William Jankowiak
Biographic Data
| ID | 3581015 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William Jankowiak |
| GIVEN NAMES | William |
| FAMILY NAME | Jankowiak |
| SIGNATURE | JANKOWIAK W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nevada, Las Vegas |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 327 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Wanting Beauty, Fearing Beauty: Mate Preference, Intimacy, Deception, and the Femme Fatale
This paper examines the cross-cultural prevalence of the femme fatale (dangerous woman) motif using folkloric materials, ethnographic accounts, and consultations with ethnographers across 84 societies. Narratives were coded for depictions in which male protagonists suffer harm following involvement with an unfamiliar but physically attractive woman. Results show that 94% of sampled societies contain recognizable femme fatale imagery. When male mo…
Love Troubles: Inequality in China and its Intimate Consequences, written by Wanning Sun
Mongolian Interethnic Marriage, Ethnic Relations, and National Integration in the PRC
Interethnic marriage amongst China’s ethnic population has not received the attention it deserves. This is partly due to the hesitation and resistance of the more prominent ethnic groups—Tibetans and Uyghurs—to enter an interethnic marriage. Still, it is less so for China’s Mongols, who now have an interethnic marriage rate of almost 90 percent. The intermarriage pattern had previously involved urbanities, but over the last twenty years, it has i…
A Chinese Rebel beyond the Great Wall: The Cultural Revolution and Ethnic Pogrom in Inner Mongolia
Illicit Monogamy: Inside a Fundamentalist Mormon Community
Angel Park is a Mormon fundamentalist polygamous community where plural marriages between one man and multiple women are common. Based on many years of in-depth ethnographic research, Illicit Monogamy considers the plural family from the points of view of husbands, wives, and children, giving a balanced account of its complications and conflicts.
Dreams of Flight: The Lives of Chinese Women Students in the West, written by Fran Martin
Marriage Unbound: State, Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China, written by Ke Li
Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides under China’s Global Rise, written by Monica Liu
Mormon Fundamentalist, Polygamous Marriage and What It May Tell Us about Being Human
The research that forms this paper was conducted over six years 1993-1999 in a Mormon Fundamentalist community in Western USA. I wanted to understand if it was possible to love multiple individuals at the same time or if, instead, there was a preference for emotional involvement. I live inside the community dwelling with different families which enable me to view ordinary life and daily interactions that are often not noted in survey research. I …
Drugs, Labor and Colonial Expansion
Embodying Middle Class Gender Aspirations: Perspectives from China’s Privileged Young Women, written by Kailing Xie
Kailing Xie. Embodying Middle Class Gender Aspirations: Perspectives from China’s Privileged Young Women. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. xvii + 305pp. 87.19 EUR. ISBN 9789811611384In this smart, well-researched and easy to read study Kailing Xie explores the emotional and moral lives of China’s newly affluent social class, i.e. its emergent middle class. This is the first generation to embrace luxury and leisure as a way of life. It is also…
Caring in Times of Precarity: A Study of Single Women Doing Creative Work in Shanghai, written by Chow Yiu Fai, 2019
Chinese-British Intermarriage: Disentangling Gender and Ethnicity, written by Yang Hu, 2016
The state of research on urban Chinese ethnicity: Urban Mongols
In chapter 9, William Jankowiak and B Shurentana provide an overview of themes and trends in the study of ethnicity in urban China. First, because minority research has been primarily conducted among rural ethnic groups, there are few studies of urban ethnic populations. To date, most research has focused on the relationship between cultural assumptions and how state policies have shaped who is and who is not a minority. With a few notable except…
Chinese Women’s Changing Status: A Review of New Publications
Billé, Franck: Sinophobia. Anxiety, Violence, and the Making of Mongolian Identity
Anthropos , Seite 667 - 667
Bisexual and Straight Females' Preferences Voiced on an Adult Sex Dating Site: A Research Report
Our study looked at a popular sex dating website that described itself as intended for those interested in finding like-minded individuals who want to engage in casual sexual encounters. Our study is the first to use an adult dating site in the United States to explore the linkage between gender, sexual orientation, and the frequency with which females-straight and bisexual-and males seek casual sex. On the basis of existing research on the gende…
Investigating Love’s Universal Attributes: A Research Report From China
There are no cognitive studies of love conducted in an Asian culture. Our study is the first to probe the cognitive qualities that urban Chinese youth associate with what it means to be in love. To this end, we build on de Munck et al.’s pioneering studies in two European cultures (Russia, Lithuanian) and in the United States. Expanding on their study, we used a similar questionnaire that also includes additional questions designed to probe the y…
Is the Romantic-Sexual Kiss a Near Human Universal
Scholars from a wide range of human social and behavioral sciences have become interested in the romantic-sexual kiss. This research, and its public dissemination, often includes statements about the ubiquity of kissing, particularly romantic-sexual kissing, across cultures. Yet, to date there is no evidence to support or reject this claim. Employing standard cross-cultural methods, this research report is the first attempt to use a large sample …
