Actually existing Chinese matriarchy

The essays in this volume present contemporary anthropological perspectives on Chinese kinship, its historical complexity and its modern metamorphoses. The collection draws particular attention to the reverberations of larger socio-cultural and politico-economic processes in the formation of sociality, intimate relations, family histories, reproductive strategies and gender relations – and vice-versa. Drawing on a wealth of ethnographic material from the late imperial period and from contemporary Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, from northern and southern regions as well as from rural and urban settings, the volume provides unique insights into the historical and spatial diversities of the Chinese kinship experience. This emphasis on diversity challenges the classic ‘lineage paradigm’ of Chinese kinship and establishes a dialogue with contemporary anthropological debates about human kinship reflecting on the emergence of radically new family formations in the Euro-American context..

Quantum-Dot Cascade Laser: Proposal for an Ultra-Low-Threshold Semiconductor Laser

We propose a quantum-dot version of the quantum-well cascade laser of Faist et al. [Science {\bf 264}, 553 (1994)]. The elimination of single phonon decays by the three-dimensional confinement implies a several order-of-magnitude reduction in the threshold current. The requirements on dot size (10-20nm) and on dot density and uniformity [one coupled pair of dots per (180nm)^3 with 5% nonuniformity] are close to current technology.Comment: 8 pages, REVTEX 3.0, 3 compressed postscript figure

What are we comparing China with?

In considering the challenges faced by researchers in China, it may be useful to take a comparative perspective. In this posting, I discuss a recent project that involved carrying out fieldwork both in rural Heilongjiang and in rural Oklahoma. The comparison reminds us, among other things, that the methodological ‘advantages’ and ‘disadvantages’ of a given field site may generate unexpected consequences – both good and bad – for research, writes Charles Stafford

Being careful what you wish for: the case of happiness in China

This article takes ethnographic material from rural China and Taiwan and relates it to recent theories and findings in the psychology and economics of happiness. In brief, psychologists suggest that humans are not on the whole very good at “affective forecasting,” that is, at predicting their own emotions; this is consequential when, for example, they pursue money in order to be happy—not realizing that having more money will probably not, in fact, make them happier. Drawing on ethnographic findings, I suggest that people in China and Taiwan are often, in fact, as concerned with predicting the emotions of others as in predicting their own emotions. I then consider this in relation to Chinese family projects where the pursuit of wealth—“for family happiness”—appears to be a shared goal, as well as considering families in which this shared goal has to some extent, and sometimes for very different reasons, been lost