In this lecture, Professor Gayl Ness will reflect on his sixty year career in Southeast Asian Studies, which has focused on development, environment-social organization, and human ecology. Specifically, he will discuss how rice production generates large empires with state-like political administration, and how the river systems in Vietnam encouraged strong political centralization in the North and political decentralization in the South. Further, Prof. Ness will detail how Southeast Asian geography relates to the high degree of independence of women throughout the region.

Gayl Ness is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Michigan. His work focuses on how geography or land forms affect social organization. He retired in 1997, but continues to teach a first year seminar on Population, Development, and Environment.