All day
Through June 22, 2019
University of Chicago Center in Beijing
20th Floor, Culture Plaza
59A Zhong Guan Cun Street
Haidian District, Beijing
Jun. 21
On June 21-22, the University of Chicago Center in Beijing hosted the largest graduate student-run conference in its history: “Asia as Action: Scaling Ethnography of the Everyday.” The conference, which targeted key issues in history and anthropology, brought together 38 social science and humanities scholars from around the world, to share their research related to South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, and the multi-scalar interrelationships within and between these world areas.
Professors Paola Iovene of the University of Chicago and Gong Haoqun of Minzu University, representing the two major institutional sponsors of the event, welcomed participants to the Beijing Center. Professor Viren Murthy, from University of Wisconson – Madison’s history department, delivered a keynote speech that examined Bruce Cummings' critique of the post-WWII third-world nations’ active non-action, namely a structure of self-colonization that occurs when nations affirm themselves by promoting anti-colonial nationalism. Inspired by Takeuchi Yoshimi’s reading of Lu Xun, Dr. Murthy put forward an innovative understanding of action situated in everyday life. By unpacking Takeuchi’s notion of “nothingness” understood as the infinite potential of each moment, Murthy proposed that revolutionary action can be sought in every turning point of the present. Asia, in this light, might be understood not as a geographical space, but as a source of potential alternatives to colonial modernity.
Scholars from universities in the US, China, UK, and Australia, shared their research that ranged in geographical focus from India, Laos, China, Singapore, Japan and beyond on panels as diverse as Development and Urbanization, Affective Consumption, Scales of Power/Knowledge, Borders & Flows as Methods and others. Dr. Gong Haoqun of Minzu University, Dr. Zhu Xiaoyong of Peking University, Saul Thomas of the University of Chicago, Dr. Jenny Hua of the University of Chicago, Dr. Lai Lili of Peking University, and Dr. Jacob Hickman of Brigham Young University all served as panel discussants, offering feedback to presenters, as well as their original interpretations of the research and its stakes in relation to the themes of the conference.
The two-day event ended with a capstone faculty roundtable moderated by University of Chicago PhD Candidate Saul Thomas. The roundtable discussants were joined virtually by Dr. Heonik Kwon of Cambridge University and Dr. Biao Xiang of Oxford University. Drawing from the themes of the conference and the research presented, the faculty debated the merits of “Asia as Action” as an analytic and as an invitation for future scholarship, the potentials of ethnographic theory, the challenges of scaling up from the everyday, and the importance of pain and empathy to social scientific research.
The conference was organized by graduate students from the University of Chicago’s Anthropology department, including Dr. Jenny Hua, Yukun Zeng, Jianghong An, Hanna Pickwell, Shuting Zhuang, and Jiyea Hong, with assistance from Dr. Gong Haoqun of Minzu University and Liang Xueming of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing.
Sponsors
Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago
University of Chicago Center in Beijing
Institute of Global Ethnology and Anthropology, Minzu University of China
University of Chicago Organizers
AN Jianghong, PhD Student
Jiyea HONG, PhD Student
Jenny HUA, MD/PhD
Hanna PICKWELL, PhD Candidate
ZENG Yukun, PhD Candidate
ZHUANG Shuting, PhD Student
Schedule
Day 1 (6/21)
09:30
Opening Remarks
Speakers:
Paola IOVENE, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Chicago
GONG Haoqun, PhD
Associate Professor, Institute of Global Ethnology and Anthropology
Minzu University of China
09:30-10:40
Keynote Speech: Asia as Practice/Asia as Method: Reflections from Takeuchi Yoshimi and Beyond
Speaker: Viren MURTHY, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of History
University of Wisconsin - Madison
11:00-12:40
Politics of Development & Urbanization
The New Ainu Village: A Case Study of Japanese Colonial Rural Policy during the 1930s
Michael HAYATA, PhD student, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Subaltern Transcript: Peasant Workers' Literary Creation in a Chinese Urban Village
YE Yunhui, Graduate Student, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University
Down to the Countryside of Asia's World City: Reimagining the Local in Rural Hong Kong
HUANG Shan, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
Planting in Outskirts: A Distinctive Practice of Urbanization in China
LU Bingzhe, Graduate Student, Department of Sociology, Peking University
