Afleveringen
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John B. LOURDUSAMY and Tiago SARAIVA, interviewed by Gonçalo SANTOS and Jun ZHANG on 13/August/2024
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Dr. Lourdusamy and Dr. Saraiva present their recently published book, Moving Crops and the Scales of History, speaking on behalf of a larger collective of authors that includes also Francesca Bray and Barbara Hahn. The episode begins with a discussion of key concepts such as the âcropscapeâ and the âscales of history,â showing how these concepts challenge stereotypical understandings of historical processes, breaking open traditional historical structures of period, geography and direction and revealing the significance of previously invisible actors and forces. Significant attention is given to the process of book composition. The authors provide unique insights on the process of writing and the criteria that were used to select crops and stories. We also learn that some crops and stories were left out of the book and the reasons why such crops and stories were not included. Finally, the authors explain how they came together as a collective and discuss the virtues and challenges of the pioneering collaborative model of writing developed in the book.
FEATURED AUTHORS
John B. LOURDUSAMY is an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Science, Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Tiago SARAIVA is a Full Professor of History at Drexel University, co-editor of the journal History and Technology, and a member of the new Cambridge History of Technology editorial team.
BOOK WEBSITE
Francesca Bray, Barbara Hahn, John B. Lourdusamy and Tiago Saraiva. 2024. Moving Crops and the Scales of History. Yale University Press (Yale Agrarian Studies Series).
Awarded the Edelstein Prize 2024 by the Society for the History of Technology and the Bentley Book Prize 2024 by the World History Association
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Lin ZHANG, interviewed by Joseph BOSCO on 13 December 2023
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this episode, Dr. Zhang discusses the definition of the âentrepreneurâ and why it is important. She also discusses why the idea that entrepreneurship would decrease inequality has become so popular in among PRC leaders. The author also explains the significance of her three cases, and elaborates on the life course of one of the interviewees. She also talks about the tension between seeing entrepreneurship as culturally important and avoiding cultural essentialism.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Dr. Lin ZHANG, author of the book The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy, published in 2023 by Columbia University Press. Dr. Zhang earned a PhD in Communication at the University of Southern California, and is currently an Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at the University of New Hampshire, focusing on critical innovation studies, knowledge and digital labor, and intersectionality.
AUTHOR WEBSITE
University website: https://cola.unh.edu/person/lin-zhang
Personal website: https://linzhangweb.org/
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Stevan HARRELL, interviewed by Loretta Ieng-tak LOU on 9/December/2023
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
This episode features a conversation with Stevan Harrell about his recent masterful overview of China's environmental processes from the twentieth century to the present. The author discusses how the âecological historyâ approach differs from more conventional approaches to environmental history. The conversation then touches on two of the many topics covered in the book, food and population, to illustrate the value of approaching the past through the concepts and frameworks of systems ecology. A variety of food-related topics are discussed, from the early struggles to feed Chinaâs population, to the recent effects of meatier diets on Chinaâs agriculture and feed imports, to alternative food movements among Chinaâs urbanites worried about food security. Finally, Chinaâs current population crisis and demographic decline are considered from an ecological perspective and taking into account the trade-offs between economic development and ecological resilience. This episode provides a brief introduction to a book that has been hailed as a âtour de forceâ and as âessential reading for anyone seeking to better understand Chinaâs environmental predicament.â
FEATURED AUTHOR
Stevan HARRELL taught anthropology, China Studies, and environmental studies at the University of Washington from 1974 to 2017. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Sanxia, Taiwan beginning in 1970 and in Panzhihua Municipality (from 1988), Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture (from 1993), and Jiuzhaigou National Park (2005), all in Sichuan. His current project is a history of agricultural change in Whatcom County, Washington.
