The Forming of World Subjects: On Promoting Intersubjective Anthropologies Between China and Southeast Asia
In this talk, Haoqun Gong aims to show how self-centered national anthropology limits the potentiality of cultural critique in both China and Thailand, by reviewing the social discourse of Southeast Asia in modern China and the current separate situation between Chinese and Thai anthropologists.
Haoqun Gong is an affilate fellow at IIAS from the Institute of Global Ethnology and Anthropology at Minzu University of China in Beijing, China.
In the forming of world society, it is necessary to establish the epistemological subjects such as “who I am”, “who you are” and “who we are”. World anthropologies could promote the formation of world society through intersubjective anthropological studies. Intersubjective anthropological studies mean that anthropologists from different areas become the subjects of knowledge producing to each other, and try to go beyond the unidirectional colonial anthropology, which could not make its narrative of the others to be the narrative of us.
The talk examines the development of overseas ethnographic studies in China in the past ten years and the challenge of how to reimagine the world in China today. Through reviewing the social discourse of Southeast Asia in modern China and the current separate situation between Chinese anthropologists and Thai anthropologists, the author tries to show how the self-centered national anthropology limits the potentiality of cultural critique in both countries. Beyond the case study from Chinese anthropology and Thai anthropology, the speaker advocates that world anthropologists need to establish the self consciousness based on reflexivity instead of provincialism, and intersubjective anthropological studies will contribute to the growth of world subjects who are building more engaged relationship between self and the other.
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About IIAS Lunch Lectures
Every month, an IIAS researcher or visiting scholar will present his or her work-in-progress in an informal setting to colleagues and other interested attendees. IIAS organises these lunch lectures to give the research community the opportunity to freely discuss ongoing research and exchange thoughts and ideas.