Pub Date : 2022-07-18DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2022.2093770
Willy Sier
Abstract After the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan in January 2020, governments around the world evacuated their citizens from China. Soon, problems arose in relation to the evacuation of families made up of white Western migrants and Chinese citizens, as their mixed citizenship status prevented them from being evacuated as a family. By analyzing news reports, policy documents, and social media discussions about these families’ predicaments, this article investigates the reasons why they faced being separated in this time of crisis. Drawing on the concept of white mobility capital, it argues that the Covid-19 era brings to our attention the weak foundation of long-assumed mobility privileges among white migrants in China and sheds light on the precarious status of increasing numbers of mixed-status families in China.
{"title":"Stuck in Wuhan? White mobility capital and the evacuation of mixed-status families after the Covid-19 outbreak","authors":"Willy Sier","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2093770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2093770","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract After the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan in January 2020, governments around the world evacuated their citizens from China. Soon, problems arose in relation to the evacuation of families made up of white Western migrants and Chinese citizens, as their mixed citizenship status prevented them from being evacuated as a family. By analyzing news reports, policy documents, and social media discussions about these families’ predicaments, this article investigates the reasons why they faced being separated in this time of crisis. Drawing on the concept of white mobility capital, it argues that the Covid-19 era brings to our attention the weak foundation of long-assumed mobility privileges among white migrants in China and sheds light on the precarious status of increasing numbers of mixed-status families in China.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"171 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43770784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-08DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2022.2090054
K. Ma
Abstract This article explores how white Western male vloggers have sought to maintain their positive images among Chinese netizens on the Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the West and foreign migrants in China were lampooned and scorned due to rising Chinese nationalism. By analyzing these vloggers’ self-representations and the Chinese audience’s responses to them, the article discusses how white male identity is negotiated on China’s state-regulated social media platforms in this critical time. It shows that while Western male vloggers carefully represent themselves as ideal foreign migrants in China, they are subject to criticisms from their Chinese audience. In this process, the meanings attached to white male identity have become increasingly debated.
{"title":"Transnational white masculinity on Chinese social media: Western male vloggers’ self-representations during the covid-19 pandemic","authors":"K. Ma","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2090054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2090054","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores how white Western male vloggers have sought to maintain their positive images among Chinese netizens on the Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the West and foreign migrants in China were lampooned and scorned due to rising Chinese nationalism. By analyzing these vloggers’ self-representations and the Chinese audience’s responses to them, the article discusses how white male identity is negotiated on China’s state-regulated social media platforms in this critical time. It shows that while Western male vloggers carefully represent themselves as ideal foreign migrants in China, they are subject to criticisms from their Chinese audience. In this process, the meanings attached to white male identity have become increasingly debated.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"211 - 223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44581432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-08DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2022.2090053
Christina Kefala, Shanshan Lan
Abstract This research examines two groups of young Western entrepreneurs’ experiences of leaving China during the Covid-19 pandemic, either due to business failure or due to being stuck abroad when China closed its border to international travelers. Based on semi-structured long-distance interviews with twenty young white entrepreneurs who had previously worked in different Chinese cities, this article highlights the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis on their businesses, social status, and identities before and during the pandemic. We identify two prominent themes in our respondents’ highly emotional reflections on their involuntary return experiences: loss and victimhood. We argue that such narratives betray multi-layered tensions between privileges and precariousness in the social construction of whiteness in a transnational context.
