C'è una rivoluzione che si sta compiendo sotto i nostri occhi: la scalata della Repubblica Popolare Cinese verso l'empireo delle superpotenze mondiali. Nella vita quotidiana di un sempre maggior numero di persone ques... more abstractC'è una rivoluzione che si sta compiendo sotto i nostri occhi: la scalata della Repubblica Popolare Cinese verso l'empireo delle superpotenze mondiali. Nella vita quotidiana di un sempre maggior numero di persone questa ascesa appare evidente nei consumi, nei rapporti di lavoro e nelle mete di viaggio. La Cina la incontriamo ogni giorno, ma la conosciamo poco. Molti ne ignorano la cultura eterogenea, i costumi popolari e gli effetti irreversibili che uno strabiliante sviluppo economico sta avendo su di essi. Per capire la Cina di oggi è necessario conoscerne affondo il processo di formazione nazionale e culturale, il modo in cui la modernità è stata costruita in questo paese. Similmente a quanto accaduto durante l'industrializzazione in Europa, processo guidato da nuove idee sulla società e sul suo sviluppo - parte cruciale in questo percorso di formazione nazionale in Cina è stato ricoperto dall'antropologia. Una disciplina nuova, importata dall'Occidente, ma che subito ha trovato in questo paese un vasto interesse per il suo respiro comparativo e per la sua capacità di identificare fenomeni strutturali in società in transizione. Fenomeni che se conosciuti potevano essere diretti e modificati. Hu Hongbao, Zhang Haiyang e Wang Jianmin ci guidano alla scoperta dell'avvento del pensiero antropologico in Cina, rintracciandone gli antecedenti storici, identificandone le ragioni del successo e fornendo un quadro dettagliato dell'istituzionalizzazione di questa disciplina...

Anthropology of China, Chinese Ethnic Minorities, and Anthropology of Modern and Contemporary China

Location: Florence

More Info: ISBN 8889473487

Publisher: SEID Editori

Publication Name: (Italian edition) The History of Chinese Anthropology, June 2014

C’è una rivoluzione che si sta compiendo sotto i nostri occhi: la scalata della Repubblica Popolare Cinese verso l’empireo delle superpotenze mondiali. Nella vita quotidiana di un sempre maggior numero di persone ques... more abstractC’è una rivoluzione che si sta compiendo sotto i nostri occhi: la scalata della Repubblica Popolare Cinese verso l’empireo delle superpotenze mondiali. Nella vita quotidiana di un sempre maggior numero di persone questa ascesa appare evidente nei consumi, nei rapporti di lavoro e nelle mete di viaggio. La Cina la incontriamo ogni giorno, ma la conosciamo poco. Molti ne ignorano la cultura eterogenea, i costumi popolari e gli effetti irreversibili che uno strabiliante sviluppo economico sta avendo su di essi. Per capire la Cina di oggi è necessario conoscerne affondo il processo di formazione nazionale e culturale,il modo in cui la modernità è stata costruita in questo paese. Similmente a quanto accaduto durante l'industrializzazione in Europa - processo guidato da nuove idee sulla società e sul suo sviluppo - parte cruciale in questo percorso di formazione nazionale in Cina è stato ricoperto dall’Antropologia. Quello che ne esce è un quadro di incredibile complessità: la Cina in tutta la sua polivocalità e ricchezza culturale.

Ethnography, History of Anthropology, Anthropology of China, Translation, World Anthropology, and 1 more

More Info: Translation of Hu Hongbao et al., 2005, Zhongguo Renleixue Shi, Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, Beijing. Other Translators: Previato Tommaso, Punzi Valentina, Zoccatelli Giulia.

Publisher: SEID Editori

Publication Date: Feb 2014

L’ultimo tentativo di trasformazione della Cina e il suo rapporto con l’Occidente visti attraverso la lente di un antropologo tedesco. In questa lunga conversazione Andrea Pia intervista Hans Steinmüller, antropologo ... more abstractL’ultimo tentativo di trasformazione della Cina e il suo rapporto con l’Occidente visti attraverso la lente di un antropologo tedesco. In questa lunga conversazione Andrea Pia intervista Hans Steinmüller, antropologo della Cina e autore di “Irony, Cynicism and the Chinese State” (Routledge Contemporary China Series).