What is New about "New Beijing"? The Urban Planning of Beijing in Historical and Global Contexts
Andrew LIU, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Toronto
12:40-14:00
Lunch for All Participants
14:00-15:40
Civilization/Temporality/Historicity
The Vitality of Cultivation Lodgers: a Narrative of Cultivation Lodging in contemporary China
SHEN Yang, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Boston University
Bifurcating Chronotopes of Canonical Reading: Radical Hope and Civil Redemption
ZENG Yukun, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
A Bengali Revolutionary in Imperial Japan: Rash Behari Bose and Asian Modernities
Shatrunjay MALL, PhD Student, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Emotion and Reason: The Entanglement of Samuel P. Huntington's and Edward Waefie Said's Theory in Zhang Chengzhi's Writings
ZHAO Zhijun, Graduate Student, Institute of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, College of Chinese, Lanzhou University
Psychology, Xin, Li: Seeking Sustenance between Chuantong Wenhua and Modern Self-Help
Colin GARON, Student Researcher, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine
16:00-17:40
Affective Consumption
The Everyday Life and Modernity of YiNizi Village: Based on the Perspective of Garbage
WANG Huan, PhD Student, School of Ethnology and Sociology, Minzu University of China
Haunting the everyday: Strangers, ghosts, and used goods in China
Hanna Pickwell, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
To Dwell in the "Ruins": Mapping, Tactic and Space Production in China's Urban Demolition
LIN Ye, Assistant Professorial Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Disability and Urban Strategies of Inclusion: The Blind Songstress in Early Twentieth-century Guangzhou
WANG Chao, PhD Candidate, Department of History, The University of Chicago
Day 2 (6/22)
09:00-10:40
Mediating (Pan)Asianism
The International Relations of Anti-Imperialism: Chinese Diplomacy in Laos
Nicholas R. ZELLER, PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Frames of War: Nationalism in the Hanfu Movement in China
WANG Zhaohe, Graduate Student, International Master's Program in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, National Tsinghua University
It will set you free: Ideologies of race, language and legitimacy in the early making of stand-up comedy in urban China
AN Jianghong, PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
Telops and the Animation of Character in Singaporean YouTube: A semiotic approach to audiovisual texts
Kenzell HUGGINS, PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
"English as it is Broken": Voicing the Singaporean as Failed (Linguistic) Subject
Joshua BABCOCK, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
11:00-12:40
Scales of Power/Knowledge
Mētis matters—A Research on Medical Pluralism in Public Hospitals in Modern Tibet
CHEN Ruonan, PhD Candidate, Medical Anthropology, Australian National University
From "Blue Lotus" to "Blue Poppy": Becoming of an Asian Botanical Species in Global Knowledge Translation
ZHUANG Shuting, PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
"I am Not a Medicine God": Western pharmaceuticals, Indian generics and the Chinese Promise of Universal Healthcare
Jenny HUA, MD/PhD, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
Scaling Truth: Facts and Fictions of "Chinese" Homosexuality
WANG Suisui, PhD Student, Department of Gender Studies, Indiana University Bloomington
The Ethics of Sacrifice: Weaving the history of women's embodied practices of sacrifice in Vietnam
DU Yuqing, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London
12:40-14:00
Lunch for All Participants
14:00-15:40
Borders & Flows as Methods
Electric Guitar as Method: The Global Mobility of Electric Guitar Industry and Its Impacts on Both the Orient and the West
Yi-Chen LIU, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of California-Santa Cruz
The Social Network Construction and Business Practice Logic of Southeast Merchants in Yunnan Kunming
JIA Chaozhishan, Research Associate, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences
The Everyday Life of North Korean Migrants, bukhan gohyang saram in Partitioned Korea
Sojung KIM, PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University
The "Tomb Relatives": A Study on a Contractual Relative Relation in the 20th Century Hangzhou
ZHENG Yushuang, PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sovereignty, Discipline and Governance, Border Landscape of Multiple Coexistence: A Case Study of Horgos Port in Xinjiang Autonomous Region
LIU Xihong, PhD candidate, School of Sociology, Minzu University of China
16:00-18:00
Faculty Roundtable on Asia as Action
Conference website: https://voices.uchicago.edu/asiaasaction/
Co-Sponsor: The Institute of Global Ethnology and Anthropology (IGEA), Minzu University of China
