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Part front matter for Part 1 Tracing Meaningful Life-Worlds
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Published:November 2016
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In 2009, I was asked by two close colleagues, David Faure and Liu Zhiwei, to clarify our research agenda on South China. It became “Reflections on Historical Anthropology,” published in Chinese by the Journal of History and Anthropology (2009a). I use a slightly revised version here. Tracing our intellectual roots from the classic traditions of Durkheim, Marx and Weber to critical social theories, European social and cultural history, the essay shows how we have attempted to synergize decades of methodological reflections in history and anthropology. It explores the construction of texts and meaningful life-worlds shared by the two disciplines. We sleuth archival sources and ethnographic encounters for divergent meanings within hegemonic frames of mind and matter, and we attempt to highlight the concepts of culture, history, power, and place in processual and non-binary terms. The themes in the essay frame the organization of this volume.
A section of the essay was delivered at a meeting of the East Asian Section of the American Anthropological Association in memory of my teacher G. William Skinner (Siu 2010a). I highlight the theme “Unity and Diversity” as key to understanding the evolution of Chinese culture and society. It captures the interface of local society and translocal environments by stressing the diverse strategies of human agents who were grounded in regional political economies. These local initiatives, symbolic and instrumental, dovetailed with late-imperial state-making impulses at crucial historical moments to generate a unifying cultural nexus of power.
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