A B Kipnis
Biographic Data
| ID | 46047 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A B Kipnis |
| GIVEN NAMES | A B |
| FAMILY NAME | Kipnis |
| SIGNATURE | KIPNIS A B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4509-4103 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 71 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 544 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 71 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Toulson, Ruth E: Necropolitics of the Ordinary. Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore
The Extraordinary in the Mundane: Family and Forms of Community in China
Imagining Social Change through Policy Failures in China
Yin and Yang Residences in Hong Kong
Anthropology's Lost Language Syndrome
This article suggests that there has been a decline in attention paid to issues of linguistic difference and translation in ethnography and examines the theoretical trends in anthropology associated with this decline. It analyses problems in ethnographic contexts where Chinese to English translation (particularly in the translation of various words related to the English semantic domain of ‘happiness’), have implications for social life, as well …
Magic, metaphysics, and methods
Spotlight on the liminal dividend
Appearance, disappearance, transience
Balancing acts and worldviews
This issue’s Colloquium is about the perennial and ineluctable issue of translation in anthropology. It is centered on Philip Swift’s call for a “heathen hermeneutics,” a staunch defense of a radical form of “foreignizing translation,” in which the translator’s own language is transformed by the language being translated, in opposition to a “domesticating translation” in which the source language is made to conform to the terms of the target lang…
A treasury of ideas
Many anthropologists have committed to decolonizing the field, but their references for what colonial/imperial projects look like come almost exclusively from Western cases, and are unwittingly ethnocentric in that regard. Russia’s ongoing efforts to gain territory and/or decisive influence from places beyond its current borders are evidence of other colonial dynamics, ones in which the shades of subjugation are also clothed in discourses of resc…
Identity, violence, and the uncomfortable necessity of categorization
Previous articleNext article FreeEditorial NoteIdentity, violence, and the uncomfortable necessity of categorizationRaminder Kaur, Andrew B. Kipnis, Luiz Costa, and Louisa LombardRaminder KaurUniversity of Sussex Search for more articles by this author , Andrew B. KipnisChinese University of Hong Kong Search for more articles by this author , Luiz CostaUniversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Search for more articles by this author , and Louisa Lom…
The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China
In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has increased drastically in recent decades, involves the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals,…
Art, affect, and art effects
Camilo Leon-Quijano’s “phenomenology of photographic experiences,” centers on the proud, strong young women of the Chantereine rugby team in Sarcelles, reflecting a remarkable process of collaborative visual ethnography and aesthetic brokerage. Sarcelles becomes “an icon in an urban mythology,” visually conveyed in Figures 2 and 3 in his article, with blurry impressions of an urban landscape, the former image conveying a sense of being under cons…
Ethnographic stews: Decennial reflections
This issue also features a book symposium on Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbin’s Waste siege: The life of infrastructure in Palestine. This outstanding book analyzes waste in both its ontological and phenomenological forms—that is to say, it considers both the biological effects of waste on the human bodies of those who are forced to live with it, and the social effects of the often scientifically inaccurate interpretations of waste that those same peo…
Anthropological overseas ethnographies and the development of Chinese social science
Nature itself
Amelia Moore turns to the destruction of the world’s corals, and particularly to the widespread recognition, unfolding during the 2014–2017 “global coral-bleaching event,” that reefs are disappearing. In this context, global companies tout themselves as saviors, and corporate coral restoration is presented as a transparent and visible solution to the climate crisis. Moore reveals what this public process conceals, such as the effacement of the ro…
Chinese Economies in Ethnographic Perspective: Two case studies of intersecting socioeconomic diversity
This article presents economic interactions in two Chinese socioeconomic realms: urban funerals and village-level welfare funds. Ethnographically examining these realms reveals that each of them comprises a diversity of economic processes and moralities. Our first point is thus that 'the economy' is a multiple rather than a singular entity. But just as important are the means by which actors move from one form of economy to another, bridging diff…
Mobilizations around the law, iconoclasm, and the (a)moral
