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Society for East Asian Anthropology

American Anthropological Association

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SEAA Highlights from the 2024 Business Meeting

January 10, 2025 by Aaron Su

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Jieun Cho and Aaron Su
January 10, 2025

On November 21, 2024, SEAA members gathered in Tampa for our annual Business Meeting, where the Board and section members reviewed this year’s activities, announced new board members, and awarded book and paper prizes.

Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize

Committee Members: Christine Yano (chair), Susan Brownell, Ellen Oxfeld, Hyang Jin Jung, and Heather Anne Swanson (2023 prize winner)

Winner

Borderland Dreams: The Transnational Lives of Korean Chinese Workers by June Hee Kwon (Duke University Press)

Kwon’s book richly weaves the multidirectional, multilayered, multivocal stories of Korean Chinese migrant workers as they move restlessly between regions, countries, and households in pursuit of dreams of a better life.  Those dreams carry the precarity of borderlands in clashing claims to a future of in-betweenness.  Migrants often enter South Korea in low-end, dangerous and difficult manual jobs with precarious legal status.  Their family relations suffer as they are away for long periods of time, all in the hopes of bettering their futures. The author beautifully renders everything from the personal lives and tribulations of migrants to the way these are impacted by larger structural changes 

Importantly, the book situates ethnic migrations within the larger context of transformations in and through East Asia. The author renders macro and micro perspectives through three interactive lenses:  1) ethnicized bodies; 2) transnational money (remittances), and 3) transnational time (waiting).  Based on Chinese, Korean, and European language sources and on close fieldwork in multiple places, Kwon’s account traces multiplex tales that are both open-ended and circumscribed within political, economic, and regional structures.

Borderland Dreams makes a wonderful contribution to the literature on migration and borderlands, especially since much of the existing literature often focuses on the global south with respect to North America or Europe.  Kwon ably demonstrates not only the cogency, but the necessity, of placing global mobilities at the center of our consideration.  This work exemplifies where, how, and why Global Asias matters:  as a frame for this elegant ethnography, it yields the yearnings, instabilities, and intimacies constituting borderland dreams. 

Honorable Mentions

The Space of Religion: Temple, State, and Buddhist Communities in Modern China by Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank (Columbia University Press)

This magisterial work is based on over thirty years of fieldwork, archival research, and interviews in a Buddhist temple in Xiamen, Fujian, China.  The “space” of religion refers to physical, institutional, and semiotic space, all of which are illuminated in rich detail.  The authors consider the networks that bind this temple to other local temples, to the local population, to diaspora communities, and to the state.  It is based on an impressive ethnography of worshippers, monks, lay monks, state personnel, and many others.  Readers will come away with a better understanding of the multitude of ways the practice of Buddhism has changed from pre-liberation times to its suppression during the Cultural Revolution, to its revival in the reform period, and ultimately (to some degree), its transformation into a form of “culture” denuded of its religious underpinnings during the Xi Jinping era.

David Plath Media Prize

Committee Members: Beata Świtek (chair), Nan Kim, and Yi Wu

Winner

Beneath the Rubber Trees. Directed by Song Qu

This outstanding ethnographic film offers an intimate portrait of the Jinuo people by exploring the lifeworld that surrounds rubber tapping in the mountainous areas of Xishuangbanna in Yunnan, China. Since the early 1950s the cultivation of rubber trees and harvesting of rubber have been a major economic pillar among  the Jinuo, China’s most recently recognized ethnic minority. Bookended by breathtaking sequences that both speak to the natural beauty of this region and its ongoing transformation, the film is otherwise a closely observed visual ethnography that moves seamlessly between scales: from the methodical rhythms of rubber tapping to the vibrant expressions of cultural festivities, from the intimate spaces of family life to the broader canvas of community celebrations. Positioning the Jinuo vis á vis the state and development in the post-Mao reform era, the film builds upon the attentive explorations of the lives of the main characters, the He family. Their experiences are situated in a wider setting where villagers strive to navigate rapidly changing and precarious economic circumstances while also negotiating their Jinuo identity during a time of intense commercialization and marketization. This film invites a reflection upon the implications of development for ethnic groups who rely heavily on local environmental resources and have been confronted with the disruptions and uncertainties posed by economic as well as touristic development. The film provides a nuanced teaching resource for discussions about labor, identity,  political ecology, and the complex dynamics of development in rural China.

