Asian anthropology最新文献

{"title":"Hoping for state policy and “policy-based resistance”: contested representations of a good society in a Chinese mining town","authors":"Chi-Pui Cheung","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2160412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2160412","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Following the resurgence of anthropological interest in resistance studies, I show how resistance can be based on firm adherence to government policies, and can thus ideologically strengthen the state. Though it is common for anthropologists to conceptualize policies as political technologies of control, Chinese scholars have shown that policies can also be appropriated by citizens for purposes of resistance. These different views on policies imply a dichotomy between the state and society. However, drawing on ethnographic data on the resistance experiences of peasants and workers in a Chinese mining town (Pingan), I explore how Pingan people’s imagination of state policy implicates a “state-family” relationship in which “policy-based resistance” was bounded by a political-moral nexus. Pingan peasants and workers used state policies as a tool of resistance despite the policy restrictions placed on social life. They did not see state policies as offering opportunities of resistance but also saw them as resources for hoping the central state’s policies would bring them a happy family life. I illustrate this with three case studies in which Pingan people’s spatial imaginations of state policies connect to the notion of “family” (家). This article concludes by reflecting on the concept of “refusal,” arguing that those who employed policy-based resistance refused to acknowledge the local government as effective policy enforcer but accepted the central state as a benevolent policy-maker, offering them hope and allowing them to imagine a good society.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"39 - 58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41933489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Can the Malay Muslims be Thai enough in Thailand’s far South?","authors":"K. H. Yong","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2158650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2158650","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay examines the construction of minorities in Thailand, questioning its naturalness, both theoretically and practically. Investigating the plight of Malay Muslim minorities in Thailand’s far south can show how minorities are central to the construction of state power in Thailand. This article argues that Siam’s annexation of the Sultanate of Patani requires a revision that brings its Malay Muslim subjects centrally and integrally into the history of modern Thailand. Indeed, given the Kingdom’s propensity to use the trope of fragility to manufacture unity and patriotism, the Malay Muslims are in fact not at the margins but one of the key problematics for Thai nationalism, one that provides a pretext for the continuing exercise of state power and violence in Thailand’s far south. The Malay Muslims in Thailand’s far south are led to ask themselves whether they can be Thai enough.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"21 - 38"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48723024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The anatomy of loneliness: suicide, social connection and the search for relational meaning in contemporary Japan","authors":"G. Mathews","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2135696","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2135696","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"153 - 154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41526265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Blood work: life and laboratories in Penang","authors":"Ayo Wahlberg","doi":"10.1080/1683478x.2022.2113568","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478x.2022.2113568","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"76 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44656052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The moving city: scenes from the Delhi Metro and the social life of infrastructure","authors":"Weihang Wang","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2123087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2123087","url":null,"abstract":"life of lab workers interlaced with four studies of the “public life of blood” based on readings of newspaper reporting on national blood donation programmes, laboratory life, elections, and more. For Carsten this interlacing of media analyses with laboratory ethnography allows her “to calibrate the material in the ethnographic chapters [in order to] complement and broaden themes in the ethnography” (p. 27). It is this juxtaposition which allows Carsten to innovatively show how “medical lab technologists, lab technicians, receptionists, lab managers, and nurses (as well as donors and patients) are directly and indirectly informed by publicity about blood donation, health scares, stories about organ donation, or hospitals that appear in the media, by the ways these are picked up by members of the public who are also potential donors” (p. 27). As an example, Carsten shows how news coverage of blood drives allows blood donation to function as a “symbolic vector” linking matters of health, the family, selfless giving, and a “spirit of Malaysia.” She then goes on to ethnographically trace the bureaucratic forms that are filled out and the various screening tests that potential donors must undergo in blood banks, showing how “histories of relatedness and moral, medical, and other categories penetrate each other and are inseparably entangled within acts of blood donation [such that] donors can equally be construed as citizens of an ethnically plural nation” (pp. 71, 73). In recent decades, we have seen ethnographers develop novel analytical and methodological strategies that allow for ways of locating intimate experiences, such as working in a laboratory carrying out blood work in Penang, within processes that operate at another scale, such as nation-building and modernization that take shape through policy processes, media coverage, and governmental programmes. Such approaches have been described by Escobar as “institutional ethnography,” by Marcus as “multi-sited ethnography,” by Feldman as “non-local ethnography,” and by Wahlberg as “assemblage ethnography,” among scholars’ recently coined terms. Carsten has innovatively woven different scales together ethnographically, and in doing so has shown us how “a close examination of seemingly routine and understated practices, and the lives of those who enact them, has revealed how the supposedly separate domains of kinship, politics, economics, science, and religion – the hallmark of ‘modernity’ – in fact bleed into each other” (p. 208). In this way Blood Work makes a brilliant and original contribution to a growing set of ethnographies that have explored the work that goes on in technoscience laboratories, insisting that we “rehumanize” our study of such sites as places where career hopes, family dreams and everyday life circumstances are constantly reshaped.