{"title":"End of the China dream? Young Western entrepreneurs’ trajectories of leaving China during Covid-19","authors":"Christina Kefala, Shanshan Lan","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2090053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2090053","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This research examines two groups of young Western entrepreneurs’ experiences of leaving China during the Covid-19 pandemic, either due to business failure or due to being stuck abroad when China closed its border to international travelers. Based on semi-structured long-distance interviews with twenty young white entrepreneurs who had previously worked in different Chinese cities, this article highlights the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis on their businesses, social status, and identities before and during the pandemic. We identify two prominent themes in our respondents’ highly emotional reflections on their involuntary return experiences: loss and victimhood. We argue that such narratives betray multi-layered tensions between privileges and precariousness in the social construction of whiteness in a transnational context.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"197 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41566225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2022.2100067
P. Leonard
Abstract This special issue of Asian Anthropology gathers five studies that deal with how the Covid-19 pandemic disruptions impacted on a distinctive social group in a particular geopolitical context: white migrants in China. While the articles reveal in fascinating detail how this combination of people and place is in many ways unique in terms of their experiences of, and responses to, the pandemic, the collection also speaks to larger themes of migration, citizenship, inequality, precarity and vulnerability, and the role of race within these.
{"title":"Precarious whiteness in pandemic times in China","authors":"P. Leonard","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2100067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2100067","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This special issue of Asian Anthropology gathers five studies that deal with how the Covid-19 pandemic disruptions impacted on a distinctive social group in a particular geopolitical context: white migrants in China. While the articles reveal in fascinating detail how this combination of people and place is in many ways unique in terms of their experiences of, and responses to, the pandemic, the collection also speaks to larger themes of migration, citizenship, inequality, precarity and vulnerability, and the role of race within these.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"238 - 243"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44564131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2022.2099081
Shanshan Lan, Willy Sier, A. Camenisch
Abstract In this introduction we explore how the effects of the outbreak of Covid-19 in January 2020 have challenged, undermined, and transformed the racialized privileges of various groups of white migrants in China. While whiteness can be an invisible hegemonic construction in Western societies, it becomes a highly visible minority status in China. We introduce the concept of “precarious whiteness” to flesh out the multi-layered tensions in the transnational circulation and reconfiguration of white privilege, particularly in China. The articles in this special issue focus on white migrants in four domains: transnational business and entrepreneurship, Chinese-foreign families, digital media platforms, and online English teaching. Together they foreground the highly contested and fragmented nature of white racial formation in a critical historical moment of Covid-19.
{"title":"Precarious whiteness in pandemic times in China","authors":"Shanshan Lan, Willy Sier, A. Camenisch","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2099081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2099081","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this introduction we explore how the effects of the outbreak of Covid-19 in January 2020 have challenged, undermined, and transformed the racialized privileges of various groups of white migrants in China. While whiteness can be an invisible hegemonic construction in Western societies, it becomes a highly visible minority status in China. We introduce the concept of “precarious whiteness” to flesh out the multi-layered tensions in the transnational circulation and reconfiguration of white privilege, particularly in China. The articles in this special issue focus on white migrants in four domains: transnational business and entrepreneurship, Chinese-foreign families, digital media platforms, and online English teaching. Together they foreground the highly contested and fragmented nature of white racial formation in a critical historical moment of Covid-19.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"161 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44606569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2022.2099082
A. Camenisch
Abstract This article investigates how white European (mostly Swiss) foreigners living in Beijing, Shanghai, and various cities in the Pearl River Delta have negotiated their social and legal positions during the early Covid-19 pandemic. Their transnational citizenship constellation spans two political systems that are commonly thought of as incommensurable and whose legitimacy is mutually contested by opponents of either model of governance. My research illustrates how this polarization was exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. The research participants noted how the position of white, Western foreigners in China was shifting as they became exposed to suspicion of being potential carriers of the virus and to a related uptick in xenophobia. They felt that the Chinese authorities and media externalized and racialized the new corona virus to enhance the legitimacy of the authoritarian regime vis-à-vis the domestic population; but they also considered the Chinese response to the outbreak of Covid-19 at the time a success overall and praised people in China for their compliance with state measures. How these white European foreigners in China navigated the early Covid-19 era is thus mediated by the larger geopolitical polarization between China and “the West” inherent in their citizenship constellation, racialized social hierarchies among foreigners in China, and an ambiguity between the experience of being othered and their identification with the Chinese approach to containing Covid-19.