Anthropology, International Relations, Chinese Studies, Applied, engaged, and public anthropology, China, and 7 more

Chinese Studies, Video Games, China, Chinese Diaspora (Migration and Ethnicity), Migration Studies, and 7 more

Chinese Law, Legal Anthropology, Critical Legal Theory, Socio-legal studies, Mediation, and 9 more

Thematic Week on allegralaboratory.net

Islamic Law, Anthropology, Political Participation, Sociology of Law, Chinese Law, and 14 more

Recent debates about the moral climate in China have focused on its citizens' purported loss of traditional values and interest in the public good. According to such views, Chinese society, and in particular its count... more abstractRecent debates about the moral climate in China have focused on its citizens' purported loss of traditional values and interest in the public good. According to such views, Chinese society, and in particular its countryside, is now affected by a moral vacuum – the absence of a moral compass that could lead citizens' public behavior to contribute to the nation's greater good. Wedding the "moral vacuum" argument, the current Chinese government is reforming its judicial system with the aim of making it more accessible to its citizenry. The idea is that in the absence of shared moral values, the law and legal rights could provide new forms of ethical bonding between individuals and the collectivity. Widely supported by Chinese legal scholars, this new approach envisions legal mediation as a principled vehicle to bring the law to the countryside. Disproving the above narrative, this paper discusses how in rural Yunnan the law and legal rights come to be seen as instruments of collective disenfranchisement. The ethnography here presented reveals two things. First, that Yunnanese rural society is best described as enjoying a moral "plenum", not a "vacuum". During mediation, legal norms, communist values and traditional moral principles appear to be equally valid normative sources from which to draw on in the attempt to redress grievances. Secondly, that Chinese law, in the form of temporary use rights to local resources, is actively ousting out alternative regimes of resource management that are predicated on local villagers' participation in and responsibility for the public good

Chinese Law, Chinese Studies, Commons, Property Rights, Legal Anthropology, and 16 more

Journal Name: PoLar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review

Publication Date: May 2016

Chinese Law, Chinese Studies, Political Anthropology, Legal Anthropology, Law and Development, and 9 more

Publication Date: Apr 2015

Publication Name: Anthropology News 56 (4)

La crisi idrica è uno dei nodi chiave da risolvere nella costruzione di uno sviluppo sostenibile in Cina. Sotto la spinta di un’economia in perenne crescita, la Cina sta oggi pagando una considerevole riduzione nella ... more abstractLa crisi idrica è uno dei nodi chiave da risolvere nella costruzione di uno sviluppo sostenibile in Cina. Sotto la spinta di un’economia in perenne crescita, la Cina sta oggi pagando una considerevole riduzione nella disponibilità delle sue risorse idriche. A questo fa fronte l’utilizzo di meccanismi di gestione, fisici ed istituzionali, dichiaratamente inefficienti nel fronteggiare il problema, con conseguenze spesso drammatiche sulla popolazione. Sotto l'egida della Banca Mondiale, e insieme a molti altre realtà con simili problemi di disponibilità idrica, la Cina ha recentemente sperimentato l'introduzione di associazioni contadine per la gestione dell'acqua potabile e di irrigazione. A muovere questo progetto, la convinzione che devolvere i diritti di gestione localmente avrebbe migliorato la sostenibilità del sistema. Basandosi su uno studio etnografico condotto presso una comunità rurale dello Yunnan nord-orientale, questo intervento documenta le implicazioni politiche e sociali derivanti dal tentativo di rendere possibile un consumo delle risorse idriche allo stesso tempo sostenibile ed efficiente nella Cina rurale, analizzandone le soluzioni amministrative impiegate dal governo per ricalibrare il rapporto uomo-acqua sul territorio.

Anthropology, Ethnography, Commons, Community Engagement & Participation, Water resources, and 12 more

Publication Date: Jun 6, 2014

Publication Name: in Ferro Nicoletta (a cura di), Sviluppo Sostenibile e Cina: le sfide sociali e ambientali del XXI secolo, Roma, Edizioni l’Asino d’Oro.

