I'm part of a great panel for this year's American Anthropological Association's Annual Meeting, which is taking place the first week of December in Washington, D.C. This panel focuses on understanding the politics of cultural commodification in China today, with a particular emphasis on the processes through which ethnic minority communities are being reformed as highly valued "resources" within larger state policies and developments. There will be three papers based on research from Yunnan, along with my paper on bull-fighting in Guizhou; details below. If you're planning on attending the meetings from beginning to end, please attend our session. I am really excited to talk about bull-fighting in Guizhou, which is a topic I've been working on for a few years now, and I am looking forward to gaining feedback from other anthropologists.
Session title: Consuming Culture, Reforming Place, and Personifying Value in China Organized by Lara Kusnetzky Wednesday, December 3, 2014 12:00-1:45 My paper: Organized Chaos: Bullfights As Cultural Production and Ethnic Practice in Guizhou Abstract: Bullfights in southeastern Guizhou index Miao cultural vitality and ethnic identity in regional and national tourism campaigns, rural development efforts, and heritage preservation programs. To be clear, while the Chinese phrase for bullfighting is douniu, according to some Miao scholars, bullfighting should be called niudajia to emphasize that two water buffalo fight each other. As events, bullfights are tightly organized competitions, yet often erupt into chaos when the bulls charge their handlers or into the crowds. This paper explores how the organization of bullfights and the enjoyment of them have become ways in which contemporary Miao use local resources, including funds from private entrepreneurs, and local government agencies (such as regional bullfighting associations and cultural bureaus) to assert an ethnic, minority cultural identity within the context, or chaos, of ever-evolving state policies of cultural preservation and rural urbanization. Unlike the many tourism projects in this region, into which bullfighting (or images of) are often incorporated, bullfights remain largely produced for local audiences. By interrogating the politics of bullfights as cultural production and ethnic practice, this paper argues that the shared experience of watching, and enjoying, bullfights reflect and refract contemporary Miao identities in a region and era where distinctive forms of ethnic-ness and cultural-ness are increasingly marketed, promoted, and celebrated. Thus, from their organization, participants, and their ubiquity as video-recordings, bullfights engender what can be called “productive pleasures” and speak to ways in which culture and ethnicity are governed within current state projects to modernize, and urbanize, rural China.
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One of the coolest things about having my book published is the chance now to discuss and reflect on my work through talks and public lectures. I really enjoyed presenting my work at Emory a few weeks ago to a very engaged audience of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. Next week I'll give a public lecture at Hamilton College, in New York, about my research on ethnic tourism in rural China. Since my fieldwork in Upper Jidao and Ping'an villages began eight years ago in 2006, and these lectures are a great chance for me to update my findings and to reconsider some of the implications of what I've observed and analyzed.
Public Lecture The Labor of Leisure: Reconsidering the Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China Friday, November 7, 2014 4-6 p.m. Kirmer-Johnson 102 Hamilton College Website: Events Calendar Here
The first good news I have to share is that my book, A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China, is hot off the press and now available for purchase from the University of Washington Press, Amazon, and other retailers. Contact me if you'd like a flyer and a discount code!
Second, for anyone attending the 2014 Society for Applied Anthropology Meeting in Albuquerque soon, I'll be screening my film, 农家乐 Peasant Family Happiness, on Saturday, March 22, at 12 p.m. in Alvarado G (inside the conference venue, the Hotel Albuquerque Old Town). I'm really eager to share this film with scholars working in applied anthropology in order to broaden my own perspectives on tourism studies. There's also going to be a special plenary session on the Anthropology of Tourism, coordinated by Valene Smith, on Friday, March 21, which I'm looking forward to attending. It feels strange, and great, to have these two pieces of work out in the world...and to hope that they will create some space for new conversations and discussions in anthropology, tourism studies, China studies, and related fields. I'm participating in a conference on Asian Video Cultures at Brown University next weekend (October 24-26) -- the schedule is online and it looks like a great event with screenings by Paromita Vohra and talks on video practices in a variety of Asian contexts. My presentation, titled "Video Documentary and Rural Public Culture in Ethnic China" will be at 9:15 a.m. on Friday, October 25. And since Brown is where I first studied Anthropology as an undergraduate concentrator, I'm especially excited to go back to Providence and revisit College Hill.
I'm excited to give two talks at Emory in the Fall 2013 semester on two different research projects of mine. It's great to share my ongoing research interests with a wide range of scholars and students here on campus. Please contact me if you have any questions about these upcoming talks.
Friday, September 27, 2013 11:30 a.m. -- 12:45 p.m. in ECIT 215 (Woodruff Library) Critical Media Literacy Group Seminar Topic: "Village Videos:" Media and Rural Public Culture in China Wednesday, October 30, 2013 12:00-1:00 in Anthropology 206 Development Studies Brown Bag Lunch Title: "Doing Tourism" as Development in Rural Ethnic China |
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