Susanne Brandtstädter | University of Cologne (original) (raw)
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Papers by Susanne Brandtstädter
ioe.sinica.edu.tw
Taiwan Journal of Anthropology 2(l):41-67, 2004 Money Plucked from the Sky: Shrimp Farming, Entre... more Taiwan Journal of Anthropology 2(l):41-67, 2004 Money Plucked from the Sky: Shrimp Farming, Entrepreneurship and the Circulation of Know-How in a Fujian Village Susanne Brandtstädter Department of Social Anthropology University of Manchester This article uses Lave and ...
ASEAS, 2023
This commentary responds to Tim Oakes' analysis of infrastructural power by examining the inheren... more This commentary responds to Tim Oakes' analysis of infrastructural power by examining the inherent fragility of mobility infrastructures and their political ramifications. It emphasizes the human element in creating and maintaining these infrastructures, highlighting the intricate interplay of political will, bureaucratic planning, technological know-how, and specialized skills needed for their implementation. The paper contends that the COVID-19 pandemic has starkly demonstrated the vulnerability of mobility infrastructures to rapid collapse. It further explores the concept of infra-politics, referring to subtle acts of resistance within these networks, which significantly disrupt their efficient operation. The Chinese concept of jianghu, representing a metaphorical space of alterity, is introduced to propose that infra-politics might evolve into alternative relational forms, challenging and potentially subverting the dominance of centralized networks.
Irony, Cynicism and the Chinese State, 2015
Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors a... more Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. University of Oslo. Her research has focused on gender and social relatedness, moral economies, modernity and peasant subjectivities, legal knowledge, notions of justice, social and political rights, and local responses to global capitalism. Recent publications include embodiment and new genetic and information technologies. Migration and Identities programme and works on gender race and diversity at the ESRC funded Centre for Research into Socio-Cultural Change (CReSC).
Economy and Society, 2011
Her research has focused on gender and social relatedness, moral economies, modernity and peasant... more Her research has focused on gender and social relatedness, moral economies, modernity and peasant subjectivities, legal knowledge, notions of justice, social and political rights, and local responses to global capitalism. Recent publications include
The China Quarterly, 2009
Anthropological Theory, 2020
Justice understood as a practical principle and virtue has remained an understudied subject in th... more Justice understood as a practical principle and virtue has remained an understudied subject in the anthropology of morality. Moral anthropology has explored the moral or ethical as a space of freedom and creativity, whereas justice has often been associated with rule-following or even the law. In contrast, my paper explores justice as a virtue whose social dynamic can initiate moral change in ordinary life. This virtue, as I understand it, comprises not only a disposition to conform to established norms but also a capacity to reformulate these in the pursuit of social justice. My ethnography of Chinese peasant lawyers’ moral agency suggests that their understanding of justice as an essentially social, rule-governed and outcome-oriented virtue can grant new insights into the dynamics of moral innovation that arise in ordinary life. The peasant lawyers of rural northern China pursue moral change through combining moral reasoning about justice with principled action for justice and the...
Critique of Anthropology, 2010
The following is the first in a series of 'paired' Prickly Polemics that high-light the... more The following is the first in a series of 'paired' Prickly Polemics that high-light the experiential basis of moral reason, and that interrogate the relation between knowing and valuing through reflections on ethno-graphic and biographical experience. Such grounded reasoning has ...
Publikationsansicht. 47723077. Elias in China? : "Civilising process", kinship and cust... more Publikationsansicht. 47723077. Elias in China? : "Civilising process", kinship and customary law in the Chinese countryside (2000). Brandtstädter, Susanne. Details der Publikation. Download, http://edoc.mpg.de/319341. Herausgeber, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology ...
English abstract In contemporary rural China, confusions over the nature of the modern have resul... more English abstract In contemporary rural China, confusions over the nature of the modern have resulted in a «war of words» in local communities, through which nominal peasants re-negotiate the meaning of good and bad citizenship, progress and backwardness, and ...
In Meidao, a fishing village in southern Fujian, south-east China, the monthly income of an avera... more In Meidao, a fishing village in southern Fujian, south-east China, the monthly income of an average family of four in 1994 was around 600 yuan renminbi. 1 In comparison, a wedding that villagers considered'ordinary'or'average'(yibande) would cost the bridegroom's family ...
Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China
The rise of popular politics is among one the most significant social and political developments ... more The rise of popular politics is among one the most significant social and political developments the People’s Republic of China has witnessed in the post-Mao era. People from all walks of life have responded to rising inequalities and the privatization of collective goods with a new quest for justice. Although China has remained a censorial society under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party, state-society relations are being remade by interventions of emergent publics through word and action.
Government and Opposition, 2003
economic unity of the state. Could some other set of policies preserve the Soviet multi-ethnic st... more economic unity of the state. Could some other set of policies preserve the Soviet multi-ethnic state in the age of nationalism and decolonization? One is inclined to answer this question in the negative. It will now be hard to write about the role of ethnicity and nationalism in the Soviet Union without taking this volume into account. The book also sheds light on other aspects of Soviet politics, in particular it provides useful material on the mechanics of Bolshevik decision-making and on the buildup of the terror campaigns of the 1930s. A masterful analysis of governmentled policies of nation-building, the book will also be of interest to students of nationalism in general.
ioe.sinica.edu.tw
Taiwan Journal of Anthropology 2(l):41-67, 2004 Money Plucked from the Sky: Shrimp Farming, Entre... more Taiwan Journal of Anthropology 2(l):41-67, 2004 Money Plucked from the Sky: Shrimp Farming, Entrepreneurship and the Circulation of Know-How in a Fujian Village Susanne Brandtstädter Department of Social Anthropology University of Manchester This article uses Lave and ...
