Find extended citations from this year’s selection committees for the Francis L. K. Hsu Book Prize and the SEAA Outstanding Graduate Student Paper at https://seaa.americananthro.org/awards/past-seaa-awards/
2021 Francis L. Hsu Book Prize
Winner
Sylvia M. Lindtner. Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020).
Honorable Mention
Lyle Fearnley. Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Heath at China’s Pandemic Epicenter (Duke University Press, 2020).
2021 Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Prize
Winner
Ruiyi Zhu, Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
“Aspiring to Standards: Mongolian Vocational Education, Chinese Enterprise, and the Neoliberal Order.”
Honorable Mention
Timothy Y. Loh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS)
“Mother Tongue Orphan: Multiculturalism and the Challenge of Sign Language in Singapore.”
SEAA Highlights from Cyberspace to Asia
The Society for East Asian Anthropology (SEAA) promotes discussion and shares information on diverse topics related to the anthropology of East Asia broadly conceived. We are committed to developing international channels of communication among anthropologists throughout the world who share an interest in East Asia both as a topic of academic inquiry and as a site of academic activity. Here, we highlight our activities over the past year and invite you to join our lively community online (through our website and listserv) and offline.
SEAA column series
Our monthly column for the Anthropology News website features curated series, bringing together scholars in the SEAA around a central theme. Our current series on “Digital Anthropologies in East Asia” examines how digital technologies impact the everyday lives of ordinary people and transform social relationships, labor structures, and youth culture. Previous themes include “Living through Waste and Waste as Lively,” which provided a critical understanding of China’s “trash crisis” and contributed to anthropological studies of the environment. The “In and Out of Japan” series examined mobility against the backdrop of Japan’s population decline. We welcome your proposals for individual articles and thematic series to feature in future columns.
SEAA regional conferences
Periodically SEAA brings together scholars for a dynamic regional conference, including Berkeley in 2004, Hong Kong in 2006, Taipei in 2009, and Seoul in 2011. Our 2016 conference was hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and included a diverse group of 160 participants from across East and Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America, who gave presentations on panels ranging from “Emerging Infrastructure of Immigration to China” to “Creative Human Reconstruction of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster” to “Confronting the ‘Grey Tsunami’” and “Ethics, Death and Beyond.” The keynote panel on “Overcoming the Gap between American Anthropology and East Asian Anthropologies” featured vigorous debate among leading scholars in the field on the cultural norms and structural challenges of academic knowledge production in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the US. Ethnographic immersion in Hong Kong was a highlight of the
conference, including a walking tour of urban renewal and high density dynamics, a field trip to Po Lin Monastery, and dinner at Chungking Mansions (described by SEAA President Gordon Mathews in his 2011 ethnography Ghetto at the Center of the World as emblematic of “low-end globalization”). We invite proposals from potential hosts for our next independent regional conference in Asia.
AAA workshops
SEAA holds professional development activities to nurture emerging scholars in our field, including yearly mentoring workshops and networking dinners at the AAA Annual Meetings. At our 2016 mentoring workshop in Minneapolis, Lisa Rofel, Eleana Kim, and Akihiro Ogawa met with SEAA graduate student members to discuss ways to connect anthropological research to political activism in the Trump era. Our 2017 mentoring workshop and networking dinner in Washington DC will continue to develop these themes; visit the SEAA website for updates.
SEAA is also organizing our first book publishing workshop at the 2017 Annual Meeting, featuring recent authors and acquisition editors from university presses at Cornell, Oxford, Princeton, and Stanford. Sign up at the AAA conference website to join us for a lively discussion on how to develop a compelling book proposal, find the right publisher, survive the review process, negotiate the contract, manage the production process, and market your book.