This issue also features a Debate on the place of moralism, moralization, advocacy and politicization within anthropology, focused on two independently submitted, peer-reviewed articles that we saw as coming to related issues from different directions. Nicolas Langlitz kicks off the debate with a passionate (or perhaps dispassionate) plea for space for anthropologists to distance themselves from the political/moral contentions of the present. He …
Racial burdens, translations, and chance
Previous articleNext article FreeEditorial NoteRacial burdens, translations, and chanceMariane C. Ferme, Andrew B. Kipnis, Raminder Kaur, and Luiz CostaMariane C. FermeUniversity of California, Berkeley Search for more articles by this author , Andrew B. KipnisChinese University of Hong Kong Search for more articles by this author , Raminder KaurUniversity of Sussex Search for more articles by this author , and Luiz CostaUniversidade Federal do R…
Hong Kong identities and the friends and enemies of recent protests
This essay analyzes the current protests in Hong Kong from the perspective of the friends/enemies dialectic. It depicts the opposed political positions involved in the protests, considers the relations of these positions to ethnic and linguistic identities in Hong Kong, and analyzes the protests through a case study of the politics and identities of a woman who immigrated to Hong Kong from Mainland China thirty years ago. The essay concludes by c…
Flesh, bones, and spirits
Previous articleNext article FreeEditorial NoteFlesh, bones, and spiritsRaminder Kaur, Andrew B. Kipnis, Luiz Costa, and Mariane C. FermeRaminder KaurUniversity of Sussex Search for more articles by this author , Andrew B. KipnisChinese University of Hong Kong Search for more articles by this author , Luiz CostaUniversidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Search for more articles by this author , and Mariane C. FermeUniversity of California, Berkeley S…
Funerals and Religious Modernity in China
Modernity in China has involved the establishment of religion as a separate sphere of life, rapid urbanization, and the rise of the profession of funerary work. This paper examines the intersection of these three trends. On the one hand, the professionalization of funerary work takes place outside of religious institutions. It involves the commercialization of funerary work, the separation of the spaces for funerary ritual from the spaces of ever…
Mediated Agency and Funeral Insurance in China
This article examines attempts to set up a market for funerary insurance in China. Anthropologists and sociologists analyzing the insurance industry often emphasize the cultural aspects of the business, suggesting that "visions" or "imaginaries" of what insurance is and how insurance should work play a guiding role in other aspects of the business. In the case of funerary insurance in China, however, the imaginary of how the insurance should work…
What terms to use: A response to Stephan Feuchtwang and Magnus Fiskesjö
Response to comments on Kipnis, Andrew. "Governing the souls of Chinese modernity" Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (2): 217-238
Governing the souls of Chinese modernity
Philippe Descola argues that human societies can be categorized by the ways in which they utilize broad assumptions about interiority and physicality, where interiority refers to something similar to what Edward Tylor and James Frazer meant by soul. In Descola's scheme, traditional Chinese culture, which gives play to infinite variability in both interiority and physicality, is strongly "analogist." In contrast, Descola defines modern, Western so…
Neoliberalism reified: Suzhi discourse and tropes of neoliberalism in the People's Republic of China
Since the mid-1990s, 'neoliberalism' has grown in importance as an explanatory trope for socio-cultural anthropologists. This article seeks to unravel the various strands of neoliberalism's anthropological meaning and demonstrate the blind spots of using neoliberalism as an overarching trope. I begin by analysing the contradictions between two common forms of theorizing neoliberalism. The remainder of the article then focuses the initial discussi…
Audit cultures: Neoliberal governmentality, socialist legacy, or technologies of governing
In this article, I analyze the social processes of performance audits in a variety of cases in China, other postsocialist nations, and a U.S. workplace with Chinese immigrant employees. Although the processes share many commonalities, the ideological evaluations of them by the people involved are often diametrically opposed to those by anthropological analysts. For example, the Chinese workers often describe the performance audits as "socialist,"…
Agency between humanism and posthumanism: Latour and his opponents
Two articles in the special section on knot-work in this journal (HAU 2014, volume 4, issue 3) take issue with the "posthumanism" of Bruno Latour's Actor Network Theory (ANT). Arguing that Latour's conception of agency undermines critical attitudes toward capitalism, they insist on all-or-nothing, accept or reject attitude toward Latour's work. In this article, I sketch an alternative vantage on questions of nonhuman agency and Latour's oeuvre, w…
Subjectification and education for quality in China
Education reform is perhaps the arena of discourse in which Foucauldian themes of subjectification are most explicit. Questions of what type of adult (citizen/subject) the education system should produce are directly articulated. From the point of view of social analysis, however, the actual production of subjectivities in schools remains a relatively opaque matter. Not only do many contradictory strands of political discourse exist side by side,…