AUTHOR WEBSITE: http://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/
BOOKâS OFFICIAL WEBPAGE: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295751696/an-ecological-history-of-modern-china/
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Silvia LINDTNER, interviewed by Joseph BOSCO on 25 October 2022
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this episode, Dr. Lindtner explains what is the âmakerâ movement, and why she focused on this phenomenon. She discusses how she conducted ethnographic research in companies that can often be wary of outsiders, especially foreigners. She also discusses how making was appropriated by the Chinese Communist Party as part of the stateâs tactics of hegemony, functioning not by coercion but by promising happiness. She explains two key concepts in the book, the âsocialist pitchâ and the term for maker, chuangke ććźą, which has slightly different implications in Chinese. She also talks about the assumption many people make that there is something particularly Chinese about making, and how it has to become part of makersâ pitch for investors.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Dr. Silvia LINDTNER is the author of the book Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize from the Society for East Asian Anthropology, and the 2022 Joseph Levenson Prize for China Scholarship from the Association for Asian Studies. Dr. Lindtner is an anthropologist, and Associate Professor at the University of Michigan in the School of Information, and Director of the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing (ESC).
AUTHOR WEBSITE
University website: https://www.si.umich.edu/people/silvia-lindtner
Personal website: http://www.silvialindtner.com/
BOOK'S OFFICIAL WEBPAGE
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691207674/prototype-nation
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Gonçalo SANTOS, interviewed by Jun ZHANG on May 26, 2022
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
This podcast episode discusses village life in China today after more than four decades of radical programs of urbanization and modernization. As China became a predominantly urban and industrial society with increasing levels of affluence, the government expanded its capacity to implement large-scale programs of development aimed at turning âbackwardâ Han Chinese peasant populations into modern âcivilizedâ subjects more aligned with global and national standards of modernity. In this episode, anthropologist Gonçalo Santos discusses this technocratic transition from the perspective of impoverished rural communities, drawing on two decades of longitudinal field research in one rural township in Guangdong Province. Santos shares his views on what has changed in rural communities over the decades and why the countryside will continue to play a central role in the future of China.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Gonçalo Santos is an anthropologist and a leading international scholar in the field of China studies. He is an Assistant Professor of Socio-cultural Anthropology in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Coimbra. He is also a Researcher at the Research Centre for Anthropology and Health (CIAS), University of Coimbra, where he coordinates the Research Group âTechnoscience, Society, and Environment.â He held previous positions at the London School of Economics, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Chinese Village Life Today (University of Washington Press, 2021) and the co-editor of Transforming Patriarchy (University of Washington Press, 2017). He is also a member of the Research Group "Culture and Society" at Georgetown University (Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues), and is the founder and the director of the International Research Network Sci-Tech Asia.
AUTHORâS WEBSITE
https://gdsantos.com/
BOOK'S OFFICIAL WEBPAGE
https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295747408/chinese-village-life-today/
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Andrew KIPNIS, interviewed by Jun ZHANG and Gonçalo SANTOS on October 28, 2021
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
This podcast episode features a conversation with Andrew Kipnis on his recent work on China's changing funerary practices in the context of powerful forces of urbanization. It examines how spatial reorganization during Chinese urbanization problematized death, and how newly emerged forms of familial organization, stranger sociality, and economic restructuring were reflected in changing funerary rituals and the rise of the funerary industry. It also discusses some of the unique features of Chinese patterns of governing death and how existing frameworks of governance influence and are influenced by everyday practices of urban memorialization. Finally, it considers moral debates on the commercialization of death and the place of secularization and ghost stories in contemporary urban China.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Andrew B. Kipnis is a professor in the Dept. of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His latest book is The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (2021). He is also the author of From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press 2016), Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics and Schooling in China (University of Chicago Press 2011), China and Post Socialist Anthropology (Eastbridge 2008), and Producing Guanxi (Duke University Press 1997). From 2006-2015 he was co-editor of The China Journal and he is currently co-editor of Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
AUTHORâS WEBSITE
https://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/memberprofile/andrew-kipnis/
BOOK'S OFFICIAL WEBPAGE (Available for free download):
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520381971/the-funeral-of-mr-wang
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Lena KAUFMANN, interviewed by Joseph BOSCO on 9 Sept 2021
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this podcast episode, Dr. Kaufmann discusses what she means by the term âsociotechnical,â and âpaddy field predicament,â the fact that in the area she researched, paddy fields need to be continuously planted or they become damaged and less productive. We also discuss her argument that technology is not simply a matter of linear progress, and whether her argument is really different from the âappropriate technologyâ argument of the 1960âs and â70s. Furthermore, given that her data covers almost a decade, she discusses whether what she describes is just a transitional situation of multiple technologies, and whether there is a strong tendency for labor saving technology. We also talk about deskilling, and what she calls the âskill turn.â At the end, we talk about how her book was published âOpen Access.â
FEATURED AUTHOR
Lena KAUFMAN is the author of the book Rural-Urban Migration and Agro-Technological Change in Post-Reform China published in 2021 by Amsterdam University Press (available for download open access from the publisher here: https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463729734/rural-urban-migration-and-agro-technological-change-in-post-reform-china or from JSTOR here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1hp5hkt
AUTHOR WEBSITE
https://www.isek.uzh.ch/en/anthropology/Staff/associatedresearchers/lenakaufmann.html
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
You can also watch a webinar presentation by Dr. Kaufmann on 'The Agriculture-Migration Nexus in China' (Sci-Tech Asia Webinar #10, 27 April 2021) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INueUZFE8h4
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Lyle FEARNLEY, interviewed by Jun ZHANG on 11 August 2021.