Japani. Directed by Dipesh Kharel and Asami Saito

This highly accomplished multi-sited ethnographic film documents the lives of Nepalis who have migrated to work in Japan as well as the lives of their family members—particularly the children—they left behind. The film begins with documentary footage and candid interviews shot in the agrarian villages and at newly built schools of rural mountainous Nepal, then later shifts to apartment complexes and street scenes in urban Japan. A primary storyline in the film follows members of an extended family in these juxtaposed sites, framed by reflections on perceptions of monetary value and the emotional toll of family separation as experienced in both places. Taken together, the film explores the paradoxes and complexities of global migration through personal stories, including dilemmas that are at once intimate and transnational, as faced by family members among a community in diaspora. While building upon the filmmakers’ earlier film Playing with Nan (2013), which won the 2014 Plath Award, Japani represents an excellent resource for teaching about globalization, labor migration, parenting, kinship, and family.

She is Still Waiting for an Apology. Directed by Hong Xiaoxin

This poignant and deeply moving documentary focuses on Luo Shanxue and Wang Zhifeng, who are a generation apart but are both victims of the system of sexual slavery imposed by the imperial Japanese army during WWII in China. Luo Shanxue is the only descendant of a ‘comfort woman’ who is openly public about his identity in China, and the film initially reflects on Luo’s life shaped by stigma. In 1944, his mother Wei Shaolan gave birth to him after escaping from a Japanese comfort station, and for more than 70 years, he and his mother depended on each other, until her death in 2019. The film later bears witness to the life of Wang Zhifeng as a survivor who has long advocated for fellow victims to attain justice and who is among the eldest of activists engaged in the struggle to secure an official apology from the Japanese government. By documenting these survivors’ final years, the film provides an invaluable historical record of the legacies of wartime sexual slavery and is an essential contribution to the understanding of historical trauma and its reverberations across generations.

2024 Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Prize

Committee Members: Zachary Howlett (chair), Xinyu Guan, Kunisuke Hirano, and Claudia Huang

Winner

“Afterlife of Closure: Victimhood and Redress after Toxic Exposure in Japan” by Shoko Yamada (Department of Anthropology, Yale University)

Dr. Yamada’s critical historical perspective and long-term ethnographic lens shed new light on the politics of redress, innovatively approaching them through the lens of performativity and situating them within the larger context of post-War memory. In this way, Yamada’s work unpacks the complex aftermath of chronic illness and settlement agreements in the wake of toxic exposure from industrial pollution in the Jinzū river basin in Toyoma, Japan. Using sensitive ethnography and gripping prose, she demonstrates how so-called closures and settlements dramatize the tension between irreparable injury and the performance of finality. Her piece delivers a fresh and eye-opening argument about how such closure can become a potent ground for future redressive work, enabling people to unsettle dominant notions of victimhood and re-imagine redress.

Honorable Mention

“The (Im)possibility of Indigenous Politics: Collaborative Medical Design and the Limits of Settler Democracy in Taiwan” by Aaron Su (Department of Anthropology, Princeton University)

Dr. Su’s work advances critical discussions on settler colonialism and Indigenous politics, sovereignty, and refusal. Chronicling the way that an Indigenous Amis community in Taiwan engages with settler-state initiatives to improve public health through community-based participatory design, Su’s paper illuminates the tensions between Amis participants’ usage of these arrangements to pursue revitalization and settler-state bureaucrats’ claiming of these occasions as collaborative successes. Artfully integrating ethnography and theory, he highlights the blurring of the lines between the possibility and impossibility of Indigenous politics. In so doing, his piece makes a compelling and thought-provoking argument for the urgency of strategizing and theorizing beyond the binaries of assimilation and transcendence in articulating an Indigenous politics for the contemporary moment.

