Andrew Alan Johnson (Yale-National University of Singapore College) will give Contemporary Ethnograpy's first academic hour lecture this semester.

A former fisherman from alongside the Mekong told me about why he moved to Bangkok: “Back in Nong Khai, water dragons [phaya nak] used to come up out of the river. They would come into town, put on human clothes, and go to the temple to listen to the Buddhist chanting. This was until a few years ago. Then they stopped.” He paused. I pressed him: “Why did they stop?,” but he responded simply: “They grew tired of us.”

Abstract
This man’s story speaks to a common experience of change, loss, and disillusionment among many living alongside the Mekong, an experience which coincides with recent changes in the area, beginning from an influx of economic capital, an increasing move from agriculture to factory labor, and the dramatic role of the Mekong region in Thai political turmoil.  Drawing from work on the “Anthropocene” (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000) and recent anthropological attention on “animist” ontologies (Kohn 2013, Ingold 2012), I draw upon ongoing field research in Nong Khai, Thailand, to explore how radical disruptions in the environment affect the relationship between humans and non-human agents: in this case, rivers, fish, and spirits. Specifically, I argue that the changing Mekong ushers in a new, less certain era, one with its own kind of indigenous knowledge, its own demands, and its own spirits; spirits whose worship centers on the negotiation of doubt and precarity, rather than on long-term or familial terms.