← New Books Network
New Books Network
Di Wu et. al, eds., "China As Context: Anthropology, Post-globalisation and the Neglect of China" (Manchester UP, 2025)
01:19:15
Loading summary
Transcript91 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello everybody. Welcome to the Anthropology Channel of the New Books Network.
- [01:11]
C
I'm your host, Yadong Li, a PhD candidate in Socio cultural Anthropology at Tulane University.
- [01:17]
B
China is getting an increasingly significant role.
- [01:19]
C
In both geopolitics and anthropological research. But in each field, controversies exist and deserve further attention.
- [01:27]
B
Today's new book asks a deceptively simple.
- [01:30]
C
But far reaching question.
- [01:32]
B
What happens if we stop treating China.
- [01:34]
C
Mainly as a bonded field site or a distant other, and instead think with China as part of the very context in which people encounter an anthropologist sea rise today? In today's new additive volume, the contributors.
- [01:48]
B
Argue that despite China's obvious geopolitical and.
- [01:51]
C
Economic importance, it remains surprisingly marginal within Anglophone anthropology and some of the discipline's major theoretical turns.
- [02:00]
B
So by treating context itself as a.
- [02:02]
C
Problem rather than a neutral background, the book invites us to think about both the place of China in social theory and the way we conceptualize context more generally. Today. I'm very happy to be joined by two of the editors of the new volume, Dr. Wu Di and Dr. Ed Poford. Dr. Wu, welcome to New Book the Anthropology and as most our audience will know, for Dr. Pulford, he then experienced host of the New Books Network. So welcome back, Dr. Puffert.
- [02:31]
D
Thank you for the invitation.
- [02:32]
E
Good to see you again, Yadong.
- [02:34]
C
Exactly thank you very much. Today's new book is China's as Anthropology Post Globalization and the Neglect of China, published by Manchester University Press in 2025, edited by Woodi, Andrea Pierre and Ed Pulford. Dr. Wu Di is currently based in the People's Republic of China. He is Associate Professional a Fellow at the Institute of Anthropology, Zhejiang University and Dr. Pulford is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. He is also the host of East Asian Studies Channel of the New Books Network.
- [03:09]
B
So to begin, could each of you.
- [03:10]
C
Briefly introduce yourself to our audience? How did you come to anthropology and to working on China? And what broader questions have guided your research trajectories leading up to this collective work?
- [03:23]
D
How did I come to anthropology? It's very by accident actually. I was trained in law, both in China and in uk and then I ended up in LSC to do my master degrees in the Comparative Perspectives of China and India, which was run by Hans Stammela and also stacking Fitch 1. Then, then afterwards I wanted to do a PhD in RSC. Then I talked to Stephen with this idea and then he suggested me to pursue in the anthropology. So that's how I got on to the boat for anthropology and then about China. This is quite tricky because I did my PhD in Zambia. Actually field work in Zambia in the two kind of different types of Chinese farms by definition is actually it's a migration studies and then if we define our specialized field actually is African studies, to be honest. And then yeah, because I studied the Chinese communities there. So partially it's considered as a part of global China studies and that time global China wasn't a concept, so I was catalyzed, you know, into anthropology of China. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a tricky position because it's kind of a how to say, when you study migration itself and this happens, you sort of lose both ants on the field. So.
- [05:29]
E
Yeah, great, yeah, well, and as for me, I guess I've probably said something about this already on this channel to you, Yadong, but briefly, I mean, I started out as a languages undergraduate students focusing on French and Russian, so mostly European languages. I got very interested in Russia in Soviet history and lots of other aspects of Russia's linguistic and cultural kind of context, if you like, including the easternmost parts of that country and basically the bits that are near other Asian countries. So that kind of led me to an interest in, in China, which I then spent a few years in after my undergraduate degree, not doing anything particularly academic. But then when I came to do a PhD, I sort of realized that anthropology would be a great discipline in which to explore some of the connections that I was interested in between Russia and China, primarily just because those interests had been developed as a result of spending long periods of time living in both countries. And so I liked the fact that anthropology is so focused on, you know, kind of daily life and these kind of, I guess, you know, cliched things that. That I think are maybe cliches, but anthropology still holds dear about the everyday and about, you know, what sort of regular people in a particular place, how they lead their lives. So that's how anthropology came into my. I guess came onto my radar as a PhD subject. And then my field work for that was in Northeast China, on the border of Russia and actually on the border of North Korea as well. And so in relation to that kind of global China question that the raised already, you know, I felt like maybe with retrospect, I was doing something a bit global, but in a highly small, know, in a very, very local way, in the sense that, you know, at a border you get this kind of convergence of lots of different flows and other dimensions of life on the scale that far exceed the relatively small town where I actually was living. And so, you know, I think from the beginning, really, although I was based in China, my interest was already connected to a variety of other concerns.
