Anthropology and China(s): Co-Constructions of Ethnographic and Acade...

The DFG Scientific Network “Anthropology and China(s)” aims at establishing the anthropology of China as a reflexive, pluralist, and relational project in the German-speaking academic world. Rather than writing the history of the anthropology of China by combining the mainstream approach of writing about national schools or world anthropologies with the heterodox approach of writing about the localized topics and thematized places of regional anthropologies, we look at how ethnographic regions (where anthropologists do ethnographic fieldwork) and academic markets (where anthropologists write ethnographies and compete for positions and funding) are co-constructed. Inspired by “object lessons” from science and technology studies, we aim at deepening critiques of essentializing notions of culture areas by asking what kind of object China is. We suggest to explore how multiple versions of China are enacted in past and contemporary practices of anthropologists of China. In particular, our research programme explores the relations of anthropologies of China to area studies, politics, and general anthropology.