Do you have a stack of recent books you’ve been intending to read for some time, but hardly can find the time to do so? Would you like a community of readers to discuss the book with you? Then become an active member of SEAA Reads.
The Society for East Asia Anthropology turns 25 in 2026 (the SEAA@25 anniversary celebration). In the SEAA READS book club we can think ahead to stimulating reading and discussion all year long. This is one of many ways in which we connect and create community. Please join us!
FEBRUARY 7, 2026 from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
HOST: Laurel Kendall (member of book prize committee)
BOOK: Philipp Demgenski 2024 Seeking A Future for the Past; Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City. (University of Michigan Press)
Join us for a very special gathering to discuss the latest Francis Hsu award winner.
Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City examines the complexities and changing sociopolitical dynamics of urban renewal in contemporary China. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in the northeastern Chinese city of Qingdao, the book tells the story of the slow, fragmented, and contentious transformation of Dabaodao—an area in the city’s former colonial center—from a place of common homes occupied by the urban poor into a showcase of architectural heritage and site for tourism and consumption. The ethnography provides a nuanced account of the diverse experiences and views of a range of groups involved in shaping, and being shaped, by the urban renewal process—local residents, migrant workers, preservationists, planners, and government officials—foregrounding the voices and experiences of marginal groups, such as migrants in the city. Unpacking structural reasons for urban developmental impasses, it paints a nuanced local picture of urban governance and political practice in contemporary urban China. Seeking a Future for the Past also weighs the positives and negatives of heritage preservation and scrutinizes the meanings and effects of “preservation” on diverse social actors. By zeroing in on the seemingly contradictory yet coexisting processes of urban stagnation and urban destruction, the book reveals the multifaceted challenges that China faces in reforming its urbanization practices and, ultimately, in managing its urban future.
Here is part of the prize committee’s commendation for Demgenski’s book:
The committee was highly impressed by this rigorously researched, gracefully written ethnographic study of the cultural, social, political, and economic meanings of the built urban environment of an old inner-city neighborhood to different groups in Qingdao, China. The study is grounded in up close and personal fieldwork, observations spanning a decade, and a deep and thorough engagement with the extensive literature on urban development within and beyond China. Seeking a Future for the Past is a vivid, powerful work of ethnography.
Please RSVP to seaa.americananthro+reads ATgmaildot com by 2/1/2026.
Previously: October 18, 2025 for SEAA Reads we talked about Nicole Constable’s Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations.. Summary of all SEAA READS sessions.
PURPOSE: To form a stronger sense of community around regular intellectual and social exchange by online book club discussion. Open to all members of SEAA.
DETAILS
- Discussion around a commonly read book, with an emphasis upon more recent publications.
- Held online quarterly at a time TBD (1.5 hours): February, April, June, October.
THEMATICALLY: ethnography as method and as enterprise
- What does ethnography mean today?
- How does ethnography mean?
- What are the limits of ethnography?
FORMAT
- Facilitator assigns reading, arranges for the zoom meeting, leads the discussion.
- In general, author of featured book should not be the discussion facilitator. But if the facilitator decides that it would be of interest, they may invite the author to perhaps the last half hour of the session.
- Limit participants for any given session. The first 20 to sign up are in that meeting’s group, with priority given to SEAA members.
Want to become a session facilitator? Contact Christine Yano, cryano athawaii dotedu
Sign up now! First come first served, since numbers for any one session will be limited to 20.
Look for announcements via the SEAA Google Group, “SEAA List,” linked from the seaa.americananthro.org homepage, right margin. A chronology of titles to date appears below.
FUTURE SESSIONS
February 7, 2026
Provisionally also: April, June, October
BOOK CLUB PREVIOUS TITLES (reverse chronological order since April 2022). Session summaries.
14. Nicole Constable 2022 Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations [host Nan Kim]
13. Julie Valk 2021 Selling the Kimono: An Ethnography of Crisis, Creativity and Hope. [host Bill Kelly]
12. Akiko Takeyama 2023 Involuntary Consent: The Illusion of Choice in Japan’s Adult Video Industry. [hosts Christine Yano, Amy Borovoy]
11. Monica Liu 2023 Seeking Western Men. Email-order brides under China’s global rise. [host Ellen Oxfeld]
10. Ryo Morimoto 2023 Nuclear Ghosts. Atomic livelihoods in Fukushima’s gray zone. [host Bill Kelly]
9. June Hee Kwon 2023 Borderland Dreams, The transnational lives of Korean Chinese Workers [Sojung Kim]
8. Heather Swanson 2022 Spawning Modern Fish: Transnational Comparison in the Making of Japanese Salmon. [host Christine Yano]
7. Anne Allison 2023 Being Dead Otherwise. [host Dan White]
6. Lynne Nakano 2022 Making Our Own Destiny: Single Women, Opportunity, and Family in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. [host Bill Kelly]
5. Chikako Ozawa-De Silva 2021 The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan. [host Jennifer Prough]
4. Eleana Kim 2022 Making Peace with Nature, Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ. [host Yookyeong Im]
3. David Palmer and Elijah Siegler 2017 Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality. [host Jie Yang]
2. Iza Kavedzija 2019 Making Meaningful Lives. [host Bill Kelly]
1. Sylvia M. Lindtner 2020 Prototype Nation: China and the contested promise of innovation. [host Marvin Sterling]