Anthropology In China Research Articles

Making Economic Policy for the Development of Minority Regions: Localization and Contribution of Economic Anthropology in China

AbstractAfter the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese government had organized a series of large-scale economic and social surveys in the minority regions to promote compre...

Fei Xiaotong and the vocabulary of anthropology in China

Fei Xiaotong and the vocabulary of anthropology in China

Economic Anthropology with Chinese Characteristics: Yang Tingshuo Xiangji (Interphase) Operational Theoretical Model

The Chinese economic anthropological theorist Professor Yang Tingshuo based on his understanding of China as well as his intensive ethnographic work, has put forward the interphase (Xiangji) economic principle theoretical in the process of localization of economic anthropology in China. It is one of the significant new contributions to the development of economic anthropology theory by Chinese scholars. This paper holds the opinion tha t Ya ng's masterpiece work represents the best efforts of Chinese schola rs' to localize economic anthropology in China. We cannot underestimate its theoretical contribution and significance in terms of practical guidance in national and regional economic development. It provides a theoretical and practical scheme for the country to build a comparatively affluent society, especially for the development of minority areas in the Western part of the country; at the same time, it provides a theoretical model of economic anthropology for regional economic and -societal development in areas that are similar to the Western part of China in other parts of the world.

Fighting for breath: living morally and dying of cancer in a Chinese village

Numerous reports of villages have appeared in the past decade in both Chinese and Western media, highlighting the downside of China's economic development. Less generally known is how people experience and understand cancer in areas where there is no agreement on its cause. Who or what do they blame? How do they cope with its onset? Fighting for Breath is the first ethnography to offer a bottom-up account of how rural families strive to make sense of cancer and care for sufferers. It addresses crucial areas of concern such as health, development, morality, and social change in an effort to understand what is at stake in the contemporary Chinese countryside. Encounters with cancer are instances in which social and moral fault lines may become visible. Anna Lora-Wainwright combines powerful narratives and critical engagement with an array of scholarly debates in sociocultural and medical anthropology and in the anthropology of China. The result is a moving exploration of the social inequities endemic to post-1949 China and the enduring rural-urban divide that continues to challenge social justice in the People's Republic. In-depth case studies present villagers' fight for breath as both a physical and social struggle to reclaim a moral life, ensure family and neighborly support, and critique the state for its uneven welfare provision. Lora-Wainwright depicts their suffering as lived experience, but also as embedded in domestic economies and in the commodification of care that has placed the burden on families and individuals. Fighting for Breath will be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers in Chinese studies, sociocultural and medical anthropology, human geography, development studies, and the social study of medicine.

Academic Affairs & Career Development

Abstract:ACADEMIC AFFAIRS“Business Anthropology in China” by Patricia Sunderland, Maryann McCabe and Timothy de Waal MalefytCAREER DEVELOPMENTANTHROPOLOGY WORKS:“Anthropologists in the NGO World” by Jean J Schensul Wendy Bartlo and Antonio Chavarria are contributing editors for Anthropology Works, the AN column of the AAA Committee on Practicing, Applied and Public Interest Anthropology.

Some Chinese Directions in Anthropology

Stephan Feuchtwang & Michael Rowlands London School of Economics & University College, London interviewing Wang Mingming. Wang Mingming is a Chinese anthropologist, born in 1962 in the city of Quanzhou in southern Fujian, China. He was trained in archaeology and ethnological history at Xiamen University in the same southeastern province of Fujian. Later he went to study social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and gained his Ph.D. there. In 1994, he returned to China to teach in Peking University and is committed to staying there. Since returning, through numerous publications, books he has written, series he has edited, journals he has founded, and through his teaching of postgraduate and doctoral students, he has been dedicated to the re-formation of anthropology in China as an academic discipline,not as an aid to programs of development and of government, nor as simply an import from English-language social and cultural anthropology, but as an anthropology coming from China that can and does have something to say to a larger anthropology.

Anthropology in China's health promotion and tobacco

Health problems vex many residents of China, as they do people elsewhere. These problems need attention from medical professionals and public-health funders. They also require academic inquiry, including that offered by medical anthropologists. Medical anthropology addresses the way in which links between illness, culture, politics, and economics unfold over time.1 Perhaps no problem is a better example than tobacco, which is wreaking a sizable social, emotional, and political-economic toll on Chinese people today and is one of the greatest causes of premature death.

Anthropology of China's One-Child Policy

Anthropology of China's One-Child Policy

Applied Anthropology in China

This chapter examines the development of applied anthropology in China through the political twists and turns of history and politics during the last eight decades. Chinese anthropology has always had a strong applied emphasis. It began with a mandate to study the political‐economy of ethnic groups in frontier/border regions in the 1920's and 1930's for national security reasons, and it continues today with the objective of cultural preservation and comprehensive development to raise living standards and bring these groups more fully into the national economy. After taking over in 1949, the communist government sent anthropologists throughout the country to provide the ethnographic evidence for conferring official minority status, determining political representation and establishing autonomous regions, counties and districts for ethnic groups. Soon thereafter anthropologists began a nationwide investigation of the history and social organization of already identified ethnic groups as preparation for implementing massive social and economic transformations planned by the government. The Anti‐Rightist Campaign in 1957 ended these investigations, pushed Marxian social philosophy to the forefront, and sidelined anthropology until its post‐Cultural Revolution revival in 1978. In the 1980's and 1990's Chinese anthropologists began to interact with their Western counterparts, adopting multiple theoretical perspectives (not just Marxian), turning to a variety of empirical methods, conducting ethnographic research, and building anthropology as a policy science.