ASEAS, 2023
This commentary responds to Tim Oakes' analysis of infrastructural power by examining the inheren... more This commentary responds to Tim Oakes' analysis of infrastructural power by examining the inherent fragility of mobility infrastructures and their political ramifications. It emphasizes the human element in creating and maintaining these infrastructures, highlighting the intricate interplay of political will, bureaucratic planning, technological know-how, and specialized skills needed for their implementation. The paper contends that the COVID-19 pandemic has starkly demonstrated the vulnerability of mobility infrastructures to rapid collapse. It further explores the concept of infra-politics, referring to subtle acts of resistance within these networks, which significantly disrupt their efficient operation. The Chinese concept of jianghu, representing a metaphorical space of alterity, is introduced to propose that infra-politics might evolve into alternative relational forms, challenging and potentially subverting the dominance of centralized networks.
Irony, Cynicism and the Chinese State, 2015
Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors a... more Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. University of Oslo. Her research has focused on gender and social relatedness, moral economies, modernity and peasant subjectivities, legal knowledge, notions of justice, social and political rights, and local responses to global capitalism. Recent publications include embodiment and new genetic and information technologies. Migration and Identities programme and works on gender race and diversity at the ESRC funded Centre for Research into Socio-Cultural Change (CReSC).
Economy and Society, 2011
Her research has focused on gender and social relatedness, moral economies, modernity and peasant... more Her research has focused on gender and social relatedness, moral economies, modernity and peasant subjectivities, legal knowledge, notions of justice, social and political rights, and local responses to global capitalism. Recent publications include
The China Quarterly, 2009
Anthropological Theory, 2020
Justice understood as a practical principle and virtue has remained an understudied subject in th... more Justice understood as a practical principle and virtue has remained an understudied subject in the anthropology of morality. Moral anthropology has explored the moral or ethical as a space of freedom and creativity, whereas justice has often been associated with rule-following or even the law. In contrast, my paper explores justice as a virtue whose social dynamic can initiate moral change in ordinary life. This virtue, as I understand it, comprises not only a disposition to conform to established norms but also a capacity to reformulate these in the pursuit of social justice. My ethnography of Chinese peasant lawyers’ moral agency suggests that their understanding of justice as an essentially social, rule-governed and outcome-oriented virtue can grant new insights into the dynamics of moral innovation that arise in ordinary life. The peasant lawyers of rural northern China pursue moral change through combining moral reasoning about justice with principled action for justice and the...
Critique of Anthropology, 2010
The following is the first in a series of 'paired' Prickly Polemics that high-light the... more The following is the first in a series of 'paired' Prickly Polemics that high-light the experiential basis of moral reason, and that interrogate the relation between knowing and valuing through reflections on ethno-graphic and biographical experience. Such grounded reasoning has ...
Publikationsansicht. 47723077. Elias in China? : "Civilising process", kinship and cust... more Publikationsansicht. 47723077. Elias in China? : "Civilising process", kinship and customary law in the Chinese countryside (2000). Brandtstädter, Susanne. Details der Publikation. Download, http://edoc.mpg.de/319341. Herausgeber, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology ...
English abstract In contemporary rural China, confusions over the nature of the modern have resul... more English abstract In contemporary rural China, confusions over the nature of the modern have resulted in a «war of words» in local communities, through which nominal peasants re-negotiate the meaning of good and bad citizenship, progress and backwardness, and ...
In Meidao, a fishing village in southern Fujian, south-east China, the monthly income of an avera... more In Meidao, a fishing village in southern Fujian, south-east China, the monthly income of an average family of four in 1994 was around 600 yuan renminbi. 1 In comparison, a wedding that villagers considered'ordinary'or'average'(yibande) would cost the bridegroom's family ...
Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China
The rise of popular politics is among one the most significant social and political developments ... more The rise of popular politics is among one the most significant social and political developments the People’s Republic of China has witnessed in the post-Mao era. People from all walks of life have responded to rising inequalities and the privatization of collective goods with a new quest for justice. Although China has remained a censorial society under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party, state-society relations are being remade by interventions of emergent publics through word and action.
Government and Opposition, 2003
economic unity of the state. Could some other set of policies preserve the Soviet multi-ethnic st... more economic unity of the state. Could some other set of policies preserve the Soviet multi-ethnic state in the age of nationalism and decolonization? One is inclined to answer this question in the negative. It will now be hard to write about the role of ethnicity and nationalism in the Soviet Union without taking this volume into account. The book also sheds light on other aspects of Soviet politics, in particular it provides useful material on the mechanics of Bolshevik decision-making and on the buildup of the terror campaigns of the 1930s. A masterful analysis of governmentled policies of nation-building, the book will also be of interest to students of nationalism in general.
NOW published in Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China (ed., with Hans... more NOW published in Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China (ed., with Hans Steinmüller). Routledge 2017
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