"The Disturbing Educational Discipline of "Peasants
Face: An Adaptable Discourse of Social Surfaces
Research Article| February 01 1995 "Face": An Adaptable Discourse of Social Surfaces Andrew Kipnis Andrew Kipnis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google positions (1995) 3 (1): 119–148. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-3-1-119 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Andrew Kipnis; "Face": An Adaptable Discourse of Social Surfaces. positions 1 February 1995; 3 (1): 119–148. doi: https://doi.org/1…
The Language of Gifts: Managing Guanxi in a North China Village
Over the past few years, much ink has been spilled over the importance of guanxi (variously translated as social relations, personal connections, or particularistic ties) in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Chinese culture in general.' Most of the empirical work on guanxi in the PRC after Mao has concentrated on instrumental exchanges of gifts and favors in urban contexts. We have learned of the importance of such practices in factories a…
Metaphors for Embarrassment and Stories of Exposure: The Not-So-Egocentric Self in American Culture
C'est l'idee de "personne," l'idee du "moi." Tout le monde la trouve naturelle, precise au fond de sa conscience, toute equipee au fond de la morale qui s'en deduit.[Mauss 1938:263
Constructing Commonality: Standardization and Modernization in Chinese Nation-Building
This essay examines the importance of Chinese nation-building in the contemporary era. Defining nation-building in terms of processes that help to bridge local differences especially but not only when also distinguishing China from the rest the world, I argue that a focus on globalization has masked the importance of Chinese nation-building to contemporary social change. I analyze three very different societal arenas in which national forms of co…
Anthropology and the theorisation of citizenship
In this paper I argue for the importance of theorising citizenship as an independent axis of social inequality in the contemporary world. As a foil, I take two intertwined tendencies within anthropological writings on migration. First is the historical trend of anthropology as a discipline to theorise against the grain of the nation-state. Second is the tendency within anthropological studies of transnationalism and migration to theorise their su…
Within and Against Peasantness: Backwardness and Filiality in Rural China
Economically the contradiction between town and country is an extremely antagonistic one both in capitalist society, where under the rule of the bourgeoisie the towns ruthlessly plunder the countryside, and in the Kuomingtang areas in China, where under the rule of foreign imperialism and the Chinese big compradore bourgeoisie the towns most rapaciously plunder the countryside. But in a socialist country and in our own revolutionary base areas, t…
Articulating School Countercultures
Starting from the observation that writings about student subcultures and antischool countercultures are much more common for wealthy English-speaking nations than elsewhere, this article develops the concept of "articulation" to help clarify the counterculture concept and differentiate fully developed countercultures from other forms of student resistance. Using examples from many nations, especially East Asia, I hope to contribute to an ethnolo…
Markets and Moralities: Ethnographies of Postsocialism
Hong Kong identities and the friends and enemies of recent protests
This essay analyzes the current protests in Hong Kong from the perspective of the friends/enemies dialectic. It depicts the opposed political positions involved in the protests, considers the relations of these positions to ethnic and linguistic identities in Hong Kong, and analyzes the protests through a case study of the politics and identities of a woman who immigrated to Hong Kong from Mainland China thirty years ago. The essay concludes by c…
Governing the souls of Chinese modernity
Philippe Descola argues that human societies can be categorized by the ways in which they utilize broad assumptions about interiority and physicality, where interiority refers to something similar to what Edward Tylor and James Frazer meant by soul. In Descola's scheme, traditional Chinese culture, which gives play to infinite variability in both interiority and physicality, is strongly "analogist." In contrast, Descola defines modern, Western so…
The Anthropology of Power and Maoism
The legacies of Maoist rule made reflecting on power almost unavoidable for U.S. anthropologists who conducted research in the People's Republic of China (PRC) just after Mao's death. In this article, I examine the theorization of power in the works of five such anthropologists. Although their approaches are diverse, they share an historical awareness of the unexpected dynamics and paradoxical outcomes of Mao's attempts to enact a revolutionary t…
In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Reform Rural China
In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Reform Rural China. Xin Liu. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. ix. 245 pp., photographs, figures, notes, glossary, bibliography, index
