2015. This monograph examines the mutual construction of masculinities, financial deal-making, and transnational political-economic identities. Her ethnography takes an in-depth and often personal look at both sex workers and their clients to show how high finance and benevolent giving are intertwined with intimacy in Vietnam\u27s informal economy. Dealing in Desire is the winner of seven distinguished book awards from the American Sociological Association, the National Women Studies Association, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Association for Asian Studies. Combined Women’s History and Asian Studies Keynote Address. Part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series: Transformations (2017-2018

New Economies of Sex and Intimacy in Vietnam

Over the past two decades, scholars have paid particular attention to the growth of global sex tourism, a trade marked by convergence between the global and local production and consumption of sexual services. In the increasingly global economy, the movement of people and capital around the world creates new segments of sex work, with diverse groups of consumers and providers. This dissertation examines the dialectical link between intimacy and political economy. I examine how changes in the global economy structure relations of intimacy between clients and sex workers; and how intimacy can be a vital form of currency that shapes economic and political relations. I trace new economies of sex and intimacy in Vietnam by moving from daily worlds of sex work in Ho Chi Minh City [HCMC] to incorporate a more structural and historical analysis. Drawing on 15 months of ethnography (2009-2010) working as a bartender and hostess I analyze four different bars that cater to wealthy local Vietnamese men and their Asian business partners, overseas Vietnamese men living in the diaspora, Western expatriates, and Western budget travelers. Drawing on 180 informal interviews with 90 clients and 90 sex workers across four niche markets of HCMC's sex industry, my dissertation incorporates three levels of analysis.I show how contemporary processes of globalization re-stratify an already stratified sex industry in HCMC, as well as how the industry is a vital player in the generation of business. Vietnam's opening to foreign direct investment since Doi Moi in 1986 has created a domestic super-élite, connected to the levers of political power, who channel incoming foreign capital to specific projects in real estate and manufacturing. For this super-élite, conspicuous consumption provides both a lexicon of distinction and a means of communicating hospitality to potential investors from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other East Asian countries -- and, using a different symbolic vocabulary, to Western investors. A new, ultra-high-end tier of sex workers has emerged in tandem with the emergence of this new group of clients. These sex workers only succeed to the extent that they can deploy the right vocabularies of consumption and sexuality in an elaborate symbolic dance tailored to the needs of individual capital deals. They are valued not only for their beauty, but also for their ability to help their clients project masculinity, deference, and collegiality in the specific context of entertaining foreign investors: they must also be able to modify this performance for East Asian clients as well as white clients. As a result, racialized desires, social status, business success, and hope for upward mobility are all played out in the bars of HCMC. The same is true in the middle and lower tiers of the industry, but in radically different ways. In short, HCMC's sex industry is not just a microcosm of the global economy, but also a vector shaping financial globalization itself. I examine how sex workers, male clients, bar owners, mommies (formally known as madams), and the police all work to create and maintain certain types of raced and gendered hierarchies according to the niche in which they are involved. I also focus on the practices of everyday life in the bars and examine how men and women construct their relations with each other, which lead to different kinds of intimate and emotional relationships that sometimes allow women to experience mobility, but at other times are self-destructive. Sex work, I argue, provides a unique lens through which to examine not only how transformations in the global economy reshape intimate life but also how the emotional intimacy (and not merely sex) provided by sex workers serves as an important currency in transnational business deals. Comparing four niche markets within HCMC's sex industry, I found that local Vietnamese men and their Asian business partners participate in business-related entertainment while Western expatriates, in contrast, participate in HCMC's sex industry for recreational purposes outside of work. Racialized desires, status, business success, and hope for upward mobility are all played out in the bars of HCMC, where dreams and deals are traded. This sex industry is not just a microcosm of the global economy; it also helps fuel its growth

Race and Capitalism: Global Territories, Transnational Histories

In October 2017, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin in partnership with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago convened a symposium on the theme, “Race and Capitalism: Global Territories, Transnational Histories.” A part of the national Race and Capitalism project led by Michael Dawson and Megan Ming Francis, the symposium sought to highlight how the study of racial capitalism in the United States must be situated in the long history of global systems of colonialism, imperialism, and development. With this in mind, the program was organized around four key themes: diasporas of racial capitalism; the land question; imperialism and its limits; race, capitalism, and settler-colonialism. Bringing together scholars from many different institutions, the symposium was also a space for shared work across different disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Writings and presentations by four scholars, Nathan Connolly, Keisha-Khan Perry, Allan Lumba, and Alyosha Goldstein, anchored a day of debate and dialogue. This collection provides a glimpse of their key provocations as well as of the questions and comments posed by invited interlocutors. It is not a culmination but instead a benchmark in the ongoing efforts to build collaborative scholarship concerned with race and capitalism. Central to our concerns has been the question of what this might mean for a new generation of curriculum and pedagogy and for the next generation of scholars, our graduate students. We hope that the conceptual and methodological frameworks and interrogations presented here are useful in the endeavor of speaking back to our disciplines and speaking across our disciplines