Grassroots Charisma

Wang, Mingming

Stephan Feuchtwang

Taylor&Francis

Empire and Local Worlds: A Chinese Model for Long-Term Historical Anthropology (UCL Institute of Archaeology Critical Cultural Heritage Series)

Mingming Wang, one of the most prolific anthropologists in China, has produced a work both of long-term historical anthropology and of broad social theory. In it, he traces almost a millennium of history of the southern Chinese city of Quangzhou, a major international trading entrepot in the 13th century that declined to a peripheral regional center by the end of the 19th century. But the historical trajectory understates the complex set of interrelationships between local structures and imperial agendas that played out over the course of centuries and dynasties. Using urban structure, documentary analysis, and archaeological artifacts, Wang shows how the study of Quangzhou represents a Chinese template for civilizational studies, one distinctly different from Eurocentric models propounded by such theorists as Sahlins, Wolf, and Elias.

History

Asia

Routledge

<p>Mingming Wang, one of the most prolific anthropologists in China, has produced a work both of long-term historical anthropology and of broad social theory. In it, he traces almost a millennium of history of the southern Chinese city of Quangzhou, a major international trading entrepot in the 13th century that declined to a peripheral regional center by the end of the 19th century. But the historical trajectory understates the complex set of interrelationships between local structures and imperial agendas that played out over the course of centuries and dynasties. Using urban structure, documentary analysis, and archaeological artifacts, Wang shows how the study of Quangzhou represents a Chinese template for civilizational studies, one distinctly different from Eurocentric models propounded by such theorists as Sahlins, Wolf, and Elias.</p>

Long before the Europeans reached the east, the ancient Chinese had advanced their perspectives of the west. In this groundbreaking book, Wang explores a fascinating perspective of the Other. He locates the Other in the alternating directionologies of classical and imperial China, leading the reader into a long history of Chinese geo-cosmologies and world-scapes. In his analysis, Wang also delves into the historical records of Chinese "world activities," or the journeys from being the Central Kingdom to reaching to the "outer regions," separating the construction of illusory from realistic geographies while drawing attention to their interconnected natures. Wang challenges an extensive number of critical studies of Orientalist narratives (chiefly including Edward Said's Orientalism), and reframes such studies from the directionological perspectives of an "Oriental" civilization. He challenges the assumption that the Other must be understood in the sense that has been explained in general anthropology, crucially underlining the European foundations that have shaped its traditional interpretations.

The West as the Other: A Genealogy of Chinese Occidentalism

The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

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Books by Wang, Mingming