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this podcast episode, we discuss how virus surveillance systems identified China as an "epicenter" or source of pandemics, and discusses how these scientific approaches drive a broader "geography of blame." Drawing on Fearnley's book on avian and pandemic influenza science in China, we explore why wet markets, wild animal foods, and China's rural farmers are repeatedly blamed for the emergence of new diseases.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Lyle FEARNLEY is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). He is the author of Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China's Pandemic Epicenter (Duke University Press, 2020), which is now available open-access on the OAPEN platform.
AUTHOR WEBSITE:
https://hass.sutd.edu.sg/faculty/lyle-fearnley/
BOOK'S OFFICIAL WEBPAGE:
https://www.dukeupress.edu/virulent-zones
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Nicolas STERNSDORFF-CISTERNA, interviewed by Jun ZHANG on 28 July 2021.
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
This podcast episode discusses the aftermath of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and food safety. The accident forced people to confront new risks in their lives and to question whether government policies would keep them safe. This led to the emergence of social movements in which citizens learned about the properties of radiation and how to source food that they considered safe.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Nicolas Sternsdorff-Cisterna is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University, and the author of the book "Food Safety After Fukushima: Scientific Citizenship and the Politics of Risk" (2019, University of Hawaiâi Press) . He specializes in the study of food and science and technology with a focus on Japan. He is a member of the transnational research network Sci-Tech Asia.
AUTHOR'S PERSONAL WEBSITE
http://www.nicolas.academy
BOOK'S OFFICIAL WEBPAGE
https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/food-safety-after-fukushima-scientific-citizenship-and-the-politics-of-risk/
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Susan GREENHALGH, interviewed by Joseph BOSCO on 19 February 2021.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Susan Greenhalgh is the John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, and the co-editor of the recently published volume, Can Science and Technology Save China? (Cornell University Press, 2020). Her two most recent books are Fat-Talk Nation: The Human Costs of Americaâs War on Fat (2017) and Cultivating Global Citizens: Population in the Rise of China (2010). In this podcast, she discusses how in China, âstate-market-science/[and] technology are tangled tightly together to form a knot of governing logics, practices, and institutions.â She discusses Chinaâs scientism, and why people continue to have faith in science even though it has not lived up to the promise. She explains what she means with the statement that âscience is contextual,â and gives examples of how âChinese science is distinctly Chinese.â She also has some interesting thoughts on the recent concern in the US press over the competition with China in science and technology.
AUTHORâS PERSONAL WEBSITE
http://susan-greenhalgh.com/
BOOK'S OFFICIAL WEBPAGE
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501747021/can-science-and-technology-save-china/
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Li ZHANG, interviewed by Joseph BOSCO on February 5, 2021.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Li ZHANG is a professor in the Dept. of Anthropology at the University of CaliforniaâDavis, and the author of the new book Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy (2020, University of California Press). Her two previous single-author books are Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China's Floating Population (2001), and In Search of Paradise: Middle Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis (2010). She is also the co-editor of the recently published edited volume, Can Science and Technology Save China? (2020).This podcast discusses the rise of psychotherapy in Kunming, and how part of the appeal of psychotherapy in China is that it comes from the West and claims to be scientific, but the therapeutic techniques donât always fit Chinese notions of personhood, sociability and efficacy in healing, so have to be adapted and localized. We also discuss the scientism and blind faith in science that makes psychotherapy such a popular fad in China today, though psychotherapy nevertheless appears to be helpful to clients.