New Board Members and Anthropology News Column Updates

We also said goodbye to several outgoing members: Teresa Kuan (Secretary), Beata Switek (Councilor), Zachary Howlett (Councilor), Sojung Kim (Student Councilor), Jieun Cho (SEAA Column Editor), and Aaron Su (SEAA Column Editor). We welcomed a cohort of new members as well: Hyang Jin Jung (Incoming President), Edward Pulford (Secretary), Lynne Nakano (Councilor), Lihong Shi (Councilor), David Kok Kwan Tsoi (Student Councilor), Yanping Ni (SEAA Column Editor), and Alex Wolff (SEAA Column Editor).

Thank you to all of these members for volunteering their time and energy to keep SEAA a thriving forum for intellectual exchange! We also thank Guven Witteveen, who has deftly overseen SEAA’s Digital Communications.

Jieun Cho was an editor for the SEAA section news column from 2021-24 and was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute at Duke University. Her research investigates how middle-class families navigate the challenges of raising healthy children amidst the uncertainties of radiation risk in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.

Aaron Su was an editor for the SEAA section news column from 2021-24. He is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University writing up his dissertation on how new participatory design movements are transforming fields as far-flung as healthcare, environmental remediation, and Indigenous politics in Taiwan.

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SEAA-SNU Anthropology 2025 Conference

October 4, 2024 by Guven Witteveen

night landscape of central Seoul around Mt. Nam-san lit by artificial lights [credit: FREEPIK]
Central Seoul nightview – image credit Freepik

About the SEAA-in-Asia regional conference: details and Call-for-Panels [current October 4, 2024].

Dedicated website for conference, http://seaasnu2025.com/

SHAPING FUTURES: EAST ASIA AS PRACTICE, July 2025 Conference in Seoul, South Korea
Organizers: Society for East Asian Anthropology (American Anthropological Association) and
Seoul National University Department of Anthropology
Timing and venue: July 14–16, 2025 at Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
Submission deadline for proposals: January 15, 2025 with decisions by March 1, 2025
All sessions will take place in person
Registration fee: USD $100 regular and reduced student rate USD $25
Contact us at: snuseaa2025@ g mail dotcom

The Society for East Asian Anthropology (American Anthropological Association) and Seoul National University Department of Anthropology are pleased to announce a joint conference, “Shaping Futures: East Asia as Practice,” to be held in-person at Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea, on July 14-16, 2025.

This inter-regional collaboration takes the task of shaping futures as a crucial responsibility for anthropologists. In placing that responsibility under the rubric of “East Asia as Practice,” we assume the ongoing intergenerational dynamism that actively creates futures. We place mentoring–both vertical and lateral–as central to the processes and structure of this future-focused conference. We not only have a pre-conference specifically designed by and for graduate students, but also structure the whole conference in a way that encourages intergenerational, interregional conversations. In short, we take “shaping futures” as an assertion, a responsibility, a platform for community, and a call to action. Those futures include overlapping issues of:

● Mentoring relationships
● Transnational ties that bind
● Diasporas and their possibilities
● Interlingual responsibilities
● Political activism and scholarship
● Raceandracism in 21st century East Asian lives
● EastAsian colonialisms, Indigeneities, and (co)ethnic politics
● Migration and the geopolitical dynamics of border-crossing
● Culinary futures: localism, regionalism, globalism
● Pasts and their consumption: cultural heritage, urban renewal, tourism
● Religious transformations and spiritual practices
● Affects, trauma, and healing
● Sexualities, violence, interventions
● Queerfutures
● Declining birth rates, societal aging, and shifting care regimes
● Digital worlds (social media, virtual reality, metaverses, etc.)
● Automation, robots, and AI
● Inter-species futures, human-animal relations, and their ethics
● Environmental sustainability and climate action
● Well-being amidst an era of anxieties

Our list is long as we commit to creating interactive, dialogic spaces of inclusion and collaboration that not only reflect upon scholarship, but place it within critical modes of engagement. Please join us in conversation and community that together constitute “Shaping Futures.”