- [08:05]
C
Thank you very much. And it's really happy to know about your research trajectory. And for both of you, China is not the first stop in your academic journeys. I think this really gives you a comparative perspective and think of China and the concept of context in a more complex, not so direct way. So I'm really looking forward to talking about it later in our conversation and in the introduction of the book. You note that this book was conceived in the immediate aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which was a geopolitical shock to the world and a moment of reflection about China's role in international politics and about context.
- [08:44]
B
So can you talk a little bit.
- [08:45]
C
About how that particular global moment helped crystallize the idea of thinking about China as a context rather than only as an object? And what kinds of conversations among you as editors first set this project in motion?
- [09:00]
D
Sure. Actually, that ethnographic kind of episodes was from me as basically when I was teaching and this Russia, Ukraine incident happened. And then suddenly lots of colleagues of mine in Oxford at that time started to asking questions about what, what China is going to do with Russia's move, and then how China is going to support or support Russia in this incident and then which as an apologist by training, we always stand back and then ask why people ask about this. So suddenly it occurred to me why people started to special anthropologists started to get into China. And then this led me into kind of a series reflections on how much knowledge we have actually produced regarding to China and regarding to Chinese roles in the world at the moment. And then also how the world at the moment is geopolitically is connected through not just as a phenomenon but also as actual engagement. So with these questions I started to talk with Ed and also Andrea with this idea because I knew Ed and was doing some board studies in the, in the northeast part of Dongbei and also Anderea was just beginning to do the southwest China border with Thailand on water resources locations as well. So yeah, so I was just with this idea approaching them to see if I can do something with this observation of the new rise of the awareness of Chinese role in the world.
- [11:18]
E
Yeah, I don't have a great deal more to add since that was Dee's kind of primary motivation, but in terms of things that have been interesting to me about this kind of this post 2022 moment, I've looked a little into how Chinese responses understand this sort of context of a Russian invasion from an ethno national or racial perspective and what the response has been like among some China based intellectuals in relation to questions that obviously concern Putin's motivation for this and the kind of high level anthropological thinking. Right. About Russian and Ukrainian ethnic identities as they were constructed over the 20th century in the Soviet Union and what that kind of, you know, how it resonates today or whether it plays any particular role in a contemporary context. And so I think, you know, as Dee said, as anthropologists we don't automatically concern ourselves with geopolitics as it is, you know, as a topic of sort of concern in itself, but exactly how people are thinking about these things and what questions on a more granular level these rays. And so I was very interested in indeed kind of introduction, if you like, to me of this thinking and why this project would be a good thing to pursue in light of that.
- [12:55]
C
Excellent. I think it's very helpful for our audience to know the genocide of this project and from this particular event about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we can definitely see how China is definitely not a homogeneous hope because debate about this war is still a topic of debate. It's still a heated topic within China today. And also this book, a central provocation of this book is that even though Many people recognize the significance of China in today's geopolitics and also global economy. China remains relatively marginal within Anglophone anthropology and key theoretical turns in recent years, for example, the ontological turn, the infrastructural turn and ethical turns.
- [13:37]
B
So how did you arrive at the.
- [13:39]
C
Language of neglect to describe the situation? And what specific gaps or blind spots in anthropological debates are you hoping to fork around with that term?
- [13:50]
D
I think the neglect here is very much points to two directions. One of them is on China as a field in a way hasn't produced enough anthropological theory to be considered as a paradigm for anthropologists to theorizing non Chinese regions. So in terms of the knowledge production, that's certainly one of the things we were looking at when we writing the introduction on the. It's not a total neglect, but we would certainly put as a marginalization of Chinese or Chinese knowledge production. So. So very much that was the central idea. But we wouldn't want to with this book calling a turn because to be honest, I think it's too many turns in that topology at the moment. And then with each turn the effect is to further fragment the field. Our aim of this, one of the major aim of this booth is actually to build bridges, bridges between anthropologists who specialize in China and then anthropologists who specialize in other areas. And then together we can perhaps take China and Chinese situations and experience into consideration when we make ethological knowledge. Then together we can use more meaningful and valuable insights when we talk about the next major international moment in a way, and then building bridge also in a way crossing different ways of theorizing in. Based in different traditions. If we put that term, if we can use that term still. So one of the. When I was doing my PhD is one of the striking kind of lesson I get from my supervisor is China has always been an information provider instead of a theory provider. So. So with this calling for people to pay attention to Chinese knowledge in a way we hope to through systematic. Systematic kind of a comparison as a method which I will talk about later, I suppose, but with a proper kind of suitable method, we aim to build a bridge for further conversations.
- [16:56]
E
Yeah, I think even in the process of trying to get this thing published, we encountered some sense of the idea that many people look at China as a niche interest. You know, there was a kind of one among many potential places which as Dee says, you can go and try to apply ideas and theories generated elsewhere. We submitted to one journal where we got a range of review responses, all anonymized and the journal will remain anonymous too, for ethical considerations. But one of the responses included description of the whole project as niche and not interesting to a broad audience and why should people care about this? And I think, you know, it's of course something we should reflect on about how we build those bridges and write for an audience beyond those that are already invested in the kind of research that we do. But in a sense, you know, I think it continues to be a feature of how China fits or is understood to fit, when for a variety of reasons that we outline in the introduction, I think it sort of should count for something a little different perhaps.