AUTHOR'S PERSONAL WEBSITE
https://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/people/lizhang
BOOK'S OFFICIAL WEBPAGE
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520344198/anxious-china
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Jun Zhang (City University of Hong Kong), Interviewed by Cornell University Press in March 2020.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Jun Zhang is Assistant Professor of Asian and International Studies at City University of Hong Kong. This episode is about her new book Driving toward Modernity: Cars and the Lives of the Middle Class in Contemporary China. In the interview, Jun talks about what it is like to be the first person in your family to ever own a car, the massive increase of cars, and car owners, within China over the past two decades, and how the Chinese, particularly the middle class, have thrived as well as struggled with this unprecedented influx of new automobiles into the country. For more details on the book, please visit the Cornell Press website: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/97815âŠbookTabs=1
AUTHOR'S PERSONAL WEBSITE
https://cityu-hk.academia.edu/JunZhang
Copyright Â©ïž 2020 by Cornell University Press. All rights reserved.
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Edwin A. Schmitt (Olso University), Interviewed by Joseph Bosco in April 2019.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Edwin A. Schmitt is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo in Norway. He has a PhD in Anthropology from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he wrote a thesis on environmental consciousness, which included examining the issue of air pollution in Chengdu, China. He is currently a member of the interdisciplinary project â Airborne: Pollution, Climate Change, and Visions of Sustainability in China â at the University of Oslo. This team has collaborated with scholars at Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, and Oregon State University to examine air pollution in China from multiple perspectives. Prof. Schmittâs most recent research focuses primarily on the historical role of energy institutions in China and what that means for air pollution.
Links to articles mentioned in the podcast:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00629-5
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/Rumors-Of-Chinese-Subsidy-Cuts-Sends-Shockwaves-Through-Solar-Markets.html
AUTHOR WEBSITE
https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/people/aca/chinese-studies/temporary/edwinsc/
CORRECTING NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
After the interview, Edwin realized he had made a mistake at minute 13:20. He said that coal-fired power plants produce 4 million GW of electricity for the grid, but the correct number should be about 930 GW. Please see the following website for details: https://www.iea.org/weo/china/
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Fazil Moradi (LOST), Interviewed by Gonçalo Santos in December 2018 at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Fazil Moradi is a postdoctoral researcher, member of the Law, Organization, Science and Technology (LOST) Research Network and an Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Halle-Wittenberg and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology with a dissertation on the translations of al-AnfÄl genocide in Kurdistan-Iraq. His ethnographic inquiries are located in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, covering modernityâs infrastructures of violence â genocide-feminicide, effects of chemical weapons, ecological harm, global drones â, technoscience of evidence & testimony, aesthetics of violence, translation and hospitality. He teaches at the University of Halle-Wittenberg and is completing a monograph entitled, Hosting Genocide-Feminicide: On the Living On of the Un Translatable in Kurdistan, Iraq.
AUTHOR'S PERSONAL WEBSITE
https://lost-research-group.org/staff/fazil-moradi/
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Moradi, Fazil and Richard Rottenburg. (2019). âIntroduction: Evidence â On the Translatability of Modernityâs Violence.â Critical Studies (Special Issue, âEvidence: On the Translatability of Modernityâs Violence.â Edited by F. Moradi and R. Rottenburg).
Moradi, Fazil (2019). âUn Translatable Death, Evidentiary Bodies: After â Auschwitz and Murambi â in Translation.â Critical Studies.
Moradi, Fazil (2018) âLove and Feminicide in Kurdistan,â tr. into Sorani Kurdish by Nabz Samad, Culture Magazine 3: 21-27.
