The Flowing Materiality of Crystal: A Global Commodity Chain of Fengshui Objects From Brazil, China to Taiwan

After the 1990s, one type of fengshui object became extremely popular in Taiwan: crystals. A diversity of crystal products, including crystal points, crystal balls, and amethyst geodes, became hot commodities and earned their fengshui meanings. However, these fengshui objects did not exist in Taiwan before the 1990s, and they are all from Latin America, Africa, India or other foreign sources. Inspired by Appadurai’s “the social life of things” (1986) and Kopytoff’s “the biography of things (1986)”. This thesis will reveal the cultural and historical meaning of the Taiwanese crystal fengshui objects embedded in a network of global commodity chains. First, the decline of Taiwan’s jewelry processing industry led the businessmen to turn to invest in China and search for potentially beneficial minerals from the globe. For example, the buyers purchased crystal materials in Brazil, processed them in China, and sold them in Taiwan. At the same time, this global commodity chain turned Taiwan’s role from jewelry processing factories to jewelry consumption. Second, it indicates the modernization of Taiwan’s society. Modern scientific education has drawn scientific conceptions into Taiwanese folk cosmology. This challenges the traditional concept of qi and force Taiwanese fengshui consultants to reinterpret the core concept of their professional knowledge and absorb crystals into their materials. In summary, the crystal fengshui commodities not only indicate globalization’s impacts on Taiwanese folk beliefs, they also embody the adapting process of “glocalization”

“It’s not a vacation, it’s your life”. Privileged identities, ageing experiences, and migration projects of British retirees on the coasts of Spain

Programa de Doctorat en Societat i Cultura: Antropologia Social i Cultural[eng] This doctoral thesis investigates identity, ageing, and migration through an intersectional approach to retirement and later life migration from the UK to Spain. Through an in-depth exploration of the experiences of British expatriate retirees in Costa del Sol, Andalusia, and Costa Brava, Catalonia, Spain, the thesis analyzes the generation of experiences between privilege, vulnerability, and precarity, and its contingent effects on the construction of these identity processes. The trend of British retirees moving to Spain has a long-standing history and has been studied in Anthropology, Gerontology, migration studies, and more. Yet, in the period between 2019 and 2020, when this research took place, the confluence of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic reinvigorated the field of study. Said geopolitical and sociosanitary shifts put the experiences and identities of British expatriate retirees in question; altering the material foundations upon which their privileged migration life projects were constructed. Like this, creating a unique context where privilege and uncertainty meet in the crux of intersecting experiences of migration and ageing. Through the latter, the thesis contributes to anthropological debates on the contextualized construction of identities between the self and society; on Global North ageing discourses and its’ effects on later life identity projects; and questions the use of migration categories on the ground. Since identity, ageing and migration are polysemic concepts that have mutated over time with their subsequent analytical repercussions, this thesis adopts an intersectional lens that recognizes and develops the debates these terms are involved in, as well as captures the everyday connections between micro experiences and macro structures that evidence relationships of power and the perpetuation of inequalities. This involves the study of labels and their adjacent prejudices and stigmas, exposing how these travel from one sociocultural context to another, while also exploring how feelings of belonging are built abroad. By examining through the seemingly privileged retirement migration experiences of informants, this doctoral thesis exposes the intricacies between privilege, vulnerability, dependence, and precarity through the minutiae of the quotidian, contributing to wider empirical and conceptual debates regarding identity, ageing, and migration.[spa] Esta tesis doctoral investiga la identidad, el envejecimiento y la migración a través de un enfoque interseccional de la gerontomigración y la migración en etapas vitales tardías des del Reino Unido a España. Al explorar en profundidad las experiencias de jubilados expatriados británicos en la Costa del Sol y la Costa Brava, España, esta tesis analiza la generación de experiencias entre el privilegio, la vulnerabilidad, y la precariedad, y sus efectos contingentes sobre la construcción de estos procesos identitarios. El fenómeno de jubilados británicos que migran a España tiene una larga historia y se ha estudiado en antropología, gerontología, estudios de migración y más. No obstante, en el período entre 2019 y 2020 cuando se llevó a cabo esta investigación, la confluencia del Brexit y la pandemia de COVID-19 revitalizó el campo de estudio. Dichos cambios geopolíticos y sociosanitarios cuestionan las experiencias e identidades de los jubilados expatriados británicos; alterando los cimientos materiales sobre los que se construyeron sus privilegiados proyectos de vida migratoria. Así, creando un contexto único donde el privilegio y la incertidumbre se encuentran en la intersección de experiencias migratorias y de envejecimiento. A través de esto último, la tesis contribuye a debates antropológicos sobre la construcción contextualizada de identidades entre el yo y la sociedad; sobre los discursos acerca del envejecimiento del Norte Global y sus efectos en los proyectos identitarios en la vejez; y cuestiona los usos de las categorías migratorias tradicionales sobre el terreno. Dado que la identidad, el envejecimiento y la migración son conceptos polisémicos que han mutado a lo largo del tiempo, con sus subsecuentes repercusiones analíticas, esta investigación adopta una aproximación interseccional que reconoce y desarrolla los debates en los que están involucrados estos términos, y, asimismo, también capturando las conexiones entre las micro experiencias y las macroestructuras que evidencian las relaciones de poder y la perpetuación de desigualdades. Esto implica el estudio de etiquetas y sus prejuicios y estigmas adyacentes, apuntando cómo éstos transitan de un contexto sociocultural a otro, además de explorar cómo se construyen los sentimientos de pertenencia en el extranjero. Al examinar las experiencias migratorias de jubilación aparentemente privilegiadas de los informantes, esta tesis doctoral expone las complejidades entre el privilegio, la vulnerabilidad, la dependencia y la precariedad a través de las minucias de lo cotidiano. Así contribuyendo a debates empíricos y conceptuales más amplios en torno a la identidad, el envejecimiento y la migración