All-Under-Heaven: Global China and the Anthropological Imagination

ANTH 138b

All-Under-Heaven: Global China and the Anthropological Imagination

Spring 2018 Tuesday and Thursday 3:30-4:50 PM

Syllabus (Last Updated 2/1/2018)

Note: Syllabus is subject to change. For most recent version, always check LATTE

Instructor: Dr. Derek Sheridan

Class: Brown 115

E-Mail: WeChat: keredus

Office Hours: Wednesday 1-3 (Please sign up on LATTE)

Office: Brown 227

Course Description

Is China building a global empire? What does that question even mean? Do different people mean the same thing when they use terms like “global,” “empire,” or even “China” to argue for or against this claim? In this course, we take a step back and adopt an anthropological perspective for making sense of China as a global formation; both China in the world, and the world in China. The emergence of globalized Chinese capitalism and the rise of the Chinese state as a global power has generated no shortage of contending narratives, imaginaries, aspirations, and anxieties, both within China and globally, and among varied publics, regarding how to appropriately map China and Chinese subjectivity in the global order of things. The course invites students to critically reflect on the import of these narratives, desires, and anxieties through a close engagement with scholarship that looks at Global China “in the details.” These include both the social, cultural, economic, and political presence of China in the world beyond the boundaries of the Chinese nation-state, and also the manifestations of globalization(s) within China. Challenging conventional understandings of the global and local, the course considers what "the Global" and "China" have meant both historically and in the present, for whom, and under what circumstances. While China often appears in popular understandings as a singular entity "rising" in the world, the course emphasizes global China as an assemblage of contending practices, actors, motivations, and imaginaries. Who is included or excluded in these projects, and what possibilities do they afford or limit? Drawing on both ethnographic and historical scholarship, the course addresses transnationalism, migration, and mobility; empire, historical imaginaries, and worldmaking, race, citizenship, nationalism, gender, kinship, development, commodities, religious practice, health, and South-South cooperation. In addition to reading, watching, and discussing articles, books, and films; students will also conduct original digital ethnographic research with either transnational Chinese social media or other regional media spaces where global China’s presence is felt.

Class sessions will be highly participatory. Regular attendance, completion of reading assignments before each class, and participation in class discussions are essential to the design of the course. Students will be expected to think critically and creatively about the reading assignments.

Learning Goals

-Appreciating the multiplicity and diversity of Global China as a phenomena and concept

-Understanding the long and multiple histories of globalization in China.

-Thinking critically about “rise of China” narratives.

-Developing critical familiarity with digital ethnographic methods and applying them.

Course Requirements

In addition to regular attendance and active participation, students will be expected to complete

the following requirements:

Discussion Questions

You are expected to read the assigned readings and be ready to discuss them in class. To facilitate discussion, I ask everyone to post a short response to the reading on the LATTE website discussion board by 10PM the night before class. These responses should pose questions which directly engage the major arguments and/or examples provided by the author(s). They may address something you find particularly interesting, surprising, confusing, or frustrating about the reading. In each case, be sure to elaborate your points with reference to the text. The goal of the exercise is to help us pose good discussion questions, and this means that even if your response is more of a comment than a question, you should think about the question your comment poses for discussion. The responses should be no more than a paragraph, but they should also be more than a few sentences.

Discussion Leading

Starting the Week of Jan 30th, two students will be asked each session to lead the beginning of class discussion. This means preparing beforehand to offer some reflections on the reading and to pose some discussion questions for the class. These should be collaborative and the “presentation” part of it should last no more than 5-8 minutes. I will pass around sign-up sheet the week before, but if there are topics you are particularly interested in, you may let me know earlier.

Global China Media Blog

The globalization of China has unfolded alongside the development of new forms of social media which have created diverse transnational publics. Not only do global networks like WeChat connect people into imagined communities, but online forums have emerged as contested political spaces where the local impacts of China in the world are debated. As a complement to the class readings, students will be asked to conduct original research by exploring these materials (e.g. blogs, online forums) and commenting on them in a collectively maintained class blog. While not required, students are encouraged to make use of their diverse language skills to collect materials. This does not just mean those who are native Chinese speakers, or students of Chinese. China’s global presence means there is much material in many languages concerning local impacts, and our class a whole can bring together voices which we might not ordinarily hear.

Students will be asked to post at least five entries over the course of the semester. At least two of these should be completed before March 9th. Each post should include both a link and a commentary analyzing the material. As an exercise in digital ethnography, we are interested not just in content, but also representational strategies, narratives, and discourses. If the material you are posting is not in English, please briefly summarize the content for the class, but don’t let the summary encompass the entire post. The commentaries should be at least 500 words in length.

