Imperial College Press The Anthropology of China: China as Ethnographic and Theoretical Critique

Review The Anthropology of China is packed with useful references and valuable insights. It is an informative volume offering students, teachers and general readers not only a unique perspective on China, but also on the study of China. --LSE Book Reviews Product Description Putting China into the context of general anthropology offers novel insights into its history, culture and society. Studies in the anthropology of China need to look outwards, to other anthropological areas, while at the same time, anthropologists specialised elsewhere cannot afford to ignore contributions from China. This book introduces a number of key themes and in each case describes how the anthropology and ethnography of China relates to the surrounding theories and issues. The themes chosen include the anthropology of intimacy, of morality, of food and of feasting, as well as the anthropology of civilisation, modernity and the state.The Anthropology of China covers both long historical perspectives and ethnographies of the twenty-first century. For the first time, ethnographic perspectives on China are contextualised in comparison with general anthropological debates. Readers are invited to engage in and rethink China's place within the wider world, making it perfect for professional researchers and teachers of anthropology and Chinese history and society, and for advanced undergraduate and graduate study. About the Author Professor Stephan Feuchtwang is an emeritus professor of the Anthropology Department at the London School of Economics. He has been engaged in research on popular religion and politics in mainland China and Taiwan since 1966, resulting in publications on charisma, place, temples and festivals, and civil society. He has recently been engaged in a comparative project exploring the theme of the recognition of catastrophic loss. In 2015 he completed the coordination of research on planning and community formation in urban neighbourhoods of four cities as part of a European Commission project on sustainable urbanisation in China. He has also been pursuing a project on the comparison of civilisations and empires.Dr Charlotte Bruckermann is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. Since completing her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Oxford in 2013, she has worked at the London School of Economics, Humboldt University and the University of Basel. Her areas of expertise include the anthropology of China, ritual, work, gender, economic transformation, and post-socialism. Based on fieldwork in rural Shanxi Province her research has explored how villagers make themselves at home despite economic inequality, political rupture, and ecological degradation. She is about to embark on research investigating the role of finance in driving environmental projects.