The Decline of the Chauvinistic Model of Chinese Masculinity: A Research Report
Our study is the first study to explore the transformation of Chinese gender stereotypes over a thirty-year period. Based on the field research conducted in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, and supplemental data in Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing, we examine the way men and women's supposed "essence" has been objectified in folk ideology to form a cognitive or ideal model of gender. We argue that there is a decline in the 1980s …
Urban Mongols: The Flourishing of Multiple Identities in a Vibrant Ethnic Community
China's ethnopolitics are grounded in two contradictory philosophies that often give rise to competing policies: the upholding of the ethnic group as well as the individual's right to achieve prominence within the established social order. An individual's sense of ethnic belonging and national identification are affected by the degree to which these ideals—individual achievement verses group interests—are internalized. The issue of the relevant s…
What Observation Studies Can Tell Us About Single Child Play Patterns, Gender, and Changes in Chinese Society
Our study focused on Chinese children’s play patterns in two different Chinese capitals: Chengdu—the capital of Sichuan in southwest China and Hohhot—the capital of the autonomous Inner Mongolia region in northern China. Unlike child psychologists working in China, who prefer survey instruments organized around parent and teacher interviews, the authors relied primarily upon behavioral observations. Their study is based on naturalistic observatio…
Ethnographies of Prostitution in Contemporary China: Gender Relations, HIV/Aids, and Nationalism. by Tiantian Zheng
Pursuits of Happiness: Well-Being in Anthropological Perspective
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture
At the start of the twenty-first century, China is poised to become a major global power. Understanding its culture is more important than ever before for western audiences, but for many, China remains a mysterious and exotic country. This Companion explains key aspects of modern Chinese culture without assuming prior knowledge of China or the Chinese language. The volume acknowledges the interconnected nature of the different cultural forms, fro…
Using Drug Foods to Capture and Enhance Labor Performance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love
The anthropological study of romantic (or passionate) love is virtually nonexistent due to the widespread belief that romantic love is unique to Euro-American culture. This belief is by no means confined to anthropology. The historian Philippe Aries (1962), for example, argues that affection was of secondary importance to more utilitarian ambitions throughout much of European history. Lawrence Stone (1988:16) goes further, insisting that if roman…
Co-Wife Conflict and Co-operation
Conventional wisdom holds that the polygynous family system is as sexually and emotionally satisfying as a monogamous one.Ethnographic accounts of 69 polygynous systems, however, provide compelling evidence that the majority of co-wives in a polygynous family prefer pragmatic co-operation with one another while maintaining a respectful distance.Moreover, there often is a deep-seated feeling of angst that arises over competing for access to their …
Performance and Imagination: Toward an Anthropology of the Spectacular and the Mundane
Sexual Selection, Physical Attractiveness, and Facial Neoteny: Cross-cultural Evidence and Implications [and Comments and Reply]
Physical attractiveness and its relation to the theory of sexual selection deserve renewed attention from cultural and biological anthropologists. This paper focuses on an anomaly associated with physical attractiveness-in our species, in contrast to many others, males seem to be more concerned than females with the attractiveness of potential sexual partners, perhaps because humans show far more age-related variance in female than in male fecund…
Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account
The first contemporary enthnographic account of urban life in China, Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City studies both public and private life, including such aspects as religious belief, gender images, family life, and sexual attraction
Is the Romantic-Sexual Kiss a Near Human Universal
Scholars from a wide range of human social and behavioral sciences have become interested in the romantic-sexual kiss. This research, and its public dissemination, often includes statements about the ubiquity of kissing, particularly romantic-sexual kissing, across cultures. Yet, to date there is no evidence to support or reject this claim. Employing standard cross-cultural methods, this research report is the first attempt to use a large sample …
The Last Hurrah? Political Protest in Inner Mongolia
The Decline of the Chauvinistic Model of Chinese Masculinity: A Research Report
Our study is the first study to explore the transformation of Chinese gender stereotypes over a thirty-year period. Based on the field research conducted in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, and supplemental data in Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing, we examine the way men and women's supposed "essence" has been objectified in folk ideology to form a cognitive or ideal model of gender. We argue that there is a decline in the 1980s …
Managing Infidelity: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Anthropologists have not systematically examined extramarital affairs. Our cross-cultural study found that within every culture men and women actively resort to mate-guarding tactics to control their mate's extramarital behavior. A person's level of interest and involvement does not change with a culture's notion of descent, level of social complexity, or the degree to which a culture is normatively permissive or restrictive in sexual matters. In…