- [18:23]
D
May I just add one more thing? Another bridge we want to build which comes to trying to push on in China is actually to use multiple language and involve with scholars, anthropologists, both in the Anglophone world and also in the Chinese world. So a bridge is between the west and east, so called dichotomy, which is not very helpful, but just to invoke that for the moment. Yes. So that's the, the trend I'm observing, especially after working in China for a year now, is how much Chinese scholars is building intentionally and with acute awareness to build their own theories and knowledge with their own tradition, which I personally think is not very helpful when we emphasizing too much on the differences and distinctions of each systems. So through this we want to find a way to create a channel for both anthropology of both sides to actually talk to each other. Basic.
- [19:50]
C
Yeah, exactly. I totally agree with both of you. And as maybe an early reader of this book, I personally believe this book is interesting not only for China scholar, but also for broader scholar, using qualitative case study as their method. As you talk really deeply about the issue of context, we will talk about later, and I really admire what both of you said, that the aim of this project is to build some bridges and to achieve this goal. Again, your entry point is to treat China at context and this volume treat context itself as something to be problematized, not just assume. You also draw attention to the fact that in Mandarin there are at least two partially overlapping notions as context as the immediate situation of speaking, and Beijing as context, as background or environment more broadly.
- [20:39]
B
So how do you understand context in.
- [20:41]
C
This book as you thinking of it mainly as background, as milieu condition, or something else? And what does it mean in practice to treat context as both a grounding and heuristic?
- [20:54]
D
Thank you for this question, for the clarification. Actually, when we proposed the title of the book, we also proposed the Chinese version of it and because the complicated issues of printing in Britain, so they can only incorporate the English title into it, but not Chinese one. So the Chinese title we actually wanted to put in was Beijing Zhong Guo. So with these two means of context, people often talk about the Yujing, the part of. Especially in literary studies and early interpreted from anthropology. But what we. Personally I was very interested in three kind of aspects of theories. One of them is communication studies, in which context is. Uncontextualization is a key notion. And then also as my affective encounters, I actually paid a lot of attention into affect theories. And then. So with these two key kind of a theory, I was thinking in what ways Chinese expansion and Chinese engagement globally have a different characteristics with the. If we can call it globalizations in the 90s started in the 90s. So by thinking that, I started reading actually by accident, Francis Julian and his book on the. It's a concept very difficult to translate actually. And then. And then his work actually gave me more inspirations onto how to think about Chinese strategies, global strategies, in what ways they're trying to use this concept of Shu to embedding themselves into the. Onto the global stage without a concrete. Without more concrete kind of effects, but also. But only with a tendencies or energy. So yeah, together with. Again with the communication studies concepts of context. So I find it can give me a clear framework, a clearer framework to articulate this. Notion. So that's. Yeah, that's how this context come about. Just to say very much the book we use context was to very much about background and conditions, especially the background which creates a certain type of affect. That's how I conceptualizing the. Of course, with the contributions of Andrea and Ed. They may have a different notion of the concept in different ways.
- [24:22]
E
I mean, it's definitely the case that you did majority of the theoretical work in terms of elaborating what this term is. But I think just sort of quite simplistically put on a sort of ethnographic level. We're also interested in the presence of China inflected dynamics flows, you know, things in all sorts of environments, ethnographic settings where people work. Even if those things are not part of what people focus on, you know, they should be assumed as part of the ordinary backgrounds that structures how people live their lives, live ethical or moral or kind of everyday existences, and set the context for people making their decisions and forming relationships and so on. And so I think we're just arguing for an attunement as well to those background phenomena as normal as ordinary and not as some remarkable niche or specific thing. Because, you know, it's clearly a truism at this point to say that China is a global presence and a powerful agent on all sorts of levels. And I think that should be registered ethnographically by anthropologists doing research in all kinds of environments.
- [25:59]
D
Let me add one more point. Context. This concept is useful in another way because another focus of this book in terms of theorizing is very much focusing on the interactive part of ordinary activities people can bring to the world and also to the to the academic studies. So context in this way is not fixed. The way we use it is not fixed. It's very much constantly co created by the actors and interactors within certain scenario and then through their interactions context change and also needs to be recontextualized by anthropologists at least, or by any analyst analyst. So that's why we find the context concepts is very uncontextualization as kind of activity is very useful.
- [27:20]
C
Perfect. Thank you very much for giving this elaboration of the keyword of this edited volume. And for me it makes full sense that you actually began with the Chinese title Beijing Zhong Guo, because I myself always made difficulties translating the English word context to Chinese. And in turn when I translate difficult, you know, different Chinese words into contexts such as Beijing, Huang, Jing or Yujing, I feel guilty because I do some simplification of the original word. But I think this book just give us such a reminder about the complexity of this word and do some very important theoretical work. And also in the introduction you actually emphasized that approaching China as context does not mean embracing ontological relativism like Dr. Wu said, is really a more interactive and procedural perspective. So how do you propose that anthropologists attend to China's growing sociological presence as threat, wish, opportunity or horizon without, you know, reinforing a fixed Chineseness or falling back into familiar binaries such as China versus the west, which is a tendency more and more popular in place worlds.