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SEAA Highlights from the 2022 Business Meeting

December 1, 2022 by Jieun Cho

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Jieun Cho and Aaron Su
December 1, 2022

SEAA members gathered virtually on November 19 for the annual Business Meeting, where the Board and section members reviewed activities throughout 2022, announced new positions, and awarded book and media prizes.

Fancis L.K. Hsu Book Prize

Committee Members: Jennifer Prough (chair), Yi Wu, Lyle Fearnley, Miriam Driessen

Winner

The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan, written by Chikako Ozawa-De Silva, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, published by the University of California Press. 

Honorable Mentions

Glossolalia and the Problem of Language, written by Nicholas Harkness, Professor of anthropology at Harvard University, published by the University of Chicago Press.

Stitching the 24-Hour City: Life, Labor, and the Problem of Speed in Seoul, written by Seo Young Park, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Scripps College, published by Cornell University Press.

The David Plath Media Award 2022

We are pleased to announce the following winner and two honorable mentions for the biennial David Plath Media Award.

Winner: 

206 UNEARTHED  

Director: Chul-nyung Heo
Producer: Sona Jo, SonaFilms

This stunning film blends documentary-style footage, interviews, and metavoice commentary to tell the searing tales of a voluntary group of amateur archaeologists, seeking the remains of civilian dead from the Korean War.  The 206 of the title references the 206 bones of the human body, at best unearthed with painstaking care and pieced together to bring the past to a final reconciliation with the present.  At worst, however, these are bones whose hauntings remain unearthed, unfound, and unresolved. The film astonishes with its elegance, ranging from the philosophical to the deeply personal to the scholarly.  It brings to the fore contemporary anthropological discussions of memory, emotion, trauma, and healing, here rooted in a particular time, place, and group of people, but reaching far more broadly.  In doing so, the film invokes the power of the medium itself to achieve its visual and auditory profundity.

Honorable Mention: 

Miles to Go Before She Sleeps

Producer/Editor: J. Faye Yuan, New Circle Films

This intense and emotionally charged film follows an activist, Ms. Yang, in her fight for the welfare protection of dogs and against the practice of dog meat eating in China. The central ethnographic conundrum of the film (China becoming the largest pet market while being world’s largest dog meat producer) is made clear within the first minutes and immediately captures attention. We are quickly drawn into thinking about the tension between perceiving non-human animals as companions versus perceiving them as food, and consequently the limits of animal—and human—rights. Compellingly combining documentary-style filming with TV news clips and ‘silent’ street scenes overlaid with music, the film is praiseworthy for being both activist-oriented and well-balanced in its approach, and for its careful and courageous way of engaging in this contentious and potentially dangerous topic.

Honorable Mention:

Hengdian Dreaming

Director: Shayan Momin

It is a lively film about hope, dreams, freedom and precarity of life as a background actor in Hengdian, a movie capital of China. As the film skilfully blends online and offline footage to address an unspoken aspect of media production and youth struggles in China, it asks us to consider the nature (and price) of hope, the relationship between mobile technologies and presentation(s) of self, and the relationship between agency and exploitation. A compelling use of visual and audio elements from the ground accentuates the lived conundrum of the background actors and attests to the close engagement of the researcher with the people he represents. There is therefore much that the film can provoke for the classroom not only in relation to the topics evoked, but also in relation to the relationship between the researcher and the people they work with and the politics of representation.

New Anthropology News Column Theme, and Open SEAA Positions

The SEAA Column in Anthropology News will be publishing pieces in 2023 under a new theme, after receiving several submissions during a call for papers: “The Future of the ‘Public’ in East Asia.” The column publishes SEAA members’ reflections and photo essays based on original ethnographic research.

In addition, new SEAA positions will be open soon. Two Councilor positions and one Student Councilor position are available for those who wish to run. Please contact Ellen Oxfeld (oxfeld [at] middlebury.edu) announcing your intent to run as soon as possible.