{"title":"Between precarious foreignness and praise for China: the citizenship constellations of white Europeans in China during the early Covid-19 pandemic","authors":"A. Camenisch","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2099082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2099082","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article investigates how white European (mostly Swiss) foreigners living in Beijing, Shanghai, and various cities in the Pearl River Delta have negotiated their social and legal positions during the early Covid-19 pandemic. Their transnational citizenship constellation spans two political systems that are commonly thought of as incommensurable and whose legitimacy is mutually contested by opponents of either model of governance. My research illustrates how this polarization was exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. The research participants noted how the position of white, Western foreigners in China was shifting as they became exposed to suspicion of being potential carriers of the virus and to a related uptick in xenophobia. They felt that the Chinese authorities and media externalized and racialized the new corona virus to enhance the legitimacy of the authoritarian regime vis-à-vis the domestic population; but they also considered the Chinese response to the outbreak of Covid-19 at the time a success overall and praised people in China for their compliance with state measures. How these white European foreigners in China navigated the early Covid-19 era is thus mediated by the larger geopolitical polarization between China and “the West” inherent in their citizenship constellation, racialized social hierarchies among foreigners in China, and an ambiguity between the experience of being othered and their identification with the Chinese approach to containing Covid-19.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"184 - 196"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45824863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2022.2043975
Tets Kimura, William Peterson, Shi Lin
Abstract This article investigates how fashion and nationalism were expressed through two iconic dress styles worn by women, the qipao in Taiwan and the terno in the Philippines in the post-WWII era. We consider the positioning of women’s bodies in the nation-building project and how sartorial practices reflected expectations around gendered performance in the public and private spheres. Both countries emerged from domination by major powers—Japan and the US—in the post-war era and ruling elites were keen to project an image of nation that was distinctively Asian and modern, while the first ladies of both nations championed their respective styles of national dress. In the Philippines, the terno was a fusion garment adapted over time that reflected the nation’s earlier cultural links with Spain, whereas in Taiwan the qipao marked women’s bodies as Chinese in the public sphere as Chinese nationalists consolidated their political control over the country. We argue that the relative success and longevity of the terno in the Philippines is due to a lengthy, organic process of internal cultural authentication prior to its take-up by former First Lady Imelda Marcos, as opposed to the top-down imposition of the qipao on Taiwanese women’s bodies.
{"title":"Fashion nationalism in Asia: a comparative study of the Philippines’ terno and Taiwan’s qipao","authors":"Tets Kimura, William Peterson, Shi Lin","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2043975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2043975","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article investigates how fashion and nationalism were expressed through two iconic dress styles worn by women, the qipao in Taiwan and the terno in the Philippines in the post-WWII era. We consider the positioning of women’s bodies in the nation-building project and how sartorial practices reflected expectations around gendered performance in the public and private spheres. Both countries emerged from domination by major powers—Japan and the US—in the post-war era and ruling elites were keen to project an image of nation that was distinctively Asian and modern, while the first ladies of both nations championed their respective styles of national dress. In the Philippines, the terno was a fusion garment adapted over time that reflected the nation’s earlier cultural links with Spain, whereas in Taiwan the qipao marked women’s bodies as Chinese in the public sphere as Chinese nationalists consolidated their political control over the country. We argue that the relative success and longevity of the terno in the Philippines is due to a lengthy, organic process of internal cultural authentication prior to its take-up by former First Lady Imelda Marcos, as opposed to the top-down imposition of the qipao on Taiwanese women’s bodies.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"7 10","pages":"100 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41268144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2022.2065005
Tsering
Abstract In China’s Himalayan borderlands, Taman people are officially categorized as a subgroup (ren) of the Tibetan ethnic group (minzu). They are typically discriminated against and marginalized by neighboring Tibetans. Taman people are located at a juncture of critical social and political questions regarding issues such as social hierarchy, state power, and the nation-state’s borders. In this article, I examine how the Taman people react to and interact with state power, focusing on grassroots village organization, economic activities, and government policies at the ground level. In doing so, I draw on ethnicity as an analytical lens and argue that the control of local society does not merely intrude from the outside as a result of “mechanical” state power. Local society also actively transforms and produces governable subjects from within, through interactions with the state.