- [28:39]
D
Yes, this is a very important question, at least to me, because we see there's certain dilemmas when we study China, especially when trying to promote China as a kind of important partner in terms of theory making or knowledge making, especially considering the rising power and domination of Chinese state. And then also the Chinese state itself is imposing its own version of a decentralized China and centralized Chinese tradition onto the social scientific kind of fields in China. So in what ways when we are talking about China as important partner in knowledge making, but also we need to keep in mind what we are not really standing with the Chinese state to some extent. Otherwise we become a become a promoter of the power and promoter domination. So to me, that's one of the major concerns because during my field work, actually I did observe lots of Chinese policies are being implemented and made and implemented at that time, specifically talking about decolonization and also building a third world alliance through a shared colonial history, etc. Etc. To insert its power into Zambian society by acting against and argue against the West. So this way and this rhetorical strategy caused more problems if we don't treat it carefully, especially when we're doing research in the, for example, Africa or in Latin America, where the societies actually had no power, no barking powers when they're dealing with the powerful states. So that's in a way give me these kind of reflections in this book. I didn't want to push on the essentializing all the strong version of relativism of China, but to engage with some kind of different ways of different perspectives to kind of understanding and then to analyze China. One of them is actually to use the again to use the concept of contextualization of context to engage with effective kind of effects and influences without giving a decentralized notion of what China is. And the other one is one of the approach we want to encourage scholars to seriously engage with is comparison is China. And whoever is going to be the second partner or third partner into the systematic comparisons. When we study Chinese phenomenons through comparisons, hopefully we can achieve sort of objective with quotation marks, understandings. And then the third strategy we try to engage with is actually emphasizing on the process, emphasizing on the interactive nature of this, of this expansion to show even though there is increasing clear tendencies from the state, but actually on the ground, if we look into the interactive process, people having certain say and certain influence, and these started creating different kind of a social space, even when the global China as a dominant power. The fourth one really, as one of the chapters in the book talked about, especially Caroline Country's chapter, we tend to see China not as a fixed concept, but as a ever changing theological kind of notion, that is how local people, when they interact with certain aspects of the Chinese activities or certain Chinese industries, or in everyday life, how they understand China. So it's a token, more like token and dialogical type of understanding from the field, rather than how as the scholars, we impose the understanding of what China is.
- [34:28]
C
And also I want to talk about one specific chapter in this volume written by Dr. Hans Stemuller. He argues that China specialists have sometimes either adopted contextual frames wholesale from Other disciplines or I always focus so heavily on context that substance become elusive and ethnographies risk becoming social commentary that is only about China at specific moments.
- [34:54]
B
So from your perspective as editors, how.
- [34:56]
C
Can anthropologists working on China related issue better navigate question of scale, Another very important word in anthropology today Avoiding on the one hand overly simplified uses of China as total categories, thinking about China as a very specific, very special culture in a pretty fixed way and on the other hand an overwhelming accumulation of contextual detail that makes hard to produce anything portable or comparative.
- [35:28]
D
To me it's very difficult to get the scale of China right. I mean, it is. Even the geographic is very difficult in what ways is not a continent, to be honest and then in what ways is not empire. But I want to highlight a distinction which is when we talk about China which is in. In chapter five of these collective volumes, Hans Zamila was mainly talking from his experience, I. E. China in terms of a nation bounded. And then what we are focusing here in this volume is very much on global. So global China and China. To me personally, I do not think we should mix them up conceptually but in terms of theory making, the conundrum exists. The conundrum has Danlo raised in this chapter. That is because Chinese state's power and then anthropology's traditional role within this power dynamics comes with knowledge production. Specifically talking about how Muslim Chinese anthropologists. Chinese anthropologists in a way born in China and educated either in China or in America or UK tend to study China as the first project and then to maintain, in order to maintain the critical stance anthropologists are trained for. When you study your own societies, which by incident is very powerful as well. So you lose in a way you risk. You risk of raising your own critical stance if you not precise in your fields, basically. So that makes a lot of Chinese and Polish at the moment becoming more. More and more like a social critique. So on the other hand, because the existence of a Sinology is very mature discipline itself. So there's tons of tons of things and materials we need to study when we study China. So this complexity in terms of the scale and the scale of knowledge and the scale of power dynamics make study China especially in terms of promoting any Chinese kind of knowledge system is becoming problematic to me. I haven't really found the most suitable proper way forward, rather just doing, as mentioned in the last question, doing systematic comparisons. Hopefully through comparisons we can achieve some sort of common ground when it comes to getting the scale right.