We also said goodbye to several outgoing members: Jie Yang, Marvin Sterling, Isaac Gagne (Treasurer), and Tim Quinn (Student Councilor). We welcomed a cohort of new members as well: Jun Zhang (Treasurer), Claudia Huang (Councilor), Kunisake Hirano (Councilor), Sojung Kim (Student Councilor).

Thank you to all of these members for volunteering their time and energy to keep SEAA a thriving forum for intellectual exchange! We also thank Guven Witteveen, who has deftly overseen SEAA’s Digital Communications.

Jieun Cho is an editor for the SEAA section news column. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University and currently writing up her dissertation on children’s health, everyday life, and radioactive uncertainty in post-nuclear Japan.

Aaron Su is an editor for the SEAA section news column. He is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University with interests in medical and environmental anthropology, urban design, and contemporary China.

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In Memoriam of David Plath (1930-2022)

November 21, 2022 by Jieun Cho

The below prose was offered by Christine Yano on November 19th as part of the annual SEAA business meeting online to honor the work and the life of our dear colleague.

— 

It is with deep sadness and gratitude that I offer these few words in memory of David Plath who served as mentor, friend, and inspiration to many of us.  David taught many of us through his scholarship, which often veered off the beaten path to the marginalia of culture, to the “after hours” of human life.  In this, he wished to give the messy emotional, social, and aesthetic side of culture its due.  Equally, David moved many of us through his warmth and integrity, as well as his generous spirit, which was as acerbic as it was empathetic.  His contributions to the field of East Asia Anthropology are many, but for today when our wounds are still so raw, let me place his memory in the hands and words of his many friends. 

Laura Miller, past president of SEAA:  David was one of the smartest, wittiest, kindest Japan scholars I ever met.  His undergraduate degree in journalism from Northwestern University is reflected in his wonderful writing.  He served as an officer in the US Naval Reserve’s Pacific Fleet (1952-55) before earning a master’s degree (1959) and a PhD (1962) from Harvard in anthropology and Far Eastern languages.  He often ruffled the feathers of theoryhead anthropology by being outspoken about his impatience with jargon (at a conference he once called it ‘intellectual masturbation’).

Instead of trendy “intellectual masturbation”, David preferred straight talking, from-the-heart-to-the-heart insight and expression, including poetry.  He valued beauty and integrity that shed light on the human condition, both in words and images.  And he produced both words and images in his rich body of work.  Thus SEAA named the biennial award for the best multimedia work on East Asian anthropology. the David Plath Media Award.  He loved that tribute.

Here is one of his favorite poems, bestowed upon friends, from the pen of a farmer-poet, Wendell Berry.

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me

And I wake in the night at the least sound

In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

Rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things 

who do not tax their lives with forethought

Of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

Waiting with their light.  For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 To David – now resting in the eternal grace of the world, and utterly free.  Remembering the knowing twinkle in your eye of droll humor and sly wit, we thank you.

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SEAA Highlights at the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting

December 14, 2021 by Aaron Su

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Aaron Su and Jieun Cho
December 15, 2021

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Society for East Asian Anthropology (SEAA) convened a vibrant virtual business meeting and featured many stimulating panels in its program for this year’s AAA. Membership and finance increases revealed a productive year of accomplishments, while numerous announcements, awards, and transitions took center stage at the business meeting.

Also announced at the meeting were a new theme for SEAA’s Anthropology News column and a call for open SEAA positions, each listed at the end of this recap.

SEAA-sponsored Panels

SEAA received a total of 31 individual paper and panel submissions this year, exploring pressing themes ranging from the resurgence of pandemic nationalisms in East Asia to the cultural and affective economies of tourism in China, Japan, and Korea. From these submissions, SEAA offered 2 invited sessions and 1 co-sponsored session with the Association for Queer Anthropology.

Business Meeting

SEAA members gathered virtually for the annual Business Meeting, where the Board and section members reviewed activities throughout 2021, announced new positions, and awarded book and essay prizes.