Chinese Economies in Ethnographic Perspective: Two case studies of intersecting socioeconomic diversity
This article presents economic interactions in two Chinese socioeconomic realms: urban funerals and village-level welfare funds. Ethnographically examining these realms reveals that each of them comprises a diversity of economic processes and moralities. Our first point is thus that 'the economy' is a multiple rather than a singular entity. But just as important are the means by which actors move from one form of economy to another, bridging diff…
Political Economy after Mao: Towards a Neo-Durkheimian Theory
The experience of Maoist and post-Mao rule in the People's Republic of China (PRC) provides an underutilized historical vantage for thinking through basic issues in political economy. Unfortunately, contemporary debates among “neo-liberals” and the “new left” in the PRC tend to reproduce old stalemates more than break new ground. In this article, I propose a neo-Durkheimian idiom of political economy as an alternative to neo-liberal and Marxian t…
Anthropological Approaches to Self in Contemporary China Renqing shehui: Renji guanxi yu ziwoguande jiangou (Society of Favours: Interpersonal Relationships and the Structure of Self) . Li Jing The Ot…
Nature itself
Amelia Moore turns to the destruction of the world’s corals, and particularly to the widespread recognition, unfolding during the 2014–2017 “global coral-bleaching event,” that reefs are disappearing. In this context, global companies tout themselves as saviors, and corporate coral restoration is presented as a transparent and visible solution to the climate crisis. Moore reveals what this public process conceals, such as the effacement of the ro…
Racial burdens, translations, and chance
Previous articleNext article FreeEditorial NoteRacial burdens, translations, and chanceMariane C. Ferme, Andrew B. Kipnis, Raminder Kaur, and Luiz CostaMariane C. FermeUniversity of California, Berkeley Search for more articles by this author , Andrew B. KipnisChinese University of Hong Kong Search for more articles by this author , Raminder KaurUniversity of Sussex Search for more articles by this author , and Luiz CostaUniversidade Federal do R…
Mediated Agency and Funeral Insurance in China
This article examines attempts to set up a market for funerary insurance in China. Anthropologists and sociologists analyzing the insurance industry often emphasize the cultural aspects of the business, suggesting that "visions" or "imaginaries" of what insurance is and how insurance should work play a guiding role in other aspects of the business. In the case of funerary insurance in China, however, the imaginary of how the insurance should work…
Post-Marxism in a Post-Socialist Perspective
Post-Marxism has been defined as the attempt to insist on the continuing value of Marxist thought while incorporating post-structuralist criticisms of holism. In this essay, I use a perspective developed through studying the contours of power in actually existing socialist and post-socialist regimes to critically examine three influential works in post-Marxism. While finding much of value in these books' development of non-totalizing forms of soc…
Yogic Meditation and Social Responsibility
Is yogic meditation antisocial, and is spiritual inwardness insular? These are the questions in this essay. Among sociologists, castigating mystical religions for their social backwardness is as popular as the investigation of religion and social action itself. From Weber and Ernst Troeltsch through Parsons and Robert Bellah, mysticism is either condemned for its indifference toward secular morality (see, e.g., Troeltsch 1960, 730-796) or blamed …
Metaphors for Embarrassment and Stories of Exposure: The Not-So-Egocentric Self in American Culture
C'est l'idee de "personne," l'idee du "moi." Tout le monde la trouve naturelle, precise au fond de sa conscience, toute equipee au fond de la morale qui s'en deduit.[Mauss 1938:263
Face: An Adaptable Discourse of Social Surfaces
Research Article| February 01 1995 "Face": An Adaptable Discourse of Social Surfaces Andrew Kipnis Andrew Kipnis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google positions (1995) 3 (1): 119–148. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-3-1-119 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Andrew Kipnis; "Face": An Adaptable Discourse of Social Surfaces. positions 1 February 1995; 3 (1): 119–148. doi: https://doi.org/1…
Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era. Deborah Davis and STEVAN Harrell
Within and Against Peasantness: Backwardness and Filiality in Rural China
Economically the contradiction between town and country is an extremely antagonistic one both in capitalist society, where under the rule of the bourgeoisie the towns ruthlessly plunder the countryside, and in the Kuomingtang areas in China, where under the rule of foreign imperialism and the Chinese big compradore bourgeoisie the towns most rapaciously plunder the countryside. But in a socialist country and in our own revolutionary base areas, t…
The Language of Gifts: Managing Guanxi in a North China Village
Over the past few years, much ink has been spilled over the importance of guanxi (variously translated as social relations, personal connections, or particularistic ties) in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Chinese culture in general.' Most of the empirical work on guanxi in the PRC after Mao has concentrated on instrumental exchanges of gifts and favors in urban contexts. We have learned of the importance of such practices in factories a…