- [39:01]
E
Yeah. One thing I'll add in the realm of Personal experience like that, which, yeah, Han Steinmuller very eloquently describes in the chapter, is similar to his reflections on what you do when you're confronted in your own field site as an anthropologist doing ethnographic work with a profusion of already published materials about that place, providing huge amounts of. Of detail going back, of course, in the case of China, many hundreds of years or even thousands of years, you know, from literature or fictional works that might have been produced in relation to the place you are to some of these records gazetteers. Right. The defunct kind of tradition that exists across a huge range of locations and where that figures in your analysis and indeed in the ethnographic kind of material and your contextualization of that that you supply is not unique to China, of course, but it is a notable feature of fieldwork in an environment in many Chinese settings that you're researching something that a place and potentially people who have been writing and theorizing about themselves for a very long time in a way that is accessible to you and therefore can't really be ignored or overlooked. And it's not that we're implying that people who do work in, for example, societies that have not, you know, been writing about themselves for thousands of years, whether that's because they didn't write their language or because that wasn't something that they were inclined to do even if they did have written language. But, you know, it is a difficult sort of practical and theoretical conundrum which you're faced with because of course, the more of that locally produced thinking you incorporate, the greater risk you run of, you know, removing the setting you're working in from anything that is easily relatable to broader comparative environments, potentially anyway. So, I mean, that's. Han Steinmuller is doing a much more sophisticated sort of breakdown of the dilemmas and issues that arise out of that sort of situation. But from a purely experiential perspective, I would say that that's a very relatable feature of his contribution to the volume.
- [41:46]
C
Exactly, exactly.
- [41:47]
B
Thank you for elaboration. And to some extent, I think this issue of scale still echoes Dr. Wu's.
- [41:55]
C
Previous commentary about how Chinese anthropologists and also China scholar in broad deal with.
- [42:01]
B
Their relationship with a powerful state. And here what I mean is not only the PRC government, but also the bureaucratic Chinese state with a long written tradition as a major way of governance which has potent presence in different scales, which actually appeals for further and deeper self reflection of anthropologists. So several chapters in this volume show how China appears in places where we might not immediately expand it in global commodity chains like Dr. Reaper's chapter in Naming Practices and Language Politics in Professor Humphrey's chapter or in academic practices such as in Professor Zhang Yang's chapter so could you each highlight some cases from the book that in your view perfectly illustrate how China's presence quite reshapes context that might otherwise be analyzed without it what do you think these cases show us about the value of taking China seriously as part of the background of other people's leaps?
- [43:03]
D
I think every chapter in this poem is very. Is excellent in its own ways so it's very difficult to pick one or two just to very highly related to my own research that is China Africa stuff so I find Qiuyu's ethnographic observations resonance more with my thinking and my concerns what this new Chinese trends of Buddhist expansion humanistic Buddhism especially into Southern Africa and part of the Eastern Africa countries really gives a new how to say a new type of engagement I. E. From her observation the orphanage the Buddhist temples and mountains are building in Tanzania is really creating a sort of third space for civil society why third is because first it's a African state is. Is not really creating any kind of a welfare space for the local orphans and local marginalized people the international NGOs international organizations has been trying for decades and then with its own problems and there's many many studies on this front and then here comes with a Chinese smile it offers a very different type of strategy is not intentionally creating any civil space a civil society and then but in a way by the by accident with quotation mark by accident they are building a new type of social relations and then building a new form of international ties but yet it's very complicated complicated kind of situation at the moment because they the monks themselves also need to take certain responsibilities towards to either the Chinese state or the. Or the local state but yeah save it to say it's new and then it's quite intriguing at least the worst dispecting so yeah and then also I find Alexander's case study is mostly related to my kind of theoretical concerns that is how the withdrawal of Chinese kind of investment investment in terms of the money and capital so buying purchase power withdraw from the even the European part of the world itself leaves a certain certain affect or certain desperation in a way or certain lose of another round of lose of hope yeah so those two ethnographic cases I think very well demonstrated how not just global commodity chains or infrastructures but also on multiple levels China is influencing having impact on the world in the world.