Silvia Lindtner from the University of Michigan was awarded this year’s Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize for Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020). The award’s Honorable Mention was given to Lyle Fearnley from the Singapore University for Technology and Design, for his book Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter (Duke University Press, 2020). This year’s book prize committee was chaired by Marvin Sterling.

In addition, the 2021 SEAA Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Prize, chaired by Nicholas Harkness, was awarded to Ruiyi Zhu (University of Cambridge) for her essay, “Aspiring to standards: Mongolian vocational education, Chinese enterprise, and the neoliberal order.” Timothy Y. Loh (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was awarded Honorable Mention for his paper, titled: “Mother Tongue Orphan: Multiculturalism and the Challenge of Sign Language in Singapore.”

A virtual yet spirited shamoji (rice paddle) ceremony reigned in this year’s transitions in SEAA board positions. As the incoming present, Ellen Oxfeld took over the shamoji from former president Sonia Ryang; Christine Yano, the president-elect, will assume this role at the end of Oxfeld’s term.

We also said goodbye to several outgoing members: Satsuki Kawano (Secretary 2019-21), Andrew Kipnis (Councilor 2019-21), Nicholas Harkness (Councilor 2019-21), Yifan Wang (Student Councilor 2020-21), and Hanna Pickwell (Anthropology News SEAA Section Editor 2019-21). We welcomed a cohort of new members as well: Teresa Kuan as Secretary; Zachary Howlett, Beata Świtek, Jennifer Prough, and Yi Wu as Councilors; Yookyeong Im and Tim Quinn as Student Councilors; and Aaron Su and Jieun Cho as Anthropology News SEAA Section Editors.

Thank you to all of these members for volunteering their time and energy to keep SEAA a thriving forum for intellectual exchange! We also thank Guven Witteveen, who has deftly overseen SEAA’s Digital Communications.

New Anthropology News Column Theme, and Open SEAA Positions

The SEAA Column in Anthropology News will be publishing pieces in 2022 under a new theme, after receiving several submissions during a call for papers: “Materialities and Movements in a Changing East Asia.” The column publishes SEAA members’ reflections and photo essays based on original ethnographic research.

In addition, new SEAA positions will be open soon. Two Councilor positions, one Treasurer position, and one Student Councilor position are available for those who wish to run. Please contact Ellen Oxfeld (oxfeld [at] middlebury.edu) announcing your intent to run as soon as possible.

Aaron Su is an editor for the SEAA section news column. He is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University with interests in medical and environmental anthropology, urban design, and contemporary China.

Jieun Cho is an editor for the SEAA section news column. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University and currently writing up her dissertation on children’s health, everyday life, and radioactive uncertainty in post-nuclear Japan.

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SEAA *final* program, August conference, Tokyo

July 27, 2019 by Guven Witteveen

screenshot from 2019 conference program
see the conference schedule here

The regional conference hosted at Waseda University in a few days is quickly approaching. The organizers have released the final PDF program to browse, download, or printout. Conference overview is at https://seaa.americananthro.org/2018/11/seaa-regional-conference-august-2019-tokyo/ and the PDF program is here.

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SEAA *draft* program, Regional Conference, August

June 22, 2019 by Guven Witteveen

See the PDF draft edition for Day-1 and Day-2 of the upcoming conference in Tokyo. The final printed edition will be distributed on-site, pending travel arrangements of some presenters.

SEAA Tokyo Conference Program_Draft21june2019Download
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Announcing the SEAA regional conference in August 2019, Tokyo

November 15, 2018 by Guven Witteveen

wordcloud in frame of WiFi icon

Society for East Asian Anthropology
Regional Conference 2019 – Tokyo

East Asian Anthropology Now and into the Future:
Transformations, Dynamics, and Challenges

[update 29 April 2019: registration begins on June 1]

The region of East Asia offers a fertile ground for anthropologists who seek to understand the pulse of a new modernity, whether it be the effects of economic restructuring, new modes of living and being, new ways of relating, technologies and human interfaces, population dynamics, understandings of well-being, the life well lived or the ‘good’ death, mobilities in the region, and much more. We hope to assemble a variety of papers from the latest anthropological research on the transformations and dynamics as well as challenges people in the region face as they go about their daily lives in the 21st century.  


