Hans Steinmüller
2015
Steinmüller, Hans; Tan, Tongxue
Like a virgin? Hymen restoration operations in contemporary China Journal Article
In: Anthropology Today, vol. 31, no. 2, 2015.
@article{Steinmüller2015,
title = {Like a virgin? Hymen restoration operations in contemporary China},
author = {Hans Steinmüller and Tongxue Tan},
doi = {10.1111/1467-8322.12165},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-04-01},
urldate = {2015-04-01},
journal = {Anthropology Today},
volume = {31},
number = {2},
abstract = {In this article, the authors use the example of hymen repair surgeries to discuss the reconfigurations of patriarchal practices in the People's Republic of China. Following a brief overview of concepts of virginity and the importance of the hymen in China, they describe the spread of hymen restorations in the reform era. These surgeries link up traditionalist and ‘patriarchal’ practices and relationships with particular expressions of sexual liberalism in contemporary China.},
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In this article, the authors use the example of hymen repair surgeries to discuss the reconfigurations of patriarchal practices in the People's Republic of China. Following a brief overview of concepts of virginity and the importance of the hymen in China, they describe the spread of hymen restorations in the reform era. These surgeries link up traditionalist and ‘patriarchal’ practices and relationships with particular expressions of sexual liberalism in contemporary China.
2013
Steinmüller, Hans
Le savoir-rire en Chine Journal Article
In: Terrain, vol. 61, no. 61, pp. 40-53, 2013.
@article{Steinmüller2013,
title = {Le savoir-rire en Chine},
author = {Hans Steinmüller},
doi = {10.4000/terrain.15157},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-09-04},
urldate = {2013-09-04},
journal = {Terrain},
volume = {61},
number = {61},
pages = {40-53},
abstract = {In China, there are explicit handbooks, lectures, and lessons in the etiquette of smiles and laughter. The instructions are quite clear that laughter cannot be learned out of context, but has to be understood against the social situation in which it occurs. In context, laughter and smile can produce “communities of complicity”, that is communities that share implicit understandings of the incongruity of social forms and discourses. I deal specifically with the “incongruity” between official and vernacular codes; and I argue that they imply different forms of etiquette and different kinds of laughter and smile. Understanding the etiquette, the historical background and the social situation can give us context clues as to the meaning of laughter. Ambiguities always remain, but capable social actors interpret them pragmatically so that communication can ensue. If this is true for language in general, laughter emphasizes the ambiguity of interpretation in action and it is this feature which is at the core of its social efficacy.},
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pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
In China, there are explicit handbooks, lectures, and lessons in the etiquette of smiles and laughter. The instructions are quite clear that laughter cannot be learned out of context, but has to be understood against the social situation in which it occurs. In context, laughter and smile can produce “communities of complicity”, that is communities that share implicit understandings of the incongruity of social forms and discourses. I deal specifically with the “incongruity” between official and vernacular codes; and I argue that they imply different forms of etiquette and different kinds of laughter and smile. Understanding the etiquette, the historical background and the social situation can give us context clues as to the meaning of laughter. Ambiguities always remain, but capable social actors interpret them pragmatically so that communication can ensue. If this is true for language in general, laughter emphasizes the ambiguity of interpretation in action and it is this feature which is at the core of its social efficacy.
Steinmüller, Hans
Communities of complicity: Everyday ethics in rural China Journal Article
In: Communities of Complicity: Everyday Ethics in Rural China, vol. 10, pp. 1 - 276, 2013.