Investigating Love’s Universal Attributes: A Research Report From China
There are no cognitive studies of love conducted in an Asian culture. Our study is the first to probe the cognitive qualities that urban Chinese youth associate with what it means to be in love. To this end, we build on de Munck et al.’s pioneering studies in two European cultures (Russia, Lithuanian) and in the United States. Expanding on their study, we used a similar questionnaire that also includes additional questions designed to probe the y…
Carnival on the Clipboard: An Ethnological Study of New Orleans Mardi Gras
Ethnological methods determined that New Orleans Mardi Gras is a time for socializing with friends and family, as opposed to an opportunity to engage strangers in acts of fellowship or communitas. People prefer to be wild or silly within confines of their own group. Outside of costumed performers or those engaged in ritualistic bead exchanges, norms of pedestrian behavior are maintained. This study is methodologically innovative as it is first to…
Gender, Power, and the Denial Of Intimacy in Chinese Studies and Beyond
This article identifies and critically examines four recurring concerns in writings on Chinese gender and sexuality: (1) Emphasis on extreme cases of women's suffering to produce a more dramatic effect. (2) Focus only one gender's perspective and disregard of the role of social class. (3) De-emphasis on men's place within the subjective domain and overlooking how emotional bonds unite couples. (4) Depiction of the erotic as simply the manifestati…
Urban Mongols: The Flourishing of Multiple Identities in a Vibrant Ethnic Community
China's ethnopolitics are grounded in two contradictory philosophies that often give rise to competing policies: the upholding of the ethnic group as well as the individual's right to achieve prominence within the established social order. An individual's sense of ethnic belonging and national identification are affected by the degree to which these ideals—individual achievement verses group interests—are internalized. The issue of the relevant s…
Beyond the Great Wall: Urban Form and Transformation on the Chinese Frontiers
The Ethnographer vs. the Folk Expert: Pitfalls of Contract Ethnography
What Observation Studies Can Tell Us About Single Child Play Patterns, Gender, and Changes in Chinese Society
Our study focused on Chinese children’s play patterns in two different Chinese capitals: Chengdu—the capital of Sichuan in southwest China and Hohhot—the capital of the autonomous Inner Mongolia region in northern China. Unlike child psychologists working in China, who prefer survey instruments organized around parent and teacher interviews, the authors relied primarily upon behavioral observations. Their study is based on naturalistic observatio…
Globalizing Evolution: Female Choice, Nationality, and Perception of Sexual Beauty in China
An evolutionary perspective on physical attractiveness suggests that individuals find those characteristics associated with reproductive success attractive. Theory and existing data consistent with this view link perceptions of physical attractiveness to traits such as symmetry, status, and reproductive value. Here, we take this evolutionary perspective global to ask how do Chinese men and women rate the sexual beauty of East Asian compared with …
Femme Fatale and Status Fatale: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
This article presents the results of a cross-cultural survey of 78 cultures that documented (through the use of folklore, ethnographic accounts, and interviews with ethnographers) the presence or absence of a femme fatale (a dangerous woman), and a “status fatale” (a dangerous man). We found that 94% of the cultures had images of a femme fatale, whereas only 42% of the sampled cultures had images of a status fatale. Our sample revealed that emoti…
Gender, sexual orientation, and truth‐of‐consensus in studies of physical attractiveness
Truth‐of‐consensus methodology presently holds that sex differences in perceptions of physical attractiveness are negligible and may be routinely ignored during prescaling. No determination has been made in the literature of the effects of sexual orientation on this perceptual process. The data presented herein suggest that while sex and sexual orientation of judge are largely irrelevant to prescaling of female stimuli, these variables are import…
The Last Hurrah? Political Protest in Inner Mongolia
Gender, sexual orientation, and truth‐of‐consensus in studies of physical attractiveness
Truth‐of‐consensus methodology presently holds that sex differences in perceptions of physical attractiveness are negligible and may be routinely ignored during prescaling. No determination has been made in the literature of the effects of sexual orientation on this perceptual process. The data presented herein suggest that while sex and sexual orientation of judge are largely irrelevant to prescaling of female stimuli, these variables are import…
Depending on Heaven: The Desert. 1989. A film by Peter Entell
The Ethnographer vs. the Folk Expert: Pitfalls of Contract Ethnography
A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love
The anthropological study of romantic (or passionate) love is virtually nonexistent due to the widespread belief that romantic love is unique to Euro-American culture. This belief is by no means confined to anthropology. The historian Philippe Aries (1962), for example, argues that affection was of secondary importance to more utilitarian ambitions throughout much of European history. Lawrence Stone (1988:16) goes further, insisting that if roman…
Urban Mongols: The Search for Dignity and Gain
This book is based on the papers that were presented at the First International Urban Anthropology Conference, which was opened in Beijing on December 28, 1989. It contains twenty-two papers and six introductory contributions, dealing with the following subjects: 'Comparative Urbanism: Socialist and Asian Cities'; 'Chinese Urbanization'; 'Chinese Urban Ethnicity'; 'Chinese Urban Culture and Life Cycle'. These papers are written by Chinese and non…
Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account
The first contemporary enthnographic account of urban life in China, Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City studies both public and private life, including such aspects as religious belief, gender images, family life, and sexual attraction
Sexual Selection, Physical Attractiveness, and Facial Neoteny: Cross-cultural Evidence and Implications [and Comments and Reply]
Physical attractiveness and its relation to the theory of sexual selection deserve renewed attention from cultural and biological anthropologists. This paper focuses on an anomaly associated with physical attractiveness-in our species, in contrast to many others, males seem to be more concerned than females with the attractiveness of potential sexual partners, perhaps because humans show far more age-related variance in female than in male fecund…
Performance and Imagination: Toward an Anthropology of the Spectacular and the Mundane
Using Drug Foods to Capture and Enhance Labor Performance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Beyond the Great Wall: Urban Form and Transformation on the Chinese Frontiers
Research Trends in the Study of Chinese Cities: A Review Essay
FOUR THEMES ARE evident in the studies of urban China (Taiwan, Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China) over the last thirty years: the relationship between state policy and economic development; the urbanization and transformation of Chinese society; socialism's impact on the urban infrastructure; and, more recently; the effect of market reforms on urban stratification, family composition and organization, and forms of cultural expression. …
Sexual Behavior in Modern China . Dalin Liu , Man Lun Ng , Li Ping Zhou , Erwin J. Haeberle
Chinese women, gender, and sexuality: A critical review of recent studies
This article identifies and critically examines four recurring concerns or biases in recent writings on Chinese gender and sexuality that are representative of research interests in the field: (1) The tendency to focus on the most miserable and extreme cases of women's suffering in order to produce a more dramatic effect. This inclination is especially evident in, but not confined to, literary analysis where the tendency is to make a moral case a…
Gendered power: An idea whose time has gone
In my review of trends in contemporary studies of Chinese gender and sexuality (“Chinese Women, Gender, and Sexuality: A Critical Review of Recent Studies,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 31, no. 1 [1999]: 31-47) I identified several presuppositions that I contend are embedded in the field's analysis: (1) the disregard of the role of social class in the formulation of generalizations about men's and women's lives; (2) the tendency to focus …
Carnival on the Clipboard: An Ethnological Study of New Orleans Mardi Gras
Ethnological methods determined that New Orleans Mardi Gras is a time for socializing with friends and family, as opposed to an opportunity to engage strangers in acts of fellowship or communitas. People prefer to be wild or silly within confines of their own group. Outside of costumed performers or those engaged in ritualistic bead exchanges, norms of pedestrian behavior are maintained. This study is methodologically innovative as it is first to…
Sibling solidarity in a polygamous community in the USA unpacking inclusive fitness
Femme Fatale and Status Fatale: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
This article presents the results of a cross-cultural survey of 78 cultures that documented (through the use of folklore, ethnographic accounts, and interviews with ethnographers) the presence or absence of a femme fatale (a dangerous woman), and a “status fatale” (a dangerous man). We found that 94% of the cultures had images of a femme fatale, whereas only 42% of the sampled cultures had images of a status fatale. Our sample revealed that emoti…
Women of Principle: Female Networking in Contemporary Mormon Polygyny
Women of Principle: Female Networking in Contemporary Mormon Polygyny. Janet Bennion. New York: Oxford University Press. 1998. 178 pp
China Urban: Ethnographies of Contemporary Culture . Nancy N. Chen , Constance D. Clark , Suzanne Z. Gottschang , Lyn Jeffrey
Managing Infidelity: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
Anthropologists have not systematically examined extramarital affairs. Our cross-cultural study found that within every culture men and women actively resort to mate-guarding tactics to control their mate's extramarital behavior. A person's level of interest and involvement does not change with a culture's notion of descent, level of social complexity, or the degree to which a culture is normatively permissive or restrictive in sexual matters. In…
Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849-1949 . Christian Henriot , Nöel Castelino
Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai . James Farrer
China, Sex and Prostitution . Elaine Jeffreys
Co-Wife Conflict and Co-operation
Conventional wisdom holds that the polygynous family system is as sexually and emotionally satisfying as a monogamous one.Ethnographic accounts of 69 polygynous systems, however, provide compelling evidence that the majority of co-wives in a polygynous family prefer pragmatic co-operation with one another while maintaining a respectful distance.Moreover, there often is a deep-seated feeling of angst that arises over competing for access to their …
Sociology (39 works) · Political science (28 works) · Gender Studies (21 works) · Law (21 works) · Psychology (21 works) · China (19 works) · History (16 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Anthropology (13 works) · Gender Studies (12 works)