This paper attempts to unpack the concept of property rights in land in Qing China (1644-1912). Starting from the traditional anthropological approach which sees property rights as a 'bundle' of social relations, this... more abstractThis paper attempts to unpack the concept of property rights in land in Qing China (1644-1912). Starting from the traditional anthropological approach which sees property rights as a 'bundle' of social relations, this paper addresses the question of how property in land was realized in Qing China. By using extensively historical material against recent anthropological analysis in the study of law, this paper seeks to break up the social concept of property into two moments: (i) the generation of 'right' from context dependant modes of agricultural production and (ii) the negotiation of those 'rights' and obligations by local elites and institutional officials in light of their conflicting or convergent interests. This particular approach exposes the concept of property rights to a set of environmental, historical and political variables. At the same time, it suggests that our present interpretation of the arrangement of land property in Qing China is profoundly influenced by the theoretical debates in which the concept of property has been employed. Insofar as the 'economical' and 'institutional' approaches found in the literature employ historically 'thick' concept such as 'right', 'law' and 'value' without accounting for cultural and sociological variations, they fail to provide the basis for a context-sensitive explanation of the production of 'property relations'. To this end, this paper presents a patchwork narrative of the generation, negotiation, codification and interpretation of land rights during the Qing with the aim of understanding the critical moments in the production of property; of highlighting the interplay of different social actors in its realization; and, finally, of problematizing the academic debate on its content.

Chinese Law, Land and Property Development, Property Rights, Property Law, Legal Anthropology, and 15 more

Publication Date: Dec 2012

Publication Name: La Ricerca Folklorica 64: 141-156

Rural Development, Nationalism And State Building, Modernity, Chinese Politics, Sustainable Rural Development, and 7 more

More Info: draft with footnotes

Journal Name: Inchiesta 177: 78-82.

Publication Date: Oct 20, 2012

The secular, secularism and secularisation are words that have been differently used for lots of different purposes and in various stages of the Euro-American history. This paper will be concerned with exploring the d... more abstractThe secular, secularism and secularisation are words that have been differently used for lots of different purposes and in various stages of the Euro-American history. This paper will be concerned with exploring the dialectic opposition between religion and secularism as it has been developed in anthropology. The broad question this paper addresses is: can religion have a place in the public spheres of the modern world states? It is argued that the concept of religion in anthropology may profit greatly from tacking on board Hannah Arendt's discussion of the public realm. This is because stressing the public dimension of religion could help understanding to what our notion of secularism really refers and help addressing whether the commonly held view that depicts world religions as mainly composed of individual beliefs can be overcome. It concludes by calling for a futher engagement of anthropologists in the debate over the relationship between the secular state and the public dimension of religious life.

Religion, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, Values, Religion & the Public Sphere, and 5 more

More Info: Unpublished manuscript, Draft only.

The Chinese water commons are currently under pressure. Along with many other water stressed countries, China is facing a diminishing availability of irrigation and drinking water. As a way to tackle the problem, Chi... more abstractThe Chinese water commons are currently under pressure. Along with many other water stressed countries, China is facing a diminishing availability of irrigation and drinking water. As a way to tackle the problem, China introduced in 2002 a new framework for water management. This shift in governance produced the adoption of a set of principles – largely inspired by Elinor Ostrom's work on common pool resource management – emphasizing the need for increased participation of users in water management. One consequence of this is the introduction in the countryside of the so called Water Users' Associations (WUA), farmers run associations supervising water management at the village level. This with the belief that devolving rights locally would avert the overconsumption of water and produce fair and sustainable practices of water management in the rural countryside. Based on 16 months of anthropological fieldwork among members of different WUAs operating in Yancong Township – a drought-prone area located in Yunnan Province – this ethnographic study suggests that the way in which collective action is imagined in rural China affects the extent to which “WUAs in the book” could be replicated in “action”. In particular this paper discusses how alternative and culturally specific benchmarks for evaluating organizational success as well as a local culture informing style and content of farmers participation conspire to reshape these organizations from within. Surprisingly however, the adaptation of WUA to local notions of power and efficacy does not end up undermining the fair and endurable management of water in Yancong. Rather, its is thanks to local practices of water sharing and stewardship that pre-dates the implementation of WUAs, if water is managed fairly and endurably. This paper concludes by suggesting that the operationalization of “Ostrom-inspired” organizational solutions to the Chinese water problem might end up overlooking, when not undercutting, the important contribution that ordinary Chinese villagers have long been giving to sustainability in their country.