August 2-3, 2019 hosted at Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies (GSAPS) of Waseda University

Conference Aims

The conference aims:

  1. to provide a platform for anthropology teachers and students and scholars in related disciplines to share their latest research findings;
  2. to provide an opportunity for building academic networks and for exploring possibilities of research collaboration among scholars and between institutions; and
  3. to promote anthropology in East Asia.

 

Organizers

The Society of East Asian Anthropology (SEAA), an officially recognized section within the American Anthropological Association (AAA), consists of close to 400 anthropologists whose primary area of study is East Asia.  SEAA is committed to developing international channels of communication among anthropologists throughout the world. It seeks to promote discussion and share information on diverse topics related to the anthropology of Taiwan, PRC, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea; other societies/cultures of Asia and the Pacific Basin with historical or contemporary ties to East Asia; and diasporic societies/cultures identified with East Asia.  Its website is https://seaa.americananthro.org/ 

 

Call for papers

The Executive Committee of the Society of East Asian Anthropology (SEAA) invites proposals for panels and individual papers to be presented at the conference. All presentations are to be delivered in English.

Proposals for panels or for individual papers should be submitted to seaa.tokyo.2019@gmail.com before February 28, 2019. Results of the selection of papers will be made by March 31, 2019.


Panels:

A panel will consist of either 3 or 4 paper presenters and 1 discussant (non-presenter); however, double-sized panels of up to 8 papers and 2 discussants will also be considered.

To submit a panel, please provide a 200-word abstract for each individual paper and a 200-word statement for the theme of the panel. Only full panels will be considered for acceptance. In middle January an online form to help self-organize panels (interested individual papers seeking fellow presenters to form a full panel) will be hotlinked here.


Individual papers:

To submit an individual paper, please provide a 200-word abstract. We will cluster together papers that broadly fit theoretically. Junior scholars are given priority.

 

Registration

Registration starts on June 1, 2019. Refer to the information page of instructions here.
Participants will arrange and pay for their own lodging and transportation. Some general advice will be developed for Tokyo at http://bit.ly/about2019seaa-tokyo

Many restaurants near the conference venue are available at lunchtime.
A reception, the cost of which will be included in your registration fee, will be held on Saturday, August 3, 2019.

 

I look forward to welcoming you at GSAPS!

Glenda S. Roberts, SEAA President
Professor, GSAPS at Waseda University
Tokyo, Japan

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Upcoming S.E.A.A. conference, June 19-22

May 28, 2016 by Guven Witteveen

conference announcement

conference announcement

Tell your colleagues & students about our regional conference this June.

This year’s regional conference of the Society for East Asia Anthropology is hosted in Hong Kong. Join the conversation about “East Asia and Tomorrow’s Anthropology.” See conference details and refer colleagues and students to http://arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/SEAAconf/

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SEAA Conference – Hong Kong, June 2016

September 1, 2015 by Guven Witteveen

preparing for June 2016 conference

preparing for June 2016 conference

SEAA has had great success in hosting meetings independent of AAA sessions at the Annual Meeting.
Come to Hong Kong to engage with colleagues from 19 to 22 June 2016, where the conference theme is “East Asia and Tomorrow’s Anthropology.”

Download proposal forms for paper or panel at the “Call for Papers” tab, http://arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/SEAAconf/
Deadline for registration is Dec. 1. After the program is announced in January, the conference registration will begin and accommodations will be arranged.
Consider presentations you can make or panels to join in. Please, also invite colleagues near and far to participate.

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Welcome!

SEAA is committed to developing international channels of communication among anthropologists throughout the world. We hope to promote discussion and share information on diverse topics related to the anthropology of Taiwan, PRC, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea; other societies/cultures of Asia and the Pacific Basin with historical or contemporary ties to East Asia; and diasporic societies/cultures identified with East Asia.

Links
Join the 'SEAA List' GoogleGroup listserv