Office Location:	201E Science Building
Office Phone:	(919) 681-6250
Email Address:
Web Page:

Education:

• Ph.D. University of Washington 1994
• M.A. University of Washington 1990
• B.A. Evergreen State College 1985

Specialties:

Globalization

Transnationalism

Nationalism

Ethnicity

Mass Culture

Post Colonialism

Asia

Research Interests: Environmentalism

I received my doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology in 1994 from the University of Washington in Seattle, and began teaching at Duke the same year. Much of my research has focused on the culture and politics of ethnic minorities in China. I have written on Marxist theory in China, on ethnic and indigenous revitalization in the post-Cold War global order, on gender and ethnic representation, and on ethnographic film, photography, and popular culture in China and elsewhere. Other Chinas: the Yao and the Politics of National Belonging (Duke University Press, 2000) was the first major ethnographic study to examine the role of minority intellectuals and other elite cultural producers in the critique of socialism and the imagining of post-socialist futures. I have also published numerous essays and in anthropology, cultural studies, and East Asian studies journals. My current research focuses on the politics of nature and critical environmentalism in northeastern Yunnan and Eastern Tibet. This research is deeply engaged with new work on bio-politics, governmentality, Empire, activist anthropology, and the making of alternative political spaces. In relationship to this research, I have published several key essays on the transnational and media dimensions of anti-dam protest in southwest China. In all of my research. teaching, and thinking, I am committed to forging an anthropology of critical advocacy and activism, one which attends to the mapping of structures of domination, exploitation, and inequality and the struggle to make the world a better place.

Curriculum Vitae

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. R.A. Litzinger. Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging. Duke University Press, 2000.  [abs]
2. Ralph Litzinger. "“Contested Sovereignties and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund”." Political And Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR)  vol. 29 no. 1 (2006).
3. R.A. Litzinger. "The Mobilization of Nature: Perspectives from Northwest Yunnan." China Quarterly  no. 178 (Spring, 2004).
4. R.A. Litzinger. "“Damming the Angry River”." China Review  vol. 30 no. Autumn (2004): 30-34. [htm]
5. R.A. Litzinger. ""Theorizing Post-socialism: Reflections on the Politics of Marginality in Contemporary China"." South Atlantic Quarterly  (Spring, 2002). (special issue on "The Vicissitudes of Theory")
6. R.A. Litzinger. ""Government from Below: The State, the Popular, and the Illusion of Autonomy"." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique  vol. 9 no. 1 (Spring, 2001): 251-264.
7. R.A. Litzinger. "Screening the Political: Pedagogy and Dissent in The Gate of Heavenly Peace." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique  vol. 7 no. 3 ( 2001): 827-850.
8. R.A. Litzinger. "Questions of Gender: Ethnic Minority Representation in Post-Mao China." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars  vol. 32 no. 4 ( 2001): 3-14.
9. R.A. Litzinger. "Memory Work: Reconstituting the Ethnic in Post-Mao China." Cultural Anthropology  vol. 13 no. 2 ( 2001): 224-255.
10. R.A. Litzinger. ""Tradition and the Gender of Civility"." Chinese Feminities/Chinese Masculinities: An Introductory Reader. Edited by Susan Brownell and Jeffrey Wasserstrom.  (Spring, 2001.).
11. R.A. Litzinger. ""Re-imagining the State in Post-Mao China"." Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and Production of Danger. Edited by Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson, and Raymond Duvall.  ( 1999.): 293-318.

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