Comparison against theory, context without concept

Comment on van der Veer, Peter. 2016. The value of comparison. Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Welcoming dangerous benefactors: incense, gods and hospitality in north-eastern Taiwan

Chinese festival ritual offers an extreme case of hospitality to outsider benefactors, to gods. They are invited outsiders. Their host is a territorial community of households represented by their divinely selected master of the god’s incense burner. Mediation to communicate with and separate from powerful guests is a courting of great power and avoiding its danger. Their welcome poses the danger of offence. To these points I add other sides and counterparts to rites of hospitality, such as rites of charitable feeding. I begin by arguing that the dangers of hospitality suggested by others in this volume are applicable in this case. Finally, I suggest how the terms in which I analyse these Chinese rites are applicable to other orders of hospitality

Implicit comparisons, or why it is inevitable to study China in comparative perspective

Methodological nationalism and the Sino-centrism of Chinese studies stand in the way of sustained comparisons in the study of China. But the supposed singularity of China either relies on implicit comparisons, or on the rejection of comparability. Comparison is a necessity, if only because there are so many contradictory claims to define ‘China’ and what should be part of it. Concepts such as society, empire, and civilization, as well as their substantialization (as in ‘Chinese society’), always rely on implicit comparisons that are accepted as shared fictions. We point to the effects of concealing comparative structures, with examples of Chinese social scientists defining native Chinese concepts; and we discuss the argumentative and political effects of revealing underlying comparisons. On this basis, we argue, it is inevitable to study China in comparative perspective

Tales of Territoriality

AbstractTerritorial place is the most open and inclusive of places. At the same scale the terrifying abstractions of deterritorialisation can be seen to be a negotiated stand-off between different territorialisations. In other words, the deterritorialisation thesis of Deleuze and Guattari, the state project thesis of James Scott, and the dislocation thesis of postmodernists need severe modification. That modification is carried out by ethnography and local history, here by a case study of a Chinese village that is in the process of being urbanised. What is revealed when this is done is that so-called deterritorialisation is a pair of territorialisations, of state projects and of capitalist ribbon development and the nodes of its economic institutions and functions. At this scale they are brought into negotiation with reappropriations of territorial place by local actors.RésuméLe territoire est le plus ouvert et le plus inclusif de tous les lieux. À cette échelle les redoutables abstractions que représente la déterritorialisation peuvent être vues comme un compromis entre différentes formes de territorialisation. En d’autres termes, les thèses de Deleuze et Guattari, de James Scott et des postmodernes, qui mettent l’accent sur la dislocation, doivent être révisées. Cette tâche incombe à l’ethnographie et à l’histoire locale. Dans cet article, une étude de cas sur un village chinois en voie d’urbanisation fait ressortir que la soi-disant déterritorialisation est en fait le résultat de deux territorialisations : celle qui relève du programme de l’État et celle qui s’appuie sur une frange capitaliste de développement dont les points nodaux constituent les institutions économiques et leurs fonctions. À ce niveau, la négociation s’impose avec la réappropriation par les acteurs locaux du territoire

Authoritarianism in the Living Room: Everyday Disciplines, Senses, and Morality in Taiwan’s Military Villages

With the nationalist government – Kuomintang (KMT) – retreating from mainland China in 1949, some 600,000 military personnel relocated to Taiwan. The military seized former Japanese colonial properties and built its own settlements, establishing temporary military dependents’ villages called juancun (眷村). When the prospect of counter-attacking the mainland vanished, the KMT had to face the reality of settling permanently in Taiwan. How, then, did the KMT’s authoritarian power enter the everyday lives of its own support group? In this article I will focus on the coercive elements of KMT authoritarianism, which permeated these military villages in Taiwan. I will look at the coercive mechanisms through the analytical lens of Foucauldian discipline. I argue that disciplinary techniques such as surveillance, disciplining of the body and the senses, as well as the creation of morality regimes played an important role in the cooptation of village residents into KMT authoritarianism by normalising and naturalising it