The blog is hosted on Google Sites, and can be accessed from the top of the LATTE home page for our course. In order to remain closed and restricted to our class, the blog will remain in unpublished editing mode for the duration of the class. The first thing you should do when visiting the blog is to “Add Page” for yourself. The “Add Page” button can be found under the PAGES tab on the right-hand column. You will be prompted to enter a title. Please enter your name. To post, go to the INSERT. You may enter text, upload images, embed links, upload documents, and embed materials directly from sites like Youtube. You can also type directly into your homepage. You are encouraged to upload as much as you want, but what will count for a grade are those postings accompanied by the 500 word-or-more commentaries.

For the ease of viewing other students’ postings, you can select “Preview” mode by clicking on the eyeball at the top of the page.

You are strongly encouraged to explore widely in looking for online resources to share and comment upon. A (limited) sample list of resources can be found on the “Media Resources” page, accessible from both the blog, and on LATTE. You are welcome to edit the document and share other resources you know of, or encounter.

The blog will be private and restricted to circulation within the class, but we can collectively discuss how we might publish and/or curate for a wider audience.

Book/Article Review

You will be asked to choose one week’s reading for writing an extended discussion response (5 pages, or 1500 words). This may be a review of one of the ethnographies we read, or it may be a summative review of a week’s articles. You are also encouraged to read and discuss any of the “recommended readings” if they are of interest to you. You may find it advisable to choose a week during which you are already planning to u lead discussion. The papers will be due on the Friday of the week you choose. You will not be required to post a discussion question on those weeks.

Final Research Paper

The topic of the final paper should build on either students’ online research, or other readings the student arranges, and engage the themes and perspectives of the course. Topics will be discussed with and approved by me beforehand according to a timetable specified at the beginning of the course. The final paper will be 10-12 pages in length, not including bibliography.

Reflections

Class discussions are as much sites of knowledge production as the texts we read. As we end each week, you may have lingering questions or concerns about the reading or about the discussion, and/or you may have observations and insights. I therefore invite you to e-mail me after our end of week discussions. You are not required to do so, but I will take it into consideration at the end of the semester when calculating your participation grade.

Grading

Participation 20%

Global China Media Blog 25%

Book/Article Review: 25%

Final Paper 30%

Four-Credit Course (with three hours of class time per week)

Success in this four- credit course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class.

Academic Integrity

You are expected to be honest in all of your academic work. Please consult Brandeis University Rights and Responsibilities for all policies and procedures related to academic integrity. Students may be required to submit work to TurnItIn.com software to verify originality. Allegations of alleged academic dishonesty will be forwarded to the Director of Academic Integrity. Sanctions for academic dishonesty can include failing grades and/or suspension from the university. Citation and research assistance can be found at LTS - Library guides.

Students with extra challenges

If you are a student with a documented disability at Brandeis University and if you wish to request a reasonable accommodation for this class, please see me immediately. Keep in mind that reasonable accommodations are not provided retroactively.

Course Outline

Be aware that the information on this syllabus is liable to change over the course of the class. Major changes will be announced, but if there is any confusion, please check LATTE for the most recent edition.

Required Readings

The following books are available for purchase at the bookstore:

AihwaOng. 1999. Flexible Citizenship

Julie Y.Chu. 2010.Cosmologies of credit: Transnational mobility and the politics of destination in China

FanYang. 2015. Faked in China: Nation branding, counterfeit culture, and globalization

Mei Zhan. 2009.Other-worldly: Making Chinese medicine through transnational frames

The following books will eventually be available for purchase at the bookstore.

LisaRofel. 2007.Desiring China: Experiments in neoliberalism, sexuality, and public culture

Gordan Mathews, Linessa Dan Lin, and Yang Yang. 2017. The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace

PálNyíri. 2017. Reporting for China: How Chinese Correspondents Work with the World.

All other readings will be available on LATTE.

The indicated readings should be completed by the time of the class.

Thursday, January 11: Introduction

Tuesday, January 16: Global China as Empire (and its critique)

Evan Osnos. 2018. “Making China Great Again” The New Yorker

Howard W.French.2014. China's second continent: How a million migrants are building a new empire in Africa(Introduction, Prologue. [Optional: Ch 1, just skim).PDF.

Ho-Fung Hong. 2015. The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World. (Introduction, Chapter 5). E-Book.

[NO CLASS] Thursday, January 18

Tuesday, January 23: Global China as Non-Empire (and its critique)

Zhao Tingyang. 2009. “A Political World Philosophy in Terms of All-under-Heaven (Tian-Xia).” Diogenes 56(1): 5–18. PDF.

Chishen Chang and Kuan-Hsing Chen. 2017. “Tracking Tianxia: On Intellectual Self-Positioning.” (in Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics, edited by Ban Wang).PDF.

Additional Recommended Readings:

Mark Edward Lewis and Mei-yu Hsieh. 2017. “Tianxia and the Invention of Empire in East Asia.” (in Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics, edited by Ban Wang).PDF.