Anthropology, Water, Commons, Irrigation, Sustainable Development, and 19 more

Location: Edmonton, Canada

Event Date: May 27, 2015

Organization: International Association for the Study of the Commons

A quarant'anni dalle riforme di Deng Xiaoping, la Repubblica Popolare Cinese è diventata a tutti gli effetti una superpotenza mondiale, detentrice della seconda economia nel mondo e di un quinto della popolazione del ... more abstractA quarant'anni dalle riforme di Deng Xiaoping, la Repubblica Popolare Cinese è diventata a tutti gli effetti una superpotenza mondiale, detentrice della seconda economia nel mondo e di un quinto della popolazione del pianeta. Tuttavia, ad accompagnare questa sorprendente crescita sono le conseguenze drammatiche di quarant'anni di "rivoluzione permanente" in campo economico e sociale. Molti osservatori e studiosi occidentali hanno recentemente puntato i riflettori su alcuni di questi effetti collaterali: la preoccupante disparità economica e di diritti fra campagna e città; lo sfarinamento dei rapporti sociali tradizionali e il senso di perdita e di crisi morale che molti cittadini cinesi dichiarano di vivere; la crescente conflittualità inter-etnica che sta avvinghiando le aree di confine. Ad un esame più dettagliato tuttavia, questi problemi appaiono non del tutto nuovi in Cina. Per molti anni antropologi cinesi ed antropologi della Cina hanno lavorato sull'incessante processo di trasformazione a cui questo paese è stato sottoposto nell'ultimo secolo, investigando attraverso lunghi studi sul campo – spesso in aree remote del paese – l'impatto sulla vita quotidiana di migliaia di cittadini cinesi della fine del comunismo, dell'apertura al mercato globale, ed oggi, il processo di transizione verso una società prospera e in crescita. Grazie ad etnografie dettagliate e spesso contro-intuitive, oggi sappiamo molto di più circa i processi sociali che escludono ancora milioni di cinesi dalla ricchezza prodotta dal loro paese; sui motivi che stanno portando diverse minoranze etniche stanziate su territorio cinese a resistere, spesso in maniera anche violenta, a politiche di assimilazione culturale; e sul diffuso senso di crisi morale ed onnipresente sospetto nutrito da molti cittadini cinesi nei confronti, non solo del proprio governo, ma anche dei propri concittadini. In questo intervento due dei traduttori del nuovo volume della SEID Storia dell'Antropologia Cinese, testo scritto a sei mani da tre figure di spicco dell'antropologia contemporanea cinese, Hu Hongbao, Wang Jianmin e Zhang Haiyang, intendono presentare alcune delle opere dei più famosi antropologi cinesi – da Fei Xiaotong a Yan Yunxiang – mostrando come queste etnografie risultino cruciali per conoscere la Cina contemporanea. Ricca di dati empirici, ma soprattutto capace di interpretare la società dal punto di vista di chi ci vive dentro, l'antropologia cinese ci fornisce dettagliate analisi dei tumulti vissuti da una popolazione capace di attraversare profonde trasformazioni nel tempo di una sola generazione. La questione rurale, quella etnica e quella morale – tre pressanti problemi che oggi la dirigenza del Partito Comunista Cinese si trova a dover affrontare – trovano negli studi sul campo degli antropologi cinesi la propria dimensione umana e indizi per una loro possibile soluzione.

Anthropology, Chinese Studies, History of Anthropology, China, Anthropology of China, and 3 more

Time: 2 PM to 5 PM

Location: Venice Ca'Foscari University

Event Date: May 4, 2015

The modernisation of east Asian countries has often passed through the reform of their legal systems. China, however, has witnessed more than one of such reforms. Assuming to have inherited a substantively irrational ... more abstractThe modernisation of east Asian countries has often passed through the reform of their legal systems. China, however, has witnessed more than one of such reforms. Assuming to have inherited a substantively irrational legal tradition – as Max Weber famously put it – pre-revolutionary Chinese elites imported western-style jurisprudence, refuting the legislation which until then had been at the cornerstone of the empire. After the communist took power, things changed, as western law started to be considered a tool for class domination. Two strands of legal tradition were refuted by the communists: the bourgeois law of the West, and the customary rights of China's “feudal” past. Things changed again with the “opening reform” of the 80s and the Party's conversion to economic liberalism. The Chinese government is now trying to establish a modern legal system, convinced that the many problems faced by China today can be solved only through a modern mechanism of governance. According to Chinese authorities however, the country's backward tradition is once again getting in the way, preventing China from fully modernize. Questioning this hegemonic narrative this paper present the findings of an ethnographic studies of disputes' mediation (tiaojie jiufen gongzuo) carried out between September 2011 and January 2013 in the Yunnanese countryside. My ethnography reveals two things. First, that locally, no single legal tradition has acquired monopoly on ruling. State legislations, communist practices and traditional moral principles get often entwined in the attempt to do “justice” and redress grievances. Furthermore, the custom-bashing narrative employed by the Chinese State does not stand up to empirical scrutiny. In rural China, villagers do not just invoke “backward” and “feudal” principles, but adopt also “progressive” and “efficient” rules to the solution of local problems.