Cadres and Kin: Making a Socialist Village in West China, 1921-1991 . Gregory A. Ruf
The Excluded Wife . Yuen-Fong Woon
Gao Village: Rural Life in Modern China . Mobo C. F. Gao
The Flourishing of Religion in Post‐Mao China and the Anthropological Category of Religion
In his provocative critique of Geertz's 1966 definition of religion, Talal Asad (1993) suggests that the very project of defining the category of religion is rooted in the historical rise of Western secularism in societies formerly dominated by Christianity. In post‐Mao China, there has been an explosion of activities that might be categorised as religious in the Geertzian sense, including church attendance, temple building, qi gong practice, pil…
Looking for Chengdu: A Woman's Adventures in China . Hill Gates
"The Disturbing Educational Discipline of "Peasants
The Flourishing of Religion in Post-Mao China and the Anthropological Category of Religion
In his provocative critique of Geertz's 1966 definition of religion, Talal Asad (1993) suggests that the very project of defining the category of religion is rooted in the historical rise of Western secularism in societies formerly dominated by Christianity. In post-Mao China, there has been an explosion of activities that might be categorised as religious in the Geertzian sense, including church attendance, temple building, qi gong practice, pil…
Articulating School Countercultures
Starting from the observation that writings about student subcultures and antischool countercultures are much more common for wealthy English-speaking nations than elsewhere, this article develops the concept of "articulation" to help clarify the counterculture concept and differentiate fully developed countercultures from other forms of student resistance. Using examples from many nations, especially East Asia, I hope to contribute to an ethnolo…
In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Reform Rural China
In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Reform Rural China. Xin Liu. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. ix. 245 pp., photographs, figures, notes, glossary, bibliography, index
Practices of Guanxi Production and Practices of Ganqing Avoidance
The problem of defining guanxi is one that I have dismissed and come back to many times. One can approach it from many angles. Is a definition of guanxi meant to distinguish something Chinese from something non-Chinese? Or is it meant to distinguish one sort of Chinese thing from another sort of Chinese thing? Is guanxi a “thing” at all, or is it just a sort of linguistic abstraction? If the latter, what sort of abstraction is it – a conceptual t…
Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture, and the Changing Nature of Guanxi
Guanxi, translated as 'social connections,' or 'social networks,' is among the most important studied phenomena in China today. Guanxi lies at the heart of China's social order, its economic structure, and its changing institutional landscape. It is considered important in every realm of life, from politics to business, and officialdom to street life. This 2002 volume offers scholarly thinking on the subject by top China sociologists whose work o…
Zouping Christianity as Gendered Critique? An Ethnography of Political Potentials
Zouping Christianity as Gendered Critique? An Ethnography of Political Potentials
During the past two decades in Zouping County, rural north China, the Protestant church has both grown explosively and become overwhelmingly female. This article contrasts the gendered cultures of banqueting and Christianity in Zouping, and asks whether female Christianity can be considered an implicit critique of male banqueting culture. In reference to a growing critique of the conceptual overuse of “resistance,” and debate over the place of po…
Chinese Sociologics: An Anthropological Account of the Role of Alienation in Social Reproduction . P. Steven Sangren
Separation and Reunion in Modern China . Charles Stafford
Education, Culture, and Identity in Twentieth-Century China . Glen Peterson , Ruth Hayhoe , Yongling Lu
A County of Culture: Twentieth-Century China Seen from the Village Schools of Zouping, Shandong . Stig Thøgersen
Anthropological Approaches to Self in Contemporary China Renqing shehui: Renji guanxi yu ziwoguande jiangou (Society of Favours: Interpersonal Relationships and the Structure of Self) . Li Jing The Ot…
Neo-leftists versus neo-liberals: PRC intellectual debates in the 1990s
This paper examines the contemporary debates among 'neo-leftist' and 'neo- liberal' Chinese intellectuals as a means of discussing strategies for intellectual criticism in a post-socialist world. While sympathetic towards the neo-leftist critique of neo-liberal views on markets, I argue that the neo-leftist refusal to reflect on the shortcomings of the Cultural Revolution leads to an unfortunate reproduction of Maoist rhetorical strategies in the…
Sociology (58 works) · Political science (46 works) · Law (41 works) · China (34 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (29 works) · History (27 works) · Law (27 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (21 works) · Media studies (20 works)