In and Out of the Ethnographer's Shadow: “Native” Identity in the Anthropology of China

In the past two decades, many Chinese students have trained as anthropologists in the West. The study of China has been enriched by the contributions of “native” anthropologists, but the “native” is not necessarily native to the site studied; the term may not be entirely helpful in the end. At the same time, complete outsiders can still contribute effective and vivid understandings of China. Ultimately, I argue that the anthropologist's identity may not be an overwhelmingly relevant criterion of a work's value, since there are many aspects to identity in every case. SUSAN BLUM is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her research interests are in identity, ethnicity, nationalism; psychological aspects of behavior; language as social action; food; Asia and China; and anthropological theory. She is the author of Portraits of “Primitives”: Ordering Human Kinds in the Chinese Nation (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) and coeditor of China Off Center: Mapping the Margins of the Middle Kingdom (Hawai'i, 2002).

The Making of anthropology in East and Southeast Asia

CHOICE OUTSTANDING BOOK OF THE YEAR 2005 Despite the growth of interest in the history of anthropology as a over the last two decades, surprisingly little has been published in English on the development of anthropology in East and Southeast Asia and its relationship to the rest of the academic world-system. The anthropological experience in this region has been varied. Japanese anthropology developed early, and ranks second only to that of the United States in terms of size. Anthropology in China has finally recovered from the experience of invasion, war, and revolution, and now flourishes both on the mainland and in Taiwan. Scholars in Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines have also attempted to break with the legacy of colonialism and develop research relevant to their own national needs. This book includes accounts of these developments by some of the most distinguished scholars in the region. Also discussed are issues of language, authorship, and audience; and the effects these have on writing by anthropologists, whether native or foreign. The book will be invaluable to anyone with an interest in the anthropology of East and Southeast Asia or the development of anthropology as a global discipline. Shinji Yamashita is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at The University of Tokyo. Joseph Bosco is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. J.S. Eades is Professor of Asia Pacific Studies and Director of the Media Resource Center, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, and Senior Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology, University of Kent.

A Historical Overview on Anthropology in China

A Historical Overview on Anthropology in China

The Ethnicity of Anthropology in China

■ Chinese anthropologists have been attempting to locate anthropology in China, debating the legitimacy of its bentu hua, or `nativization'. However, a second careful look will take us to a more complicated landscape. While China, as one of the `mis-imagined' homogeneous world-level communities has to face the West, its minority groups, whether `imagined or not', have to confront both the Han world and the West. In connection to the hegemony of a market economy, which sidelined the minorities, the `ethnicity' of anthropologists reflects their respective upbringing or `habitus'. A sub-version of Sapir-Whorfian linguistic relativity bites here: anthropologists who master different languages tend to merge into linguistically demarcated separate interest groups. Looking at the underlying implications will lead our analysis metaphorically to a broader view of the extant dilemma global social sciences and humanities have been trapped in.

Introduction to the Investigation of the Present Situation and Development of Ethnic Minorities in China: A Reflection on Changes in the Last Ten Years in the Field of Anthropology in China

A delegation of five Chinese ethnologists and anthropologists from the Institute of Nationality Studies (INS), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) presented their research at the SfAA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, March 2000. Their papers reported on the first phase of a nationwide investigation of selected ethnic minority areas that started in 1993 and ended in 1998. For display, they brought eight volumes from "A Series of Investigations on Present Situation and Development of Ethnic Minorities in China." At that time the ninth volume in this series was about to be published to complete the first phase of the investigation. The second phase began in 2000.

The Saga of Anthropology in China

The Saga of Anthropology in China

The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao. GREGORY ELIYU GULDIN

<i>The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao</i>. GREGORY ELIYU GULDIN

GREGORY ELIYU GULDIN, The Saga of Anthropology in China From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao, Armonk, New York, and London, England: M.E. Sharpe, 1994. £55 (hardcover)/£19.95 (softcover).

GREGORY ELIYU GULDIN, The Saga of Anthropology in China From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao, Armonk, New York, and London, England: M.E. Sharpe, 1994. £55 (hardcover)/£19.95 (softcover).

The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao.

This work traces the development and turmoil surrounding the discipline of anthropology during the tumultuous events of 20th-century Chinese history. It describes the personalities shaping this history and the rivalry around the institutions involved.

The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao (review)

The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao (review)

The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao.Gregory Eliyu Guldin

<i>The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao.</i>Gregory Eliyu Guldin