Moradi, Fazil (2017) âGenocide in Translation: On Memory, Justice, and Future Remembrance.â in Memory and Genocide: On What Remains and the Possibility of Representation , edited by F. Moradi, R. Buchenhorst, and M. Six-Hohenbalken. London and New York: Routledge.
Moradi, Fazil (2016). âThe Force of Writing in Genocide: On Sexual Violence in the al-AnfÄl Operations and Beyond,â In Gender Violence in Peace and War: States of Complicity. Edited by V. Sanford et al. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, pp.102-115.
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Glenn Davis Stone (Washington University), Interviewed by Joseph Bosco in December 2018, St. Louis, Missouri.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Glenn Davis Stone is a Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Washington University in St Louis. Professor Stoneâs research focuses on environmental anthropology, political ecology, food studies and science & technology studies. He has conducted fieldwork among nonindustrial farmers in West Africa, India, the Philippines and North America, and he has been researching and writing on Genetically Modified crops since 2002, and was the author of a major review article on The Anthropology of Genetically Modified Cropsâ in the Annual Review of Anthropology in 2010. In this podcast, Prof. Stone discusses how he came to research GMOs, why he opposes both the praising and condemning of GM crops, why he thinks GMOs are so polarizing, and what he thinks anthropologists can contribute to the debates about GMOs. He also explains why he has done research on âheirloom riceâ among the Ifugao in the Philippines. At the end of the podcast, Dr. Stone discusses the controversy over the use of CRISPR technology on humans.
AUTHOR'S PERSONAL WEBSITE
https://pages.wustl.edu/stone
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Agriculture as Spectacle. (Journal of Political Ecology, 2018)
Farmer Knowledge Across the Commodification Spectrum. (Journal of Agrarian Change; with A. Flachs, 2018)
Dreading CRISPR: GMOâs, Honest Brokers, and Mertonian Transgressions. (Geographical Review, 2017)
The Ox Fall Down: Path Breaking and Technology Treadmills in Indian Cotton Agriculture. (Journal of Peasant Studies; with A. Flachs, 2017)
Heirloom Rice in Ifugao: An Anti-commodity in the Process of Commodification (Journal of Peasant Studies; with D. Glover, 2017)
Towards a General Theory of Agricultural Knowledge Production: Environmental, Social and Didactic Learning (Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 2016)
Disembedding Grain: Golden Rice, the Green Revolution, and Heirloom Seeds in the Philippines (Agriculture & Human Values; with D. Glover, 2016)
CRISPR and the Monsanto problem (Fieldquestions, 2016)
Biotechnology, Schismogenesis, and the Demise of Uncertainty (Journal of Law & Policy, 2015)
The FoxNewsization of GMOâs (EnviroSociety, 2015)
Biosecurity in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Bioinsecurity and Human Vulnerability, 2014)
Trials of Genetically Modified Food (Food Culture & Society; with C. Kudlu, 2013)
GM Crops: From St Louis to India (Anthropology News, 2012)
Contradictions in the Last Mile: Suicide, Culture & E-Agriculture (Science, Technology & Human Values, 2011)
Anthropology of Genetically Modified Crops (Annual Review of Anthropology, 2010)
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Stevan Harrell (University of Washington), Interviewed by Gonçalo Santos in June 2018, Whatcom County, WA.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Stevan Harrell is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Washington. Steve is one of the most well known anthropologists of China. He has been doing empirical research in China and Taiwan for more than four decades. He has published a large number of books and journal articles on diverse topics such as family, kinship, fertility, aging, and gender, as well as religion and ethnicity. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Steve started doing fieldwork with ethnic minority communities in Sichuan province. Work in Liangshan, Sichuan, led Steve to develop a strong interest in environmental sustainability and community development. He is currently writing a new book on the history of modern and contemporary china from an ecological perspective. In this podcast, Steve shares his insights on Chinaâs environmental crisis, its historical roots, as well as some of the future challenges faced by the country in the age of the Anthropocene.
