Northern Illinois University
Department of Anthropology
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Ivan V. Small is an economic and cultural anthropologist. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Southeast Asian studies from Cornell University, and an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University. Prior to arriving in Illinois, Dr. Small was an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Houston and an assistant and associate professor of Anthropology at Central Connecticut State University. He has held fellowships at The New School, University of California Irvine, Yusof Ishak Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, Fulbright University Vietnam, and Vietnam National University.  

 Dr. Small is the author of Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam (Cornell Univ. Press 2019), which investigates the social, spatial and material dimensions of diasporic remittances drawing on interviews with remittance-receiving and sending households in Vietnam and California. The book examines changing economic capacities and forms of remittances, as well as shifts in local and transnational social and political relations from 1975 to the present. Dr. Small’s work in the field of economic anthropology also extends to mobile money and other cashless financial technologies, topics that he considers comparatively as co-editor of Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion & Design (Berghahn Press 2018).   

In addition, Dr. Small has researched transportation consumption and production as well as multi-modal and cultural market design practices shaped by Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) trade agreements. His current research draws on ethnography and archives to connect migration, finance and automobility issues through a comparative regional examination of Asian American community formations and transnational connections. This includes investigating ethno-burb and auto-mobile affordances as responses to post-Vietnam War resettlement policies intended to disperse and assimilate Southeast Asian refugees across the United States.  

Along with his academic career, Dr. Small has worked and consulted with think tanks, foundations, cultural institutions and NGOs including the World Policy Institute, Ford Foundation, Smithsonian and War Legacies Project. At NIU Dr. Small is jointly appointed as Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.  

Selected Publications 

Books  

Currencies of Imagination: Channeling Money and Chasing Mobility in Vietnam (Cornell University Press, 2019).  

(Reviewed by American Ethnologist, Cross Currents, International Migration Review, Mekong Review, Pacific Affairs, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Journal of Asian Studies. Podcasts available at Gatty Rewind and New Books Network.)  

Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Inclusion & Design, co-edited with Bill Maurer and Smoki Musaraj (Berghahn Press, 2018).  

(Reviewed by American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.)  

Articles  

2023: “Driving is Terrifying: Auto-Mobile Horizons, Projections and Networks in Vietnam and ASEAN”, Journal of Cultural Economy 16(1), 62-80.   

2021: “Wandering Money: Valuating and Mediating Remittances in Vietnam”, TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia 9(1), 31-43.    

2018: “Affecting Mobility: Consuming Driving and Driving Consumption in Southeast Asian Emerging Markets”, Journal of Consumer Culture 18(3), 377-396.    

Chapters  

2024: “Memory Moments in Vietnamese American Cultural Productions”, Handbook of the Vietnamese Diaspora, Nathalie Nguyen, ed. London: Routledge, 253-269. 

 2023: “Vietnamese Americans and Their ‘Homeland’: Transnational Advocacy Efforts and Diasporic Ties”, Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory, Linda Ho Peche, Alex Thai Vo and Tuong Vu, ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 116-132. 

 2023: “Emplacing Multiculturalism: Southeast Asian Migrant Linguistic Acculturation Programmes and Community Building in South Korea”, Demography and Diversity in Southeast Asia: Challenges and Issues Amidst a New Normal, Kevin Tan and Steve Chan, ed. Singapore: ISEAS Press, 68-83. 

 2022: “Capitalist Lack: Vietnamese American Remittances as Cultural Supplement and Political Critique”, The Vietnamese Diaspora in a Transnational Context: Contested Spaces, Contested Narratives, Victor Satzewich and Anna Vu, ed. Leiden: Brill Press, 123-142.  

 2020: “Ecologies of Immateriality: Remittances and the Cashless Allure”, Who’s Cashing In? Contemporary Perspectives on New Monies and Global Cashlessness, Atreyee Sen, J. Lindquist and M. Kolling, ed. Oxford: Berghahn, 57-72.