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 “cropscape” and the “scales of history,” 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

Lin ZHANG, interviewed by Joseph BOSCO on 13 December 2023

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

In this episode, Dr. Zhang discusses the definition of the “entrepreneur” 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/

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 ‘ecological history’ 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 China’s population, to the recent effects of meatier diets on China’s agriculture and feed imports, to alternative food movements among China’s urbanites worried about food security. Finally, China’s 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 “tour de force” and as “essential reading for anyone seeking to better understand China’s environmental predicament.”

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/

BOOK’S OFFICIAL WEBPAGE: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295751696/an-ecological-history-of-modern-china/

Silvia LINDTNER, interviewed by Joseph BOSCO on 25 October 2022

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

In this episode, Dr. Lindtner explains what is the “maker” 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 state’s tactics of hegemony, functioning not by coercion but by promising happiness. She explains two key concepts in the book, the “socialist pitch” and the term for maker, chuangke 创客, 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 makers’ 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

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 “backward” Han Chinese peasant populations into modern “civilized” 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 “Technoscience, Society, and Environment.” 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.

AUTHOR’S WEBSITE

https://gdsantos.com/

BOOK'S OFFICIAL WEBPAGE

https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295747408/chinese-village-life-today/

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.

AUTHOR’S 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

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 “sociotechnical,” and “paddy field predicament,” 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 “appropriate technology” argument of the 1960’s and ‘70s. 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 “skill turn.” At the end, we talk about how her book was published “Open Access.”

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

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