Power and Knowledge Production in Anthropology

Funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation, Yang Zhan and Jing Xu will organize a workshop on "The Future of China Anthropology" in Hong Kong in December 2024.

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Debating the Future of China Anthropology amid Misalignments

Abstract

China is shaping the future of our world, and anthropology is urgently needed and uniquely positioned to offer contextualized understanding of China that goes beyond ideological abstractions. The strategic importance of understanding China, however, poses a stark contrast to the awkward status of China anthropology in both Western and Chinese contexts, as the field is plagued by multiple misalignments. This workshop aims to discuss and identify solutions to major challenges that restrain our ability to produce relevant knowledge for understanding China, i.e., epistemological challenges, methodological challenges, institutional challenges as well as challenges of translation. By developing new epistemological and methodological frameworks, this workshop addresses how to make anthropology relevant in today’s fast-changing world and opens up new conversations about responses and solutions. We invite 13 participants from diverse institutions, training backgrounds, national origins, topical areas, and career trajectories, including anthropologists working in universities, funding agencies as well as publishers. By bringing together scholars with multiple positionalities into dialogue, our workshop will produce academic and public writings in English and Chinese, i.e., a special collection/issue in an English journal, an edited volume in Chinese, and media reports and interviews.