@article{Steinmüller2013b,
title = {Communities of complicity: Everyday ethics in rural China},
author = {Hans Steinmüller},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-03-01},
urldate = {2013-03-01},
journal = {Communities of Complicity: Everyday Ethics in Rural China},
volume = {10},
pages = {1 - 276},
abstract = {Everyday life in contemporary rural China is characterized by an increased sense of moral challenge and uncertainty. Ordinary people often find themselves caught between the moral frameworks of capitalism, Maoism and the Chinese tradition. This ethnographic study of the village of Zhongba (in Hubei Province, central China) is an attempt to grasp the ethical reflexivity of everyday life in rural China. Drawing on descriptions of village life, interspersed with targeted theoretical analyses, the author examines how ordinary people construct their own senses of their lives and their futures in everyday activities: building houses, working, celebrating marriages and funerals, gambling and dealing with local government. The villagers confront moral uncertainty; they creatively harmonize public discourse and local practice; and sometimes they resolve incoherence and unease through the use of irony. In so doing, they perform everyday ethics and re-create transient moral communities at a time of massive social dislocation.},
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pubstate = {published},
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Everyday life in contemporary rural China is characterized by an increased sense of moral challenge and uncertainty. Ordinary people often find themselves caught between the moral frameworks of capitalism, Maoism and the Chinese tradition. This ethnographic study of the village of Zhongba (in Hubei Province, central China) is an attempt to grasp the ethical reflexivity of everyday life in rural China. Drawing on descriptions of village life, interspersed with targeted theoretical analyses, the author examines how ordinary people construct their own senses of their lives and their futures in everyday activities: building houses, working, celebrating marriages and funerals, gambling and dealing with local government. The villagers confront moral uncertainty; they creatively harmonize public discourse and local practice; and sometimes they resolve incoherence and unease through the use of irony. In so doing, they perform everyday ethics and re-create transient moral communities at a time of massive social dislocation.
2012
Steinmüller, Hans
China and postsocialist anthropology: theorizing power and society after Communism Journal Article
In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 481-483, 2012.
@article{Steinmüller2012,
title = {China and postsocialist anthropology: theorizing power and society after Communism},
author = {Hans Steinmüller},
doi = {10.1111/j.1467-9655.2012.01754_15.x},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-06-01},
urldate = {2012-06-01},
journal = {Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute},
volume = {18},
number = {2},
pages = {481-483},
abstract = {All this is a familiar story in Aboriginal historical ethnography by now. Babidge's contribution is her focus on the way in which specific forms of Aboriginal family and family statuses in the Charters Towers area were engendered and elicited by the development of various state and federal policies in Queensland and Australia. Her work is an ethnographic contribution to the description of the now commonly referred to Aboriginal'surnamed family group', which has become a unit of both domestic economy and reproduction in the classic sense, as well as a political unit of Aboriginal interaction with the state within a variety of statutory realms. This twofold domestic and political function distinguishes the extended Aboriginal family from most non-Aboriginal families in Australia.},
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All this is a familiar story in Aboriginal historical ethnography by now. Babidge's contribution is her focus on the way in which specific forms of Aboriginal family and family statuses in the Charters Towers area were engendered and elicited by the development of various state and federal policies in Queensland and Australia. Her work is an ethnographic contribution to the description of the now commonly referred to Aboriginal'surnamed family group', which has become a unit of both domestic economy and reproduction in the classic sense, as well as a political unit of Aboriginal interaction with the state within a variety of statutory realms. This twofold domestic and political function distinguishes the extended Aboriginal family from most non-Aboriginal families in Australia.
2011
Steinmüller, Hans
The Reflective Peephole Method: Ruralism and Awkwardness in the Ethnography of Rural China Journal Article
In: The Australian journal of anthropology, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 220-235, 2011.