Law, Anthropology, Community Engagement & Participation, Law and Development, Legal Pluralism, and 14 more

Location: Beijing

Event Date: Jul 3, 2014

Organization: French Center for Research on Contemporary China

Yancong's water supply network is a intricate infrastructural arrangement of channels and pipes covering 7,5 km² of rural land in North-East Yunnan, People's Republic of China. The network delivers irrigation water to... more abstractYancong's water supply network is a intricate infrastructural arrangement of channels and pipes covering 7,5 km² of rural land in North-East Yunnan, People's Republic of China. The network delivers irrigation water to 1826 Ha of farmland, and drinking water to Yancong's almost 22 thousands inhabitants. Managing the operations, maintenance and expansion of the supply network is the daily occupation of the state officials working in Yancong's Water Bureau, a township level government office where I conducted 16 months of fieldwork. The Bureau is populated by party cadres and hydraulic engineers who take great pride in their work. In fact, running water infrastructures in contemporary rural China is a quest fraught with contradictions. While China is experiencing an increasing pressure over its water resource – as its booming economy and mushrooming megalopolis are making up for an unprecedented water demand – rural centres like Yancong are left with underfunded or ill-planned infrastructures, amid threats of water dispossession from state dictated development projects. In such a context, the quest of bringing water to society requires cooperation among state agents and farmers, political skills and an intimate knowledge of local expectations and requests. This paper documents the daily preoccupations of the water workers of Yancong's Water Bureau, investigating the ethical and political dimensions involved in the project of securing water access for the local community. The ethnography reveals how the encounter with water can activates personal and intimate ethical reflections, bringing people together on common, yet far to be uncontested, projects for human survival.

Anthropology, Ethics, Ethnography, Welfare State, Water resources, and 12 more

Location: UCL Department of Anthropology, London

Event Date: Jun 24, 2014

Organization: Anthropology in London Day

In Yancong, a drought-prone agricultural rural Township of North-East Yunnan, access to water is a crucial concern of local villagers. Irrigation and drinking water comes to the community from a reservoir located fift... more abstractIn Yancong, a drought-prone agricultural rural Township of North-East Yunnan, access to water is a crucial concern of local villagers. Irrigation and drinking water comes to the community from a reservoir located fifty km north, and the local Water Bureau – a government office under the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources where I conducted 16 months of fieldwork – is in charge of delivering it to the 27 villages under its jurisdiction, securing that all villages get their share. Developing the water supply network so that the Chinese citizens' right to domestic water can be fulfilled is one of the main objectives sought after by the Water Bureau. This however with ambivalent results. Despite the many efforts of keeping the drinking water flowing, Yancong's distribution network has been affected since its completion by severe disruptions. Furthermore, with the construction of a hydro-power station in the late '80s, the old water infrastructures collectively excavated by the local villagers have been definitely encroached upon by the state, being converted to uses which were not supported by or even discussed with the local community. The dispossession of collectively owned infrastructures prompted local villagers to find alternative ways of securing drinking water, creating a network of illegal wells from which anyone can collect clean water without charge. This paper investigates the moral significance and social implications of this water management counter-practice, investigating the local notion of solidarity it enacts and how this directly challenges the state governance of water and the entwined notion of legal right protecting its access.

Anthropology, Ethnography, Water resources, Collective Action, Environmental Management, and 13 more

Location: Edinburgh

Event Date: Jun 20, 2014

Organization: Associations of the Social Anthropologists of the UK (ASA) Decennial Conference

