Sarah G. Grant

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Biography

Sarah G. Grant is Associate Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton. Her research uses ethnographic methods to understand the human experiences of industrial agriculture, climate change, and precarity in contemporary Vietnam. She is finishing her first book length manuscript about industrial coffee production in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and developing two new research projects. The first is a multispecies examination of fertilizer production, birds, aquatic life, and climate change in the Mekong Delta. The second is an ethnography of citizen science, conservation, and birdwatching communities in a transnational context.

Before joining the Division of Anthropology at CSUF, she held a LUCE-ASIANetwork Foundation Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship at Hendrix College.

Degrees

PhD, Anthropology, University of California Riverside

MA, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin Madison

BA, History, University of Pittsburgh

Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

2021 “Complicated Webs: Experiential Risk in the Vietnamese Coffee Industry,” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 44 (1): 75-90. https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12416

2019 “Café Creatives: Coffee Entrepreneurs in Vietnam,” Education About Asia 24(2): 46-49. (Fall 2019, Special Section: Entrepreneurship in Asia)

2018 “Not Quite in California: Living in Louisiana, Longing for Little Saigon,” Boom California online edition

Editor Reviewed Publications

2020 Jennifer Way and Sarah Grant, “The Politics of Vietnamese Craft: American Diplomacy and Domestication,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 15(2): 152-160.

2019 Francois Carlet-Soulages with Christina Schwenkel and Sarah Grant, “Socialist Modernism: An Architectural Photo Essay of everyday Spaces in Hà Nội,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 14(4): 64-80.

Book Chapters

(Under Review) “Ecologies of Coffee Sustainability,” In Environment and Narrative in Vietnam, eds. Ursula K. Heise and Chi P. Pham with Palgrave Macmillan Literatures, Cultures, and Environment series

2020 “What’s in a Wet Market: Anthropology of Food and Asia During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” In Teaching About Asia in a Time of Pandemic, Asia Shorts Series, Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies

2020 “ Cosmopolitan Coffee Aspirations and Caffeinated Youth in Urban Vietnam,” In Aspirations of Young Adults in Urban Asia, eds. Kenneth Finis, Desiree Remmert, and Mariske Westendorp

Book Reviews

2019 Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology (2017) for Teaching and Learning Anthropology Journal (open access)

2017 Essential Trade: Vietnamese Women in a Changing Market Place by Ann-Marie Leshkowich (2014) for The Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12(1)1: 167-170.

2016 Vietnam’s New Middle Classes: Gender, Career, City by Catherine Earl (2014) for American Anthropologist 118(2): 424-425.

2015 Rice Talks: Food and Community in a Vietnamese Town by Nir Avieli (2012) for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 15(1):94.

Media and Interviews

2019 “Why Starbucks and other international chains are way less popular than local coffee shops in Vietnam,” interview for CNBC, 23 December. Available: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/19/starbucks-coffee-bean-tea-leaf-are-losing-to-local-vietnam- chains.html

2019 “Innovative methods could transform Vietnam’s robusta farms into carbon sinks,” interview for Mongabay (Global Forests Series), 13 June. Available: https://news.mongabay.com/2019/06/innovative-methods-could-transform-vietnams-robusta- farms-into-carbon-sinks/

2016 “Brewing up some research on Vietnamese coffee growers,” interview for The Orange County Register, 15 March. Available: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/coffee-708353-vietnamese-grant.html

2015 “Digital Threats; Vietnamese Coffee,” interview for Loa: Broadcasting Vietnam podcast ep. 24, 5 October. Available: https://soundcloud.com/loa_fm/ep-24