- [47:25]
E
Yeah, I think Dee's raised two very good cases there. I share his view that all the chapters are the best. But just to add briefly on Alessandro Ripa's chapter also partly because it, you know, at least Alain's sort of background in research is maybe also close to my own biases in borderland regions and so on. I think the case there that he illustrates with this sort of what he calls an absent presence of Chinese actors in the field in Poland and in Mexico where he's doing his research, you know, is very indicative, exactly as he says, of the kind of concerns we want to foreground. Because he's showing a kind of imprint, a sort of spectral residue or a sort of change of relationships that has emerged out of the previous presence and action of China coded people and things, even if they're not there anymore. And I think by highlighting the way that things that don't seem to be there in terms of an actual human actor can still influence a social setting, he's doing quite useful work. I just feel like my comparative sort of sense of why we should be thinking about China often comes back to. To what extent is something from the US treated similarly or dissimilarly to these kind of Chinese things that we're interested in in a global context? Because it's also the case, for example, that lots of people across the world have never met an American, just as lots of the people in Alessandro Ripper's chapter have not met actual Chinese people, and yet they sort of are discursively present. And why is it that, you know that. That China is somehow more absent and less sort of tangible than things that are coded as from the United States? You know, if you were pointing out the presence of US coded phenomena in a particular field site far from the United States itself, I think you wouldn't be, it wouldn't be suggested that you were raising some niche, weird concern because it's taken as a given that, you know, US led globalization is just part of people's lives. Whereas if you do the same thing for, for China related things, it is, it is more sort of notable. It's like, oh, that's, you know, that's odd. Partly, I guess, because it's because it's new, but also partly maybe because of. In other areas, for example, media and, and culture, people feel more familiar with Americans even if they haven't met them. They think they have because they've seen them in films maybe a lot more than they have, you know, Chinese people or Chinese actors and they have other ideas about what they represent. So yes, I think not only Alai's chapter, but his in particular kind of really draws out something that's quite important to a lot of what we're. What we're getting at here about the sort of mundane presence of things originating from China.
- [50:41]
B
Thank you very much. And I can definitely see how Doc Pover Yu begins to practice this strategy of treating China at context in your study of Donggang people in Central Asia. How their life and hope are impacted by flows of people, money and cultural material, not only the state, from China and beyond the individual case studies at the term context implies, this volume also rises important mastological questions. So from the perspective of you as editors, what methodological implications follow from treating China at context in the way you.
- [51:14]
D
Propose so very much? First, as I couple of questions ago, I mentioned that context in this volume is not a fixed notion by context. We actually want to highlight the interactive nature of not just also not in terms of ordinary people's interactions, but also on theory making, on knowledge, knowledge making. With this interactive procedural kind of notion of context, we discovered some methodology. I think very much we certainly I personally wanted to promote a. An encounter as a type of a new method to carry on to do ethnography and also to analyze ethnography in concert here by saying not taken any kind of social relations or social actions as sustainable by default, but to pay attention to moment by moment, how the social relations change and reshape and reconstructed and negotiated through people interacting with each other and then especially in what situations encounters becomes meaningful and then intentionally sustained by the actors. So that's one of the methods I encounter or ethnography of encounter. That's one of the grand schemes that what of this afterwards we may pursue. And then the other, as I said, is comparison in terms of especially in terms of analytical and theoretical part of the work here, comparison. We very much draw on the not just the explicit comparisons but also implicit comparisons and then not just two parts, but also three parts, especially for Chinese anthropologists. Because when it comes to really theorizing from ethnography, the Chinese anthropologists need to face the local knowledge and also the so called Western knowledge and also Chinese knowledge. So in a way it's a three part comparison at least. So in what ways we can make it clearer and systematic. That's more work to be done on that front, at least in my point of view. Yes, that's the two major kind of methods and the third is really personal ones I'm thinking about is how to engage rfact theories within migration studies in terms of the floor people and especially the empire building. So from a new perspective to understand global expansion. But that's still ongoing. It's very primitive at the moment, so I won't share too much about.
- [55:15]
E
Yeah, I don't think I have a whole lot else to add particularly except to say and maybe it's not exactly a methodological question per se and more to do with a sort of kind of tone or flavor added to ethnographic research. People are already very interested in capitalism, in science and technology, in lots of things. You know where it goes without saying really at this point or should that China related stuff is pretty essential. And so I guess just a kind of greater attunement to the again the ordinariness of that in the current world one can read sort of all kinds of research about for example technologies which bracket off the Chinese bit of that. And it's true that there are different ecosystems and sort of political and sociological environments in which some of this emerges which is distinctive to China. But the fact that it's so omnipresent should make it just part of a single field of study I think for people doing work in all sorts of different environments. But said that already, so maybe don't need to go into lots more detail.
- [56:41]
B
Excellent, thank you very much.
- [56:43]
C
And I really looking forward to witnessing.
- [56:45]
B
How FX theory can contribute to methodologies.
- [56:49]
C
In anthropological research on China. So I'm really looking forward to knowing.
- [56:54]
B
More about Dr. Wu's work in the future. And like Dr. Wu repeatedly talk about.
- [56:59]
C
A key hope for the book is to move toward to a situation where.
- [57:04]
B
China is not only a supplier of.
- [57:07]
C
Ethnographic data but also a partner in theory building or knowledge making.
- [57:12]
B
So if things go in the direction you hope, what might this look like concretely? Are there particular concepts, debates or future turns in anthropology?
- [57:20]
C
Although we cannot definitely predict any turns.
- [57:23]
B
Anthropology or it cannot be a turn where you think material collected from China around China could play a formative rather.
- [57:30]
C
Than merely illustrative rule.