AUTHORâS PERSONAL WEBSITE
http://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/index.html
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Greening East Asia. The Rise of the Eco-developmental State (University of Washington Press, 2020, co-edited with Ashley Esarey, Mary Alice Haddad, and Joanna I. Lewis)
Transforming Patriarchy. Chinese Families in the 21st Century (University of Washington Press, 2017, co-edited with Gonçalo Santos)
Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China (University of Washington Press, 2001)
Human Families (Westview Press, 1997)
Chinese Historical Micro-Demography (University of California Press, 1996)
Cultural Encounters on Chinaâs Ethnic Frontiers (University of Washington Press, 1995)
Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era (University of California Press, 1993)
Ploughshare Village. Culture and Context in Taiwan (University of Washington Press, 1982)
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Dagmar SchÀfer (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), Interviewed by Gonçalo D. Santos on March 22, 2018, Hong Kong.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Dagmar SchĂ€fer is the Director of Department III, Artifacts, Action, Knowledge at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She is Honorary Professor in History of Technology at Technische UniversitĂ€t, Berlin; Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Sinology, Freie UniversitĂ€t, Berlin; and Guest Professor at Tianjin University (2018â2021). She received her doctorate and habilitation from the University of WĂŒrzburg and has worked and studied at Zhejiang University, Peking University, National Tsing Hua University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Manchester, among others. She was previously a Guest Professor at the School of History and Culture of Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Dagmar SchĂ€fer's interest is the history and sociology of technology of China, focusing on the paradigms configuring the discourse on technological development, past and present. She has published widely on the Premodern history of China (Song-Ming) and technology, materiality, the processes and structures that lead to varying knowledge systems, and the changing role of artifactsâtexts, objects, and spacesâin the creation, diffusion, and use of scientific and technological knowledge. Her current research focus is the historical dynamics of concept formation, situations, and experiences of action through which actors have explored, handled and explained their physical, social, and individual worlds.
Her monograph The Crafting of the 10,000 Things (University of Chicago Press, 2011) won the History of Science Society: Pfizer Award in 2012 and the Association for Asian Studies: Joseph Levenson Prize (Pre-1900) in 2013. Dagmar SchĂ€fer was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2020âthe most prestigious research award in Germany, it is given to âexceptional scientists and academics for their outstanding achievements in the field of research.â
FURTHER READING
SchÀfer, Dagmar. 2011. The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China. University of Chicago Press.
AUTHOR WEBSITE
https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/users/dschaefer
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Michael HERZFELD, interviewed by Gonçalo SANTOS on March 6, 2018, Hong Kong.
FEATURED AUTHOR
Michael Herzfeld is Ernest E. Monrad Research Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. He is also the former and founding Director (2014-18) of the Thai Studies Program, Asia Center, Harvard University; Senior Advisor on Critical Heritage Studies to the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, and Visiting Professor at Leiden University. He is also Chiang Jang Scholar and Visiting Professor at Shanghai International University, and Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Arts, Melbourne University. His research interests cover social theory, history of anthropology, social poetics, knowledge politics, politics of history and heritage, crypto-colonialism, artisanship, and the practice of comparison, and is ethnographically focused on Europe (especially Greece & Italy) and Southeast Asia (specifically Thailand). He is the author of eleven books (most recently Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok, 2016) and Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics and the Real Life of States, Institutions, and Societies, 2016), and is the producer of two films about Rome and currently working on two films about Bangkok. Herzfeld was Lewis Henry Morgan Lecturer for 2018 with a topic focusing on âsubversive archaismâ in Greece and Thailand; the book version will appear in 2021 as Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage (Duke University Press). A former editor of American Ethnologist, editor at large (responsible for âPolyglot Perspectivesâ) for Anthropological Quarterly, co-editor of the âNew Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocationsâ series at Berghahn Books and of the IIAS Asian Heritages series at Amsterdam University Press, he holds honorary degrees from the UniversitĂ© Libre de Bruxelles, the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki), and the University of Crete, and is a past winner of the J.I. Staley Prize, the J.B. Donne Prize in the Anthropology of Art, and the Rivers Memorial Medal.
FURTHER READING
Herzfeld, Michael. 2004. The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value. University of Chicago Press.
Herzfeld, Michael. 2016. Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok. University of Chicago Press.
AUTHOR WEBSITE
https://anthropology.fas.harvard.edu/people/michael-herzfeld