SEAA prizes
SEAA awards annual prizes for outstanding work in East Asian anthropology, including scholarly books, media productions, and graduate student papers. In 2016, SEAA awarded the Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize to Jie Yang (Simon Fraser University) for her book Unknotting the Heart: Unemployment and Therapeutic Governance in China. Aya Domenig received the David Plath Media Award for her film The Day the Sun Fell (Als die Sonne vom Himmel fiel). The Theodore C. Bestor Prize for Outstanding Graduate Paper was awarded to Adam Liebman, a PhD candidate at the University of California Davis, for his paper “Waste-Product Trading and Colloquial Urban Sociality in Kunming, China.” Join us at the SEAA annual business meeting in DC to find out the winners of the 2017 SEAA prizes.
SEAA: seaa.americananthro.org
Contributing editors: Heidi K. Lam, Yale University (heidi.lam@yale.edu), Priscilla Song, Washington University in St Louis (priscillasong@wustl.edu), and Yi Zhou, University of California Davis (yizhou@ucdavis.edu)
2016 Bestor Graduate Paper Prize: Adam Liebman (Winner) and Megan Steffen (Honorable Mention)
The Society for East Asian Anthropology awards the 2016 Theodore C. Bestor Prize for Outstanding Graduate Paper to Adam Liebman for his paper entitled “Waste-Product Trading and Colloquial Urban Sociality in Kunming, China.” Adam is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at University of California, Davis.
Megan Steffen, who recently received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Princeton University, was awarded honorable mention for her paper entitled “The Value of Emptiness: Zhengzhou’s Empty Houses and the PRC’s Housing Bubble.”
Named after the first president of SEAA, the Theodore C. Bestor Prize is awarded annually for the best graduate student paper on any aspect of East Asian anthropology and/or East Asian anthropology’s contribution to the broader field. Carolyn Stevens (SEAA Secretary and Professor of Japanese Studies at Monash University) chaired the 2016 Bestor Prize Committee, which included Gordon Mathews (SEAA President and Chair of the Anthropology Department at Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Sealing Cheng (SEAA Councilor and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Chinese University of Hong Kong).
The deadline for submissions for the next Bestor Graduate Paper Prize (for papers written by graduate students in 2016) is May 1, 2017. For more information: https://seaa.americananthro.org/awards/bestor-prize-for-outstanding-graduate-paper/
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2016 Bestor Prize Citations:
Winner: Adam Liebman (Ph.D. Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at University of California, Davis)
Paper Title: “Waste-Product Trading and Colloquial Urban Sociality in Kunming, China”
Award Citation: This paper was distinguished by its clarity of argument, ethnographic richness and theoretical sophistication. Liebman’s topic is of importance to those in Chinese Studies but the concept of ‘colloquial urban sociality’ is highly applicable to all anthropologists looking at the ways in which people forge lives for themselves in cities around the world, and outside ‘formal’ labor and economic structures that are promoted by their governments. Firmly connected to theoretical and ethnographic literature that comes before, Liebman’s paper makes fresh contributions to our understanding of ‘class consciousness’ and individual in changing urban Chinese society as well as injecting new insight into the materiality and the meaning of ‘waste’ objects in people’s daily lives.
Honorable Mention: Megan Steffen (Ph.D. 2016, Department of Anthropology, Princeton University)
Paper Title: “The Value of Emptiness: Zhengzhou’s Empty Houses and the PRC’s Housing Bubble”
Award Citation: This paper, also on a timely and provocative topic in contemporary Chinese society, was chosen for honors because it particularly highlights the meaningful and vivacious relationship between the ethnographer and informants through examples of vivid personal dialogue as argument. The prize’s namesake, Theodore C Bestor, is an anthropologist whose writings have always highlighted and valued respectful personal relationships with his informants; Steffen’s paper continues and excels in that engaged ethnographic tradition. As Steffen eloquently gives voice to these Chinese young women through her writing, we are reminded that ethnography comes from the people, freely given to the anthropologist as a gift of friendship as well as information.
2016 Bestor Prize Selection Committee:
- Carolyn Stevens (SEAA Secretary and Professor of Japanese Studies at Monash University), Chair
- Sealing Cheng (SEAA Councilor and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Chinese University of Hong Kong)
- Gordon Mathews (SEAA President and Chair of the Anthropology Department at Chinese University of Hong Kong)
2016 Hsu Book Prize: Jie Yang’s Unknotting the Heart
The Society for East Asian Anthropology awards the 2016 Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize to Jie Yang, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University, for her book Unknotting the Heart: Unemployment and Therapeutic Governance in China (Cornell University Press 2015).