{"title":"State power and trans-border people in China’s Himalayan borderlands: a study of the Taman people in Kyirong valley, Tibet Autonomous Region","authors":"Tsering","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2065005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2065005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In China’s Himalayan borderlands, Taman people are officially categorized as a subgroup (ren) of the Tibetan ethnic group (minzu). They are typically discriminated against and marginalized by neighboring Tibetans. Taman people are located at a juncture of critical social and political questions regarding issues such as social hierarchy, state power, and the nation-state’s borders. In this article, I examine how the Taman people react to and interact with state power, focusing on grassroots village organization, economic activities, and government policies at the ground level. In doing so, I draw on ethnicity as an analytical lens and argue that the control of local society does not merely intrude from the outside as a result of “mechanical” state power. Local society also actively transforms and produces governable subjects from within, through interactions with the state.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"121 - 137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46032614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2022.2064370
Álvaro Malaina
Abstract The article introduces the concept of “ethno-cinematographic rhizome,” inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s conceptual framework. This is a non-representational model of an ethno-social world built with time-images, non-hierarchical and characterized by multiplicity, which through memories, myths, fantasies, and dreams open up the actual to the virtual. The concept is applied to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s cinema. Through the analysis of his most representative films, Tropical Malady (Sud Pralad, 2004), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat, 2010) and Cemetery of Splendour (Rak Ti Khon Kaen, 2015), I show how they are characterized by the rhizomatic assemblage of natural, daily-life profane components and by supernatural, spiritual and sacred components, which present us the Thai region of Isan. Apichatpong’s ethno-cinematographic rhizomes can help us to deepen in a contemplative and perceptual way our understanding of the ethno-cultural world of Isan, while connecting at a broader level with the “ontological turn” in anthropology by, among others, Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.
摘要本文介绍了“民族电影根茎”的概念，其灵感来源于德勒兹的概念框架。这是一个非代表性的民族社会世界模型，由时间图像构建，非层次性，以多样性为特征，通过记忆、神话、幻想和梦想，将现实向虚拟开放。这一概念被应用于阿皮查蓬·维拉萨库尔的电影。通过对他最具代表性的电影《热带马拉迪》（Sud Pralad，2004）、《能回忆前世的布恩美叔叔》（Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat，2010）和《灿烂的墓地》（Rak Ti Khon Kaen，2015）的分析，我展示了它们是如何以自然、日常生活中的世俗成分和超自然、精神和神圣成分的根茎组合为特征的，它向我们介绍了泰国的伊桑地区。Apichatpong的民族电影根可以帮助我们以沉思和感性的方式加深对伊桑民族文化世界的理解，同时在更广泛的层面上与Philippe Descola、Bruno Latour和Eduardo Viveiros de Castro等人的人类学“本体论转向”联系起来。
{"title":"Assembling the natural and the supernatural in Thai independent cinema: the ethno-cinematographic rhizomes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul","authors":"Álvaro Malaina","doi":"10.1080/1683478X.2022.2064370","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2022.2064370","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article introduces the concept of “ethno-cinematographic rhizome,” inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s conceptual framework. This is a non-representational model of an ethno-social world built with time-images, non-hierarchical and characterized by multiplicity, which through memories, myths, fantasies, and dreams open up the actual to the virtual. The concept is applied to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s cinema. Through the analysis of his most representative films, Tropical Malady (Sud Pralad, 2004), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat, 2010) and Cemetery of Splendour (Rak Ti Khon Kaen, 2015), I show how they are characterized by the rhizomatic assemblage of natural, daily-life profane components and by supernatural, spiritual and sacred components, which present us the Thai region of Isan. Apichatpong’s ethno-cinematographic rhizomes can help us to deepen in a contemplative and perceptual way our understanding of the ethno-cultural world of Isan, while connecting at a broader level with the “ontological turn” in anthropology by, among others, Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.","PeriodicalId":34948,"journal":{"name":"Asian anthropology","volume":"21 1","pages":"138 - 154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47447075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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