Il cambiamento climatico, l'aumento della popolazione mondiale e fenomeni di economia di scala a livello globale stanno mettendo le risorse idriche mondiali sotto forte pressione. Come molti altri paesi definiti water... more abstractIl cambiamento climatico, l'aumento della popolazione mondiale e fenomeni di economia di scala a livello globale stanno mettendo le risorse idriche mondiali sotto forte pressione. Come molti altri paesi definiti water-stressed, la Repubblica Popolare Cinese sta pagando negli ultimi anni una crescente riduzione nella disponibilità delle proprie risorse idriche. Ciò con conseguenze nefaste sulla popolazione: 300 milioni sono i cittadini cinesi ad non avere tutt'ora accesso a fonti di acqua potabile; mentre il numero di sollevazioni di massa per il controllo delle fonti disponibili ha raggiunto, secondo le autorità cinesi, 120.000 in 10 anni. Sotto l'egida della Banca Mondiale, il Fondo Monetario Internazionale e il Dipartimento per lo Sviluppo Internazionale del Regno Unito (DFID) la Repubblica Popolare ha recentemente sperimentato l'introduzione di associazioni locali gestite direttamente dai contadini, chiamate Water Users' Associations (WUA, cin. nongmin yongshuizhe xiehui), nella convinzione che devolvere i diritti di gestione localmente avrebbe migliorato la performance del sistema e fermato una volta per tutte le recriminazioni provenienti dal basso. Questo modello di governance “dal basso” è stato ufficialmente introdotto in Cina con il progetto di gestione del fiume Yangtze/Changjiang, sponsorizzato dalla Banca Mondiale agli inizi degli anni ‘90, e più di recente (2004-2011) testato in diversi progetti di cooperazione internazionale finanziati dal DFID, volti al miglioramento dell'accesso all'acqua nelle aree rurali delle Province di Gansu, Henan, e Mongolia Interna. Questi progetti hanno conosciuto nel tempo una diffusione inaspettata al di là dei limiti posti dai progetti stessi, venendo replicati in centinaia di comunità rurali confinanti le località pilota selezionate. I contadini coinvolti nei progetti sono stati gli artefici di tale diffusione. Benefici sostanziali provenivano dalla riforma della gestione dell'acqua nelle comunità rurali, e le comunità confinanti incominciarono presto a far tesoro di tale esperienza provvedendo autonomamente a fondare nuove associazioni contadine preposte alla gestione dell'acqua. Testimone di tale successo, il governo cinese ha sposato entusiasticamente le riforme proposte dal consorzio di agenzie internazionali, promuovendo la riforma del settore idrico a livello nazionale. Ciò è avvenuto in parte perché gli indicatori posti a misurazione dell'uso della risorsa in agricoltura segnavano numeri preoccupanti. Un'altra ragione dietro la volontà di riformare la gestione dell'acqua in questo paese è di carattere politico: la consapevolezza che il cambiamento climatico, sommato alla crescita della domanda idrica da parte della società, stia incamminando la Cina verso un futuro in cui la limitatezza della risorsa sarà sempre più causa di problemi di ordine pubblico e il nodo da sciogliere nel bilanciamento degli interessi dei vari gruppi sociali. Un'ultima motivazione a dar slancio alla riforma del settore sta nel ritiro dello Stato cinese e nel processo di “responsabilizzazione” finanziaria esperito dai diversi livelli della macchina amministrativa cinese. Devolvere diritti e doveri direttamente ad associazioni contadine, significa sì promuovere il coinvolgimento dei cittadini nella gestione della risorsa, conferendo loro più poteri (empowerment), ma anche ridurre il coinvolgimento dello Stato nella soluzione di problemi di allocazione e distribuzione intrinsecamente conflittuali, permettendo alle autorità di preservare legittimità e ridurre il proprio carico fiscale. La riforma del settore idrico cinese vede dunque la commistione di molteplici interessi: internazionali, nazionali, locali. Nel processo di traduzione e accorpamento di aspettative e aspirazioni tanto diverse tuttavia, la creazione delle WUA sul territorio cinese ha preso una sua propria strada, indipendente in forma e finalità da quelle inizialmente immaginate.

Rural Sociology, Political Economy, Community Engagement & Participation, Water resources, Collective Action, and 9 more

Location: Lecce, Monastero degli Olivetani

Event Date: Dec 14, 2013

Organization: Primo Convegno Società Italiana di Antropologia Applicata

The length and occurrence of droughts in China have increased considerably in the last few years. The ensuing water crisis, which now affects the whole country, will loom large over the future prospects of the Chinese... more abstractThe length and occurrence of droughts in China have increased considerably in the last few years. The ensuing water crisis, which now affects the whole country, will loom large over the future prospects of the Chinese economy. Moreover, the lack of water experienced by many people in China has not failed to cause social unrest. In the last decade the confrontation between the farmers and the local administration around water allocations has risen, leading often to overt violence. As a way to tackle this multifaceted crisis, China amended its Water Law in 2002, thereby introducing a new framework for water management. This shift in governance has produced the adoption of a set of principles emphasizing the need for increased participation of users in water management, and the implementation of water conservation technologies. New inequalities are thus created: while urban dwellers are increasingly being protected from the effects of the shortage, rural communities are facing the contradiction of an imposed economic development agenda under mounting environmental constraints and diminishing state intervention. This paper, drawing from two different ethnographic studies conducted in rural China between 2007 and 2013, explores how drought and the politics of water management are played out in the Chinese rural countryside. In particular it discusses how mistrust between farmers and the many institutions supervising water management in the communities impact the water reform and its effectiveness. In this process feelings of dependency, care and betrayal are generated, pushing often local farmers and the state to violent confrontations.