Unknotting the Heart is an extraordinary ethnography that charts new territory in our understanding of the ways in which neoliberal governance, psychotherapy, and affective labor come together to shape subjects and subjectivities during mass unemployment as former socialist-style industries in China transform into global manufacturers. Based on many years of in-depth fieldwork in urban China, Jie Yang explores the plight of laid-off workers as the state psychologizes their condition and promotes what Yang calls “fake happiness.” Jie Yang brilliantly shows the tension between the Chinese state’s “therapeutic governance,” which employs western-style psychology, and the workers’ own attempts to deal with the astonishing transformations taking place around them. Jie Yang shows how therapeutic governance disrupts existing values and habits by promoting self-enterprising and self-reflective subjects who are expected to fit current market needs. This process further genders the population, often in traumatic and disturbing ways. As external and connected selves are pushed to transform themselves into internal and self-reliant selves, the therapists, not surprisingly, solidify their position as Communist Party authorities. Their combination of political and therapeutic roles legitimates and naturalizes their psychological knowledge and authority. Unknotting the Heart is an innovative, ethnographically nuanced, and theoretically sophisticated book about the contemporary condition. It is anthropology at its best. This is a contribution to anthropology at large, and it will inspire anthropologists and students of all sub-disciplines and all regions to think creatively and deeply for decades to come.
The SEAA’s annual book prize is named for the late Francis L.K. Hsu (1909-2000), renowned cross-cultural anthropologist and former president (1977-78) of the American Anthropological Association. The Hsu Book Prize is given to the English-language book published in the previous calendar year judged to have made the most significant contribution to East Asian anthropology. 18 books were submitted for consideration for the 2016 prize from a diverse range of scholarly publishers.The 2016 Hsu Book Prize selection committee was chaired by Manduhai Buyandelger (2014 Hsu Book Prize recipient and Associate Professor of Anthropology at MIT) and included Jong Bum Kwon (Associate Professor of Anthropology at Webster University), Glenda Roberts (Professor of Anthropology at Waseda University), and Priscilla Song (Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis).
The deadline for submissions for the next Francis L.K. Hsu Prize (for books published in 2016) is May 1, 2017. For more information:
https://seaa.americananthro.org/awards/francis-l-k-hsu-book-prize/
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2016 Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize:
Yang, Jie. Unknotting the Heart: Unemployment and Therapeutic Governance in China (Cornell University Press 2015).
Book description: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100984600
2016 Hsu Book Prize Selection Committee:
- Manduhai Buyandelger (2014 Hsu Book Prize recipient and Associate Professor of Anthropology at MIT), Chair
- Jong Bum Kwon (Associate Professor of Anthropology at Webster University)
- Glenda Roberts (Professor of Anthropology at Waseda University)
- Priscilla Song (Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis)
2016 Plath Media Prize: Aya Domenig’s The Day the Sun Fell
The Society for East Asian Anthropology awards the 2016 David Plath Media Prize to Aya Domenig’s “The Day the Sun Fell” (Als die Sonne vom Himmel fiel).
This remarkable film begins as a personal quest to uncover the history of the director’s loving, yet enigmatic, grandfather, who was a physician for the Red Cross in Hiroshima the day of the bombing. Domenig powerfully melds that traumatic past with the contemporary nuclear devastation of the March 11, 2011 triple disaster, which took place during the course of the film’s production. Featuring compelling characters and a finely paced narrative, “The Day the Sun Fell” brings to light a repressed history of Japanese victims of the nuclear bomb and the medical personnel who served them, by following two elderly survivors, a doctor and nurse from Hiroshima. Delicately interwoven with these portraits are interviews with the filmmaker’s widowed grandmother. The film demonstrates the power of ethnographic cinema to capture a big story with intimacy and nuance, and would be effective for teaching courses on war, illness, trauma, nuclear culture, and contemporary Japan.
