Research Interests for Ralph A Litzinger

I received my doctorate in socio-cultural anthropology in 1994 from the University of Washington in Seattle. My research has focused on the culture and politics of ethnic minorities in China. I have written on Marxist nationality 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. I am completing a book project focusing on global conservation movements and environmentalism in China. This research is engaged with new work on bio-politics, governmentality, 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. Finally, I have begun a new project on migrant labor politics in China, with a particular focus on non-official education projects for migrant kids, and the role of non-governmental organizations and corporate social responsibility projects in these experimental ventures. In all of my research, teaching, and thinking, I am committed to forging an anthropology of critical advocacy and activism, one which addresses structures of domination, exploitation, and inequality and the struggle to make the world a better place.

Keywords:

Cultural Theory, Modernity, Nationalism, Globalization, Environmentalism , Activism, People's Republic of China

Current projects:

Global Environmentalism in China

Migrant Labor and the Politics of Education

Global Tibet: Between Patriotism and Resistance

Areas of Interest:

Anthropology of Post-socialist Development
Critical Environmentalisms
Globalization and Alternative Modernity
NGOs and Transnational activism
People's Republic of China
East Asia

Representative Publications

1. R.A. Litzinger, Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging (2000), Duke University Press [abs]
2. Ralph Litzinger, Afterword: Beyond the Corporate Leninist Box, in Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar, edited by Aihwa Ong and Li Zhang (Accepted, 2008)
3. R.A. Litzinger, The Mobilization of Nature: Perspectives from Northwest Yunnan, China Quarterly no. 178 (Spring, 2004)
4. Ralph Litzinger, “Contested Sovereignties and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund”, Political And Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR), vol. 29 no. 1 (2006)
5. R.A. Litzinger, In Search of the Grassroots: Hydroelectric Schemes in Northwest Yunnan, in Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China, edited by Elizabeth Perry and Merle Goodman (Accepted, April, 2007)