@article{Steinmüller2011,
title = {The Reflective Peephole Method: Ruralism and Awkwardness in the Ethnography of Rural China},
author = {Hans Steinmüller},
doi = {10.1111/j.1757-6547.2011.00125.x},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-08-02},
urldate = {2011-08-02},
journal = {The Australian journal of anthropology},
volume = {22},
number = {2},
pages = {220-235},
abstract = {Starting with Arthur Smith’s metaphor of the ‘peephole method’, this article explores the issues of ruralism and awkwardness which underlie much ethnographic fieldwork in rural China. In the first part, the continuing influence of ruralism—the idea that the Chinese countryside represents the ‘real’ China—is discussed. This idea is based on a radical conceptual separation of the countryside and the city, which denies modern everydayness to the countryside. If we accept that the modern everyday is now present in rural China and that ordinary people are aware of ruralism and its opposites (urbanism and modernity), we need to find research methods suitable to address the entanglement and the social uses of ruralist and modernist representations in everyday life. In the second part of the article, I argue that the ‘reflective peephole method’ could be such a method. Starting from the awkwardness I felt in my own fieldwork in south-western Hubei Province, I argue that the dilemmas of the ‘peephole method’ might be a good starting point for reflecting on the intensified ambiguity of moral discourse and action in contemporary rural China.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
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Starting with Arthur Smith’s metaphor of the ‘peephole method’, this article explores the issues of ruralism and awkwardness which underlie much ethnographic fieldwork in rural China. In the first part, the continuing influence of ruralism—the idea that the Chinese countryside represents the ‘real’ China—is discussed. This idea is based on a radical conceptual separation of the countryside and the city, which denies modern everydayness to the countryside. If we accept that the modern everyday is now present in rural China and that ordinary people are aware of ruralism and its opposites (urbanism and modernity), we need to find research methods suitable to address the entanglement and the social uses of ruralist and modernist representations in everyday life. In the second part of the article, I argue that the ‘reflective peephole method’ could be such a method. Starting from the awkwardness I felt in my own fieldwork in south-western Hubei Province, I argue that the dilemmas of the ‘peephole method’ might be a good starting point for reflecting on the intensified ambiguity of moral discourse and action in contemporary rural China.
Steinmüller, Hans
The Moving Boundaries of Social Heat: Gambling in Rural China Journal Article
In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 263-280, 2011.
@article{Steinmüller2011b,
title = {The Moving Boundaries of Social Heat: Gambling in Rural China},
author = {Hans Steinmüller},
doi = {10.2307/23011371},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-06-01},
urldate = {2011-06-01},
journal = {Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute},
volume = {17},
number = {2},
pages = {263-280},
abstract = {Whilst gambling for money was prohibited during the Maoist era, since the 1980s it has become very common in many rural areas of central China. It is often the major communal activity in many villages, a focus point of daily gossip and an object of government campaigns. I describe several forms of gambling common in Bashan township, Eastern Hubei province, and relate them to local discourses on capability/skill and luck/fate. Gambling reproduces 'social heat', which is a desired form of social effervescence as long as it remains within certain boundaries. But the boundaries of accepted gambling and social heat in local sociality as well as those given in official representations and state discourse are contested, and both stand in an ambiguous relationship to each other; a relationship that is described in terms of ' cultural intimacy'. Using medium-range concepts such as 'social heat' and 'cultural intimacy', the article attempts to avoid the pitfalls of totalizing approaches which explain popular gambling as a consequence of or resistance to 'neoliberalism'.},
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pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Whilst gambling for money was prohibited during the Maoist era, since the 1980s it has become very common in many rural areas of central China. It is often the major communal activity in many villages, a focus point of daily gossip and an object of government campaigns. I describe several forms of gambling common in Bashan township, Eastern Hubei province, and relate them to local discourses on capability/skill and luck/fate. Gambling reproduces 'social heat', which is a desired form of social effervescence as long as it remains within certain boundaries. But the boundaries of accepted gambling and social heat in local sociality as well as those given in official representations and state discourse are contested, and both stand in an ambiguous relationship to each other; a relationship that is described in terms of ' cultural intimacy'. Using medium-range concepts such as 'social heat' and 'cultural intimacy', the article attempts to avoid the pitfalls of totalizing approaches which explain popular gambling as a consequence of or resistance to 'neoliberalism'.
Steinmüller, Hans
The state of irony in China Journal Article
In: Critique of Anthropology, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 21-42, 2011.