- [57:33]
D
Yes, I wouldn't call it a term because it's not first of all, it's too many terms and then the Chinese turn anthropology has been called 50 years ago, I think so now it's time to turn back in a way to really seriously engage with the other anthropologists trying to buy. Only by embracing I think we can move forward rather than by radicalizing all. How to pronounce that word. Relativizing. Relativizing China to its room which, which it's is the trend in China at the moment because the state is really doing the promoting it, doing the work to building the Chinese social theories with Chinese characteristics. And then by one of the again and emphasize here, one of the key concerns of this book is to avoid any type of centuries. Certainly China or Sino centrism is not one we want to promote to. Nevertheless, we want to acknowledge and then to put forward at least the phenomenon Chinese and Chinese experience. And the Chinese knowledge hasn't been incorporated into the general knowledge system. So that means that doesn't mean we need to engage with the Sino centrist. So the only way, the only method is to the limits of my wisdom. It's just to do systematic comparison the comparison with the heavy historical materials and to really tease out when we talk about Chinese uniqueness, when we talk about Chinese exceptionalism, is it really that different? Because I've been traveling around in China since I came back. It's really. China is not. It's not unpainted kind of place. It's very much a mixture of different culture, different traditions, different religions and then. Yes, and in what way we need to acknowledge that as at least when we work in China. Yes. So to your question. I think the major. One of the key points I think is important is in what ways we're talking about the equalities and in knowledge production under what academic situation we need to consider the consider the complex is not dichotomy or power. It's this very, very complex, at least three. Partners within this. It's not just the Global north, global south, but also global Western, global. It's all mingled together.
- [61:14]
E
I think a part of that mingling is the presence, the work being done, including by people like you, Yadong, which is the work of anthropologists with some kind of educational upbringing, institutional backgrounds in China, but working elsewhere. Whether we like it or not, and we obviously are pro and we like it, but this kind of more bridge building or collaborative theory building, it's going to happen one way or another. Not least because anthropology is evidently a sort of boom industry in Chinese academia or at least in kind of a lot of younger scholars interests at the moment, you know, compared to 10 years ago. I think it's on people's radars to an extraordinary extent. Some of that is has been matched in institutional developments within China where universities now have more anthropology focused research centers or departments or something. And so the work of people coming out of that wave of interest is going to generate stuff which I think is, you know, it's exciting and interesting, may take a Little more time in some senses. But in a sense, I guess we are not necessarily even here to say what exactly it will mean or to say it should happen, even though we think it should really. But I guess it will happen something along these lines just by statistical fact of, of how much more anthropology is being done. You know, not as Dee says, in some siloed separate, you know, west and east or China and not China, but you know, involving this much more graded, integrated sort of Chinese component in the way that, you know, reflects the broader global reality.
- [63:19]
C
I think completely agreed.
- [63:22]
B
I think anyway, you know, we will.
- [63:24]
C
Generate something, maybe knowledge, maybe other things.
- [63:28]
B
And what we can do now is to keep more self reflective about our.
- [63:34]
C
Position to our interlocutors and also to.
- [63:37]
B
The state and also at editors. You must have had different, you know, different readers in mind.
- [63:43]
C
We're shipping this volume like China specialists.
- [63:47]
B
Like anthropologists, more generally like students, like.
- [63:49]
C
Me, and also, perhaps also scholars in related disciplines like sociology.
- [63:54]
B
So who did you see as the.
- [63:56]
C
Primary audiences for this very fascinating volume?
- [63:59]
B
And what do you hope different kinds.
- [64:01]
C
Of readers will take away from the book?
- [64:05]
D
So targeting the audience is not very the primary concern of this volume, but. But what we really want to achieve is actually to call scholars and the students the scholars to be when they see and when they trying to analyze China, pay more attention on the context. Not in terms of the context in which China appears and then and creates, but also the context as it's called Wei, when we are studying China and then is the context, especially the political context, you know, I mean, it's not to the local, but also to the international, international political context, what we are trying to analyzing because it's ever increasing tricky situation at the moment. And then if we really not careful about this, if we don't really pay special attention on this, our own positions and the political stance and the political context, when we make certain statements and certain and they would be used, it would be culted as something maybe against ourselves and by accident become complicated for violence in a way. So yes, I hope different audiences will take different reflections specific to their own situations and their own context.