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"78 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48312222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lithic devotionality and other aesthetic strata: Buddhist garden shrines in rural Java","authors":"Robert K. Rizzo","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2122686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2122686","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article I explore the contemporary practice of establishing garden shrines in Buddhist rural Java. While on the surface the placement of shrines follows the demands of environmental upgrading and beautification strategies, often in accord with eco-tourist imaginaries, the practice reveals a complex aggregation of material and discursive threads. The article situates the project, ethnographically, as a sensorial practice in which environmental awareness and a sense of “atmosphere” are directly involved. This perceptual domain, particularly the relationship of the villagers to the Sakyamuni statuettes, is simultaneously articulated in continuity with the religious field of Javanese Buddhism, as it encompasses notions of sacralization and rituality. I recover the idea of aesthetic practice in order to bring these sensorial stems on a common platform. In blending discursive and materialist approaches, the article converses with the idea of strata as devised by Deleuze and Guattari as a pivotal image in their work on rhizomes. Through the concept of stratification, I argue, it is possible to apprehend Buddhist shrines as cultural formations in which “everything is involved,” that is, as multiplicities in which layers of materiality and discourse are intertwined in meaningful and generative ways.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"283 - 300"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41337595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The museum is like a temple: the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum in Taiwan1","authors":"Shu-li Wang, Valentina Gamberi","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2117963","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2117963","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article describes how a museum built by the Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan (FGS), one of the largest Buddhist groups on the island, triggers emotions and spirituality in its visitors. We explore how the conceptualization of materiality by the founder of FGS, Hsing Yun, is presented to visitors at the FGS Buddha Museum (FGS-BM) and how Humanistic Buddhism is materially expressed at the museum. By analysing the museum space and investigating visitors’ responses to the FGS-BM through ethnographic research, we describe how the FGS uses material artefacts, museum space and embodied activities to communicate Buddhist ideology to the laity, triggering some visitors’ emotions and leading some to describe the museum as being similar to a temple.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"22 1","pages":"1 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43200424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Coping with loneliness in southern Myanmar","authors":"Samia C. Akhter-Khan, J. Drewelies, Khin Myo Wai","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2115623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2115623","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Little is known about the experience of older adults’ loneliness in Southeast Asia. Situated in southern Myanmar, this study uses ethnographic interviews to shed light on coping strategies that older adults deploy to prevent and reduce loneliness. A resilient mindset was identified as essential to alleviating loneliness in older adults, a strategy described as including acceptance of loneliness and finding strength to fight against loneliness. Acceptance was facilitated by religious practices such as praying and meditating. Efforts to reduce loneliness included leisure activities “just to pass the time” and engagement in care provision. Culturally specific concepts such as prosociality and social harmony, as well as religious ideas such as karma and the desire for a non-lonely afterlife influenced the ways the people we interviewed coped with loneliness and adverse life events.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"245 - 262"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43894552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Drifting in China’s porcelain capital: self-realization and alternative-seeking of the self-employed craft workers in Jingdezhen","authors":"Ruoxi Liu","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2116259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2116259","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Following the decline and closure of government factories in Jingdezhen, the Chinese capital of porcelain, a recent wave of migrant self-employed craft workers known as “Jing drifters” (jingpiao 景漂) has faced a dilemma: whether to follow independent craft practices and remain vulnerable, or hire workers, automate some steps, and cut corners to make more money. Recent government-led redevelopment plans in Jingdezhen are introducing spatial reconfigurations and a new regulation of the manufacturing process. Residents have diverse opinions on these government-led plans and show that these changes have exacerbated the instability in the work of the self-employed craft workers. Drawing on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and diaries, I also report a changing social dynamic in response to these transformations, which takes place where the individual craft workers, the local craft community, the state-endorsed enterprise capitalists, and the state meet. By contextualizing the individual craft workers in such a changing context as well as in their craft communities where a self-reliant and carefree lifestyle narrative is prevalent, I find that the self-employed craft workers can be self-reliant, self-organized, and mutually supportive despite the vulnerability and instability in their work and in the industry and city. This suggests the possibility of a self-sufficient alternative lifestyle that parallels that of the Chinese neo-liberal consumerist society and of the state-led renaissance narrative about Jingdezhen.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"263 - 282"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44554780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Neutral” vs. “pure” accents: the racialization of Filipino and EuroAmerican teachers in China’s online education industry during the covid-19 pandemic","authors":"R. Litman","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2100069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2100069","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The early Covid-19 pandemic intensified the employment of online English teachers in China’s private educational market. White EuroAmerican English teachers have long been idealized by offline schools. However, the rising number of Filipino teachers employed by private companies online led to a more competitive field of English teaching, where companies tried to promote their teachers’ English accents in relation to their racialized identities in order to attract consumers from other platforms. Based on online ethnographic research, this article uncovers the marketing and management strategies of two major Chinese online educational companies, one focusing on the recruitment of Filipino teachers, and the other on EuroAmerican teachers; these companies developed their strategies partially in competition with each other. This article demonstrates how Chinese online education companies have competed to associate English-language accents with “race” through the teachers they employ.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"224 - 237"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45426551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}