葛兆光. 2015. “对‘天下’的想象——一个乌托邦想象背后的政治、思想与学术(The Imagination of ‘Tianxia’: The Politics, Thinking, and Academics behind a Utopian Imaginary 思想29.Web.

Daniel A. Bell. 2017. “Realizing Tianxia: Traditional Values and China’s Foreign Policy” (in Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics, edited by Ban Wang).PDF.

Thursday, January 25: China and Orientalism

Daniel Vukovich. 2013. China and orientalism: Western knowledge production and the PRC. (Chapter 1). PDF.

Tuesday, January 30: Digital Ethnography and China

Christine Hine.2015. “The Internet in Ethnographies of the Everyday.” Ethnography for the Internet

Guobin Yang. 2014. “Political contestation in Chinese digital spaces: Deepening the critical inquiry” China Information 28(2): 135-144

Thursday, February 1: Early Chinese Globalisms

AbdulSheriff. 2010. “Mare Liberum and its Antithesis”.Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam. New York: Columbia University Press(Chapter 15)

David Christian. 2000. “Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History” Journal of World History 11(1): 1-26

Additional Recommended Readings:

Tamara Chin. 2014. “Alienation: Kinship in the World Economy.” Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (Chapter 4).E-Book.

Valerie Hansen.2012. “The Cosmopolitan Terminus of the Silk Road: Historic Chang’an, Modern-day Xi’an. The Silk Road: A New History (Chapter 5). E-book.

Tamara Chin. 2013. "The invention of the Silk Road, 1877." Critical Inquiry 40(1): 194-219.

Peter C. Perdue. 2015. “The Tenacious Tributary System” Journal of Contemporary China 24(96):1002-1014.

Tuesday, February 6:The Clash of Empires and the Nation

Frank Dikotter. 1992. The Discourse of Race in Modern China (“Race as Lineage (1895-1903);[Optional] “Race as Nation (1903-1915))

PrasenjitDuara.2004. “Manchukuo: An Historical Overview” Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern(Chapter 2)

[Optional, or Alternative to Duara] Wang Hui. 2010. “The ‘Tibet Issue’ Between East and West”

[Optional] Rebecca E. Karl. 2002.“Recognizing Colonialism: The Philippines and Revolution” Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century(Chapter 2)

Additional Recommended Readings:

Lydia Liu. 2006. “Translating International Law.” The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making(Chapter 4)

Prasenjit Duara, 2004. “Imperialism and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century.” Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern(Chapter 1)

Rebecca E. Karl. 2002.“Staging the World.” Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. (Chapter 2)

EmmaTeng. 2004. Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895.(Introduction)

Wang Hui. 2011. “The Politics of Imagining Asia.” The Politics of Imagining Asia (Chapter 1)

Thursday, February 8: Socialist Internationalism

Priya Lal. 2014. “Maoism in Tanzania: Materialism and Shared Imaginaries.” Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History. PDF.

VijayPrashad. 2002.“Kung Fusion: Organize the ‘Hood Under I-Ching Banners.” Everybody was Kung Fu fighting: Afro-Asian connections and the myth of cultural purity(Chapter 5). E-book.

Additional Recommended Readings:

Robin D GKelley and Betsy Esch. 1999. “Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution.” Souls: Critical Journal of Black Politics & Culture 1(4): 6–41.PDF.

Lin Chun. 2017. “China’s Lost World of Internationalism.” (in Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics, edited by Ban Wang). PDF.

Lisa Rofel. 2017. “China’s Tianxia Worldings: Socialist and Post-socialist Cosmopolitanisms” (in Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics, edited by Ban Wang). PDF.

Jin Bo-xiong (金伯雄). 2008. 我的非洲岁月(My Years in Africa). Shanghai: Shanghai Dictionary Publishing.PDF.

Tuesday, February 13: Diasporic Imaginaries

Wang Gungwu. 2000. "Seaward Sweep: the Chinese in Southeast Asia." The Chinese Overseas:From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy

Tu Wei-ming. 1991. “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center.” Daedalus 120(2): 1-32

Thursday, February 15: Diasporic imaginries

IenAng. 1998. “Can one say no to Chineseness: Pushing the limits of the diasporic paradigm.”

Aiwha Ong. 2006. “Cyberpublics and the Pitfalls of Diasporic Chinese Politics.” In Neoliberalism as Exception.

Additional Recommended Readings:

AllenChun. 1996. “Fuck Chineseness: On the Ambiguities of Ethnicity as Culture as Identity” boundary 2 23(2): 111-138

Arjun Appadurai. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”

MID-TERM RECESS FEB 19-23

Tuesday, February 27: Flexible Citizenship

AihwaOng. 1999. Flexible Citizenship (Introduction, Parts 1-2). Book.

Thursday, March 1: Flexible Citizenship

AihwaOng. 1999. Flexible Citizenship (Parts 3-4, Afterward). Book.