Introduction: Area Studies and Regional Anthropologies

The first theme of the DFG Network "Anthropology and China(s)" is the relation between the anthropology of China and area studies. Two lectures by our invited guests (Thomas Heberer and Dan Smyer Yu) and three chapters co-authored by network members demonstrate how anthropologists’ relations with different area studies produce multiple – partly overlapping, partly competing – versions of China. These contributions explore not only anthropology's relations with philological-historical and social scientific area studies (ranging from sinology and Chinese studies to various minority studies within China to area studies on other continents), but also with more-than-human area studies that cut across both international borders and ethnic boundaries (such as ecological geography). Taken together, they show that the production of different versions of China is not only a question of conceptions, representation and discursive constructions ("Orientalism"), but involves material elements such as various forms of data and specific measuring technologies. For example, if climate change research enters the interdisciplinary mix of area studies, regional anthropologies can produce surprising versions of China: Rather than being "conquerors", have the Mongols that established the Yuan dynasty been “climate refugees” after all?