Named for David Plath, renowned Japan scholar and producer of award-winning documentary films, this biennial prize is awarded for the best work (film, video, audio, and/or multimedia/interactive media, such as websites) in the preceding two years on any aspect of East Asian anthropology and/or East Asian anthropology’s contribution to the broader field. Eligible submissions include a diverse range of forms including research footage and documentation that adds to the historical and/or ethnographic record, or is used for further analysis (such as linguistics, dance, and art); ethnographic media that contributes to theoretical debate and development; media designed to enhance teaching; and media produced for television broadcasting and other forms of mass communication.
The 2016 David Plath Media Prize Selection Committee was chaired by Eleana Kim (SEAA Councilor and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine) and included Julie Chu (Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago), Dodom Kim (Ph.D. Student in Anthropology, University of Chicago), and David Novak (Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara).
The next David Plath Media Prize will be awarded in 2018 for works produced in 2016-2017.
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2016 David Plath Media Prize:
“The Day the Sun Fell” (Als die Sonne vom Himmel fiel). Written and directed by Aya Domenig. 78 minutes.
The Day the Sun Fell film trailer: https://youtu.be/MzokWoZ3FBI
The Day the Sun Fell film website: http://www.thedaythesunfell.com/
2016 Plath Media Prize Selection Committee:
- Eleana Kim (SEAA Councilor and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine), Chair
- Julie Chu (Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago)
- Dodom Kim (Ph.D. Student in Anthropology, University of Chicago)
- David Novak (Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara)
Annual SEAA awards — Book prize, Best Graduate Student Paper, Media work (even-numbered years only)
At the SEAA business meeting at the AAA annual meeting in Denver the winners were announced for Book Prize, Best Student Paper, and (even numbered years) Media Production.
A short description follows, together with a link to the full description by the selection committees.
The 2015 Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize Winner is Rian Thum. 2014. The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History. Harvard University Press.
Rian Thum’s The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History is an extraordinary accomplishment that advances our understanding of sacred traditions of pilgrimage, local senses of history, and politics of nationalism. The book redefines the fields of Xinjiang history and Uyghur studies in a way that scholars in these fields will now have to take into account…
… Indeed the relative paucity of historical sources on the region in Turkic languages that Thum works with (rather than Chinese) may well be a source for the book’s creative methodology and a reason the book is so good.
Amazon entry, http://tinyurl.com/hsu2015thum
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The 2015 Theodore C. Bestor Prize for Best Student Paper was tied between:
“Modeling History: How Chinese Local Officials and Designers Meet in Museums” (Leksa Chmielewski Lee, U.C.-Irvine) and
“Negotiating Masculinities through the Game of Distinction: A Case Study of MOBA Gamers at a Chinese University” (Siyu Chen, U. Oslo)
For this year’s Theodore C. Bestor Prize for Outstanding Graduate Paper, there were 23 applicants. Most of these were remarkably good papers indeed, and could, with a little polishing be publishable within a wide range of anthropological journals. In a unanimous decision the three judges for the Bestor Prize—Sealing Cheng, Joshua Hotaku Roth, and Gordon Matthews— found that three papers stood out for closer comparison. The result was an award tie and one honorable mention.
In a tied vote the judges awarded this year’s prize to Leksa Chmielewski Lee (University of California, Irvine) who wrote “Modeling History: How Chinese Local Officials and Designers Meet in Museums” and to Siyu Chen (University of Oslo) who wrote “Negotiating Masculinities through the Game of Distinction: A Case Study of MOBA Gamers at a Chinese University.”
For honorable mention the judges chose Suma Ikeuchi (Emory University):
“Of Two Bloods: Nation, Kinship, and Religion among Nikkei Brazilian Pentecostal Migrants in Japan.” Like the authors above, this paper is another example of the artful weaving together of ethnography and theory in a whole that transcends the sum of its parts.
Full discussion and description by selection committees [Annual Awards 2015 from SEAA: MS-Word document downloads to view or print]