"Consuming Culture in China" -- 2014 AAA Annual Meeting Session

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.