@article{Steinmüller2011c,
title = {The state of irony in China},
author = {Hans Steinmüller},
doi = {10.1177/0308275X10393434},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-03-01},
urldate = {2011-03-01},
journal = {Critique of Anthropology},
volume = {31},
number = {1},
pages = {21-42},
abstract = {In everyday life, people in China as elsewhere have to confront large-scale incongruities between different representations of history and state. They do so frequently by way of indirection, that is, by taking ironic, cynical or embarrassed positions. Those who understand such indirect expressions based on a shared experiential horizon form what I call a ‘community of complicity’. In examples drawn from everyday politics of memory, the representation of local development programmes and a dystopic novel, I distinguish cynicism and ‘true’ irony as two different ways to form such communities. This distinction proposes a renewed attempt at understanding social inclusion and exclusion. I also suggest that irony, so defined, might be more conducive to an anthropology that is ethnographic and dialogical.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
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In everyday life, people in China as elsewhere have to confront large-scale incongruities between different representations of history and state. They do so frequently by way of indirection, that is, by taking ironic, cynical or embarrassed positions. Those who understand such indirect expressions based on a shared experiential horizon form what I call a ‘community of complicity’. In examples drawn from everyday politics of memory, the representation of local development programmes and a dystopic novel, I distinguish cynicism and ‘true’ irony as two different ways to form such communities. This distinction proposes a renewed attempt at understanding social inclusion and exclusion. I also suggest that irony, so defined, might be more conducive to an anthropology that is ethnographic and dialogical.
Steinmüller, Hans
School killings in China: Society or wilderness (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate) Journal Article
In: Anthropology Today, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 10 - 13, 2011.
@article{Steinmüller2011d,
title = {School killings in China: Society or wilderness (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)},
author = {Hans Steinmüller},
doi = {10.1111/j.1467-8322.2011.00782.x},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-02-01},
urldate = {2011-02-01},
journal = {Anthropology Today},
volume = {27},
number = {1},
pages = {10 - 13},
abstract = {Between March and May 2010 a series of school killings took place in mainland China. This article explores media discourses on the school killings and examines three cases in detail. It connects the search for underlying reasons and responsible authorities in relation to the murders with the wider search for ‘society’ in contemporary China, and concludes by emphasizing the gap between the official promotion of the idea of ‘society’ as a cohesive moral community and a parallel popular understanding of the contemporary Chinese social world as a savage wilderness.},
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pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
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Between March and May 2010 a series of school killings took place in mainland China. This article explores media discourses on the school killings and examines three cases in detail. It connects the search for underlying reasons and responsible authorities in relation to the murders with the wider search for ‘society’ in contemporary China, and concludes by emphasizing the gap between the official promotion of the idea of ‘society’ as a cohesive moral community and a parallel popular understanding of the contemporary Chinese social world as a savage wilderness.
2010
Steinmüller, Hans
Communities of Complicity: Notes on State Formation and Local Sociality in Rural China Journal Article
In: American Ethnologist, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 539-549, 2010.
@article{Steinmüller2010,
title = {Communities of Complicity: Notes on State Formation and Local Sociality in Rural China},
author = {Hans Steinmüller},
doi = {10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01271.x},
year = {2010},
date = {2010-08-01},
urldate = {2010-08-01},
journal = {American Ethnologist},
volume = {37},
number = {3},
pages = {539-549},
abstract = {In this article, I deal with the tension in rural China between vernacular practice in local sociality and official representations related to processes of state formation and with the ways in which this tension is revealed and concealed through gestures of embarrassment, irony, and cynicism. Such gestures point toward a space of intimate self-knowledge that I call a “community of complicity,” a concept derived from Michael Herzfeld’s outline of “cultural intimacy.” I illustrate how such communities are constituted with examples involving Chinese geomancy (fengshui), funerary rituals, and corruption. I contrast this approach with arguments made about “state involution” in China.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
In this article, I deal with the tension in rural China between vernacular practice in local sociality and official representations related to processes of state formation and with the ways in which this tension is revealed and concealed through gestures of embarrassment, irony, and cynicism. Such gestures point toward a space of intimate self-knowledge that I call a “community of complicity,” a concept derived from Michael Herzfeld’s outline of “cultural intimacy.” I illustrate how such communities are constituted with examples involving Chinese geomancy (fengshui), funerary rituals, and corruption. I contrast this approach with arguments made about “state involution” in China.