- [66:04]
E
Yeah, I guess to add one specific audience maybe that might respond to this in one way, I think. And the latter part of the book kind of outlines some of the reasons for this in the fact that lots of the history of anthropology and its neighboring disciplines, sociology, ethnology within China has been focused on quite pragmatic, practical purposes perhaps, or applied, we might call it that. Not just a kind of theory building as we've already discussed that, I think may partly relate to why a very large number of Chinese doctoral students do their field work in China. It's, it's, you know, it's not unique, of course, to Chinese doctoral students, but, you know, many, I think departments in many parts of the world in anthropology will have doctoral students where all the people from Western Europe and North America are doing research just anywhere in the world. And, you know, in the, in the Pacific, in, from Saharan Africa, in different parts of Europe or Latin America or anywhere, really. Whereas almost everybody who isn't from one of those rich countries, bluntly speaking, is doing research in their own country. That was certainly the case when I was doing my PhD and people like Dee were a rarity doing research in a different place from the one that they came from. And so I guess my hope would be that more PhD students with backgrounds in China do research just anywhere, because I think part of why, you know, the people from places like Britain, where I come from, do research in all sorts of other places, as well as coming out of violent histories of colonialism and empire, come with a kind of a perceived sort of attachment to some sort of universalism, to some sort of broadly applicable body of theory and thinking that maybe for people not from those countries remains sort of perceived to be constrained and bounded in some way. I don't want to speak for anybody else, but I don't know if that's part of it. A sort of quite ambitious imperialist mindset that probably still colors a lot of, a lot of anthropologists coming from different places. Maybe I'm speaking out of them there, but this kind of, you know, confidence, if you like, or, you know, impulse to go and do research in all sorts of different places, I think should ride on at the back of the understanding that again, China is part of the ordinary background of a lot of things going on anywhere in the world. And that, you know, even if you're not explicitly researching China, you can be sure that, you know, you're doing something that's related, whatever you're doing and wherever you're doing it. So, I don't know. I hope that's not too provocative a set of suggestions, but I guess a more generalized, collaborative and border crossing type of ethnographic research would also be one of my aspirations. For people who read this and any other books, really excellent.
- [69:29]
B
I think it's really provocative.
- [69:30]
C
And in terms of this hope of.
- [69:32]
B
Encouraging Chinese students and also maybe students from other countries not so rich do research elsewhere, I tend to think this is both a political economic issue, but also an issue of imagination. And I believe for this book it can provide a source of provoking imagination for many students. So it will be really helpful for them and also for me. As we are nearing the end of our conversation, I'd like to ask each of you about your current and future projects. Also, how has working together on this interesting volume shaped the question you are now curious about? And are there any particular collaborations or directions that you are planning to pursue at the current moment?
- [70:14]
E
Well, yeah, I think this has been a tremendously fruitful project for me in thinking about some of the kind of ways that we've discussed throughout this conversation that China centered thinking is, is integrated otherwise into broader global trends on the level of theory, on the level of everyday theory that we encounter ethnographically. And one area that I've been interested in exploring in this regard is how the ideas of nationhood or ethnicity may, you know, be changing or kind of sort of being reappraised on a global canvas as a result of greater Chinese power. I mean, I've already alluded briefly to some of the kind of ethno national implications of Chinese analyses of the invasion of Ukraine, but on a broader canvas. And yeah, Dong, you already mentioned some of the more recent work I've been doing in Kazakhstan on Dongan community there. I'm kind of curious about, you know, among many of the other things that we see radiating beyond Chinese borders, how might the very paradigm through which ethnicity and nationhood and indeed race is understood be altered or be under some sort of going, undergoing some changes in the same way? Because among many other universalisms, it seems to me that that is a key one, which it might be reasonable to think if we understood nationhood to have emerged at a time of particular socioeconomic and technological transformation. Well, maybe we're in an age a bit like that now in a different context. And so what's happening to the nation? Maybe a bit of a ridiculously broad question, but that's something that has really helped or that this project has really helped me kind of think my way into.
- [72:26]
D
In terms of my plan. I was planning to go back to Zambia to study Shaolin temple, especially kung fu monks, and then how Chinese monks, the training, and also how Chinese monks are training the local Zambian office about martial arts, because my own kind of laziness delayed this project for so many years. And now many brilliant works has come out and with a similar kind of area studies. So I was thinking another kind of field work possibilities. And then by accident, I used to one of my friends he knows Tamwan from North Philippine Islands so and especially on the Catholicism and Catholic Church activities. So I I once I heard that I thought this is a very good opportunity because one of my theoretical interests that's always been in emotion and affect and then the Pacific is such a key area which the anthropology of emotion and anthropology of affect was developed. So I might go to Philippines and then do some group work and then see what comes out that in terms of global China not very much in terms of phenomenon is not very much related but somehow related because Philippines is one of the countries are not one belt by rules policy yet so gimme and certain distance to observe the local China even further further from comparing with Zambia the other is more related in terms of theory but like I said I'm always interested in how affects takes effect in the Untied building and the global power expansion. So that might give me more insights when we observing from the North Philippine Islands. Awesome.
- [75:26]
B
Fascinating. Thank you for sharing this project and I think both of your plan projects sounds fascinating. Thank you very much for joining me today and for this thoughtful conversation and sharing all your, you know, existing journeys and also your future plans.
- [75:44]
E
Thank you very much. Adam.
- [75:46]
D
Thank you. Thank you.
- [75:47]
B
Thank you. It's my pleasure. And in today's episode, I've been speaking with Dr. Udi and Dr. Ed Pulford about the additive volume China Ed Context, Anthropology, Post Globalization and the Neglect of China, published by Manchester University Press last year. For listeners interested in China studies in global China or in how we think about context at the Conceptual Tool in Social science, this book offers a timely and provocative set of insights and case studies. I'm Yadong Li and you've been listening to the New Books Network. We hope to see you next time.