Political Participation, Chinese Studies, Water, Participatory Design, Community Resilience, and 32 more

Location: Manchester University, UK

Event Date: Aug 7, 2013

Organization: the 17th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences

Water, Irrigation, Water resources, China, Chinese Politics, and 12 more

Location: Venice

Event Date: Mar 25, 2013

Organization: Venice Ca'Foscari University

The length and occurrence of droughts in China have increased considerably in the last few years. It has been now recognised that this trend is the cause of severe damages to the economic growth prospects of China, as... more abstractThe length and occurrence of droughts in China have increased considerably in the last few years. It has been now recognised that this trend is the cause of severe damages to the economic growth prospects of China, as well as a potential threat to its social stability. As a way to tackle the problem, China amended its Water Law in 2002, thereby introducing a new framework for water management. This shift in governance has produced the adoption of a set of principles emphasizing the need for increased participation of users in water management and establishing market mechanisms for water trade. For this reason China started developing Water Users' Associations (WUA) – farmers-run associations that supervises water management at the village level - with the belief that devolving rights locally would avert future water-shortages. However, many are the data suggesting WUAs are failing. This ethnographic study conducted among members of different WUAs operating in Yiche city, Huize county - a drought-prone area located in Yunnan Province - , suggests that the imperatives of the local politics effect the extent to which WUA are implemented in the countryside. In particular this paper discusses how fears over farmers associating outside the purview of the Communist Party alter the impact of the water reform. The long standing preoccupation over social stability in rural China has led to prioritise drought-relief measures and universal access to water over water efficiency and sustainability; but this only at the expanses of villagers' participation to the decision making process.

Water, Irrigation, China, Chinese Politics, Water Rights Law, and 7 more

Location: San Francisco

Event Date: Nov 16, 2012

Organization: American Anthropological Association Annual Conference

Water shortage is severely affecting China's economy and its population. This research will address this phenomenon from the perspective of a rural village located in Gansu. Byfocusing on the daily activity of the vil... more abstractWater shortage is severely affecting China's economy and its population. This research will address this phenomenon from the perspective of a rural village located in Gansu. Byfocusing on the daily activity of the village's Water Users’ Association (WUA), it addresses the broad question of how the shortage, and the strategies developed locally to its solution, are affecting the larger community and changing local practices of communal water management. WUAs are legally constituted, farmer-run associations with elected managerial boards, which supervise water management at a village scale and distribute water rights to farmers within the village. WUAs do not only make decisions on water use but also issue water rights. Water rights are legal documents that give farmers’ the right to store, use and sell water. Notably, this particular ownership framework proposes something quite new to rural farmers in Yunnan: a market for water which is geared to replace older water management practices. Against this background, this research poses three questions.1) WUAs prompt farmers to debate publicly the management of water supply, involvingthem in the decision-making process over this common resource. It is also making villagers responsible for the local environment and it is empowering them in negotiations over village politics. Is this legal reform increasing the participation of farmers in the village’s political life? 2) Managing common resources have long remained in the scope of the local cadres. With the reform, water management rights are now devolved to farmers. Therewith, localcadres face a challenge to their vested interests in the resource. Thus, are WUAs perhaps seen as threatening these interests? 3) Lastly, it explores how law affects individual andcollective agency: are water rights bringing new ideas about fairness and morality to ruralvillagers?

Political Participation, Water, Space and Place, Community Engagement & Participation, Property, and 10 more

Location: Hong Kong

Event Date: Dec 9, 2011

Organization: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Postgraduate Seminar

"In the 19th and 20th century, the modernisation of far east countries has often passed through the adoption of the western concept of the "rule of law". Assuming to be the heir of an substantively irrational legal tr... more abstract"In the 19th and 20th century, the modernisation of far east countries has often passed through the adoption of the western concept of the "rule of law". Assuming to be the heir of an substantively irrational legal tradition – as Max Weber famously put it – Chinese ruling elites imported from the various European colonies within the Chinese territory western-style jurisprudence, constitutions and the legal procedures, refuting the legislation, based on the Confucian tradition, which until then had been the cornerstone of the empire. After the communist took power in 1949, things changed. Western law was considered a tool for class domination, thus to be replaced with socialist permanent revolution and collective critique. Two strands of legal tradition were refuted by the communist: the bourgeois law of the West, and the customary rights of China's "feudal" past. Things changed again with the "opening reform" and the party's conversion to economic liberalism. Following the law and development tradition, the Chinese government is now training to establish a modern legal system, protecting individual rights, corporate interests and upholding the fair trial principle. However, Chinese authorities still thinks, as in the past, that the country's backward tradition is somewhat getting in the way, halting the modernisation reforms. How to foster a "legal consciousness" in society, and enlarge access to justice in the countryside – considered to be the hotbed of all Chinese malaise – has become the main preoccupation for the country's legal reformists. Ethnographic studies of the functioning of disputes resolutions and grass-roots courts in the Chinese countryside reveal how such an opposition is merely ideological: in local contexts state legislations, communist practices and traditional moral principles get entwined in the attempt to do "justice" and redress grievances. And yet, state law often face opposition, as Chinese citizens do not see it as legitimate, but a diversionary tactic to coerce people and dispossess the poor in favour of powerful elites who encroaches upon the state. How does law construct a self-serving image of a backward mentality to be replaced with its own rationality? What is the place and meaning of "customary laws" in a country where the judicial power shows not to be fully independent? In the Chinese context, is state law about "empowering" individual citizens or is it just a technique favouring the unaccountable corporate governance of the country?"

Chinese Law, Dispute Resolution, Mediation, Customary Law, Rule of Law, and 8 more

Location: CLM 2.07, LSE

More Info: AN226, Topic 19.

Event Date: Mar 11, 2014

Anthropologists working in China have long been interested in the empirically grounded study of the Chinese state and in the analysis of the effects of its power onto the lives of Chinese citizens. Ethnographic resear... more abstractAnthropologists working in China have long been interested in the empirically grounded study of the Chinese state and in the analysis of the effects of its power onto the lives of Chinese citizens. Ethnographic researches in this field have explored the everyday practices and ideals of state workers and the ethics of public services provision. They have addressed the new challenges posed to state power by the exponentially growing numbers of social protest and civil society activism. They have investigated the inception of new forms of public/private partnerships and the subsequent emergence of new modes of govermentality and of subtle forms of indirect state control – what Ong and Li called socialism from afar (2008). Taken together, these contributions cast a new light on the often too simplistic portrayals of state authoritarianism in China and provide new qualitative perspectives on the inner working, the regrouping and the challenges faced today by the Chinese state. Set against this background, this panel welcomes contributions that draw on long-term fieldwork in order to engage with both the grassroots and structural transformations of the Chinese State. To this end, in this panel we wish to dig deeper into the everyday ramifications of state power in contemporary China and into its implications for local notions of citizenship and conflict. We will be particularly interested in contributions that address the everyday encounters of common citizens with state agents, their changing knowledge, unstable subjectivities and power practices, and the ways in which these encounters give rise to new interactive ways of performing, engaging with and resisting to the far-from-monolithic entity that is the contemporary Chinese state. On what grounds do ordinary citizens engage with or take on the Chinese States? What new lines of conflict and alternative imaginaries of state power are emerging from these forms of engagement?

Anthropology, Ethnography, Chinese Studies, Sinology, Consumerism, and 17 more

By focusing on various actors' engagement with dynamic weather forces and infrastructures, this panel considers the political ecology of infrastructures as constituted in issues regarding climate change.

Anthropology, Climate Change, Political Ecology, Climate Change Adaptation, Political Anthropology, and 14 more

Organisation of a panel on solidarity and solidarity economies at the ASA 2014. ASA14 Decennial: Anthropology and Enlightenment

Anthropology of Food, Economic Anthropology, Solidarity Economy, and Solidarity

Anthropology of China and Anthropology of Modern and Contemporary China

Location: Rome

More Info: ISBN 978-88-548-5764-3

Publisher: Arance Editrice

Journal Name: Ming Qing Studies 2012 (Asia Orientale Series), Reviews, pp. 274-277