Gordon Mathews

On the Referee System as a Barrier to Global Anthropology

In the present paper, I first discuss the lack of a truly global anthropology in the world today and consider why such a world anthropology does not exist. I then offer a more personal account, based on my experience as an editor of an international journal attempting, to some extent, to counter the hegemony of the American anthropological core. Finally, I look at the referee system and argue that, for all its benefits, it nonetheless serves to prevent the emergence of a global anthropology. The major questions raised in this paper are how, in an anthropological world riven by a huge gap between the core and periphery, as well as by different national schools of anthropology, can refereeing of journal articles take place in a fair and balanced way; and, if it cannot take place, what does this mean about the nature and future of anthropology as a discipline?

Happiness and the Pursuit of a Life Worth Living: An Anthropological Approach

The study of happiness, as presented in most chapters of this book is statistical. The researcher asks respondents how happy they are, or how satisfied with their lives they are, and compiles their answers statistically, to offer a universal measure that can be used to compare people of different societies, as well as different social classes, genders, and ages, as to happiness. These statistical findings have, no doubt, a broad accuracy. At a subtler level, however, their accuracy is arguable.

Taking Copies from China Past Customs: Routines, Risks, and the Possibility of Catastrophe

Abstract This paper seeks to add to our understanding of “low-end globalization” by exploring the processes through which copy goods are transported from China to various African countries. It begins by discussing low-end globalization and high-end globalization, different forms of globalization involving different forms of regulation and morality. It then considers copies, knock-offs, and contraband and their distinctions, and discusses African logistics agents in south China, and their major concerns in their work. It then examines the specific issue of how to get copies past customs in China. It then explores corruption, particularly in Kenya and Nigeria, and how this serves as an ongoing burden as well as aid for traders and logistics agents. Finally, it returns to the issue of copies—within the context of low-end globalization, copies may represent something beneficial to many of those who consume them, as a cheaper alternative to the goods of Global-North luxury that they cannot afford.

Asylum Seekers in Hong Kong: The Paradoxes of Lives Lived on Hold

This paper discusses the global crisis of asylum, with developing-world peoples clamoring to be admitted to stable and wealthy developed-world societies, and illustrates this crisis through the case of Hong Kong, where I have been teaching asylum seekers for the past 6 years. Hong Kong’s asylum-seeker population is relatively small: there are 8,000–10,000 from South Asia and Africa who have come to Hong Kong to have their cases decided by the UNHCR or by the Hong Kong government, a process that may take 6 or more years. Many asylum seekers have come to Hong Kong not to escape political persecution, but to try to make a better living than they could in their home countries. Asylum seekers are legally forbidden to work in Hong Kong, but most work anyway, because under Hong Kong law, they are difficult to apprehend and prosecute. The ironic situation this creates is that those asylum seekers who illegally work are physically and psychologically better off than those who do not work, obeying the law. The former, once their cases are rejected, as almost all cases are rejected in Hong Kong, will go home with a nest egg, while the latter, who are more likely to be genuine in their claims, gain nothing and only interminably wait, while living with the fear of being returned home to face possible imprisonment or death.

Understanding Japanese society through life after death

Abstract In this article based on extensive ethnographic interviewing of eighty-six Japanese adults, I analyze the different ways in which they understand life after death, and consider the societal implications of their views. I examine senses of life after death as based in communion with departed family members as linked to practices of ancestor veneration and ideologies of Japaneseness. I consider heaven/hell or reincarnation as linked, through the idea of impartial judgment of the individual, to meritocracy and the examination system. I examine agnosticism and relativism in senses of life after death as linked to the idea that individual freedom of choice may exist in the next world if not necessarily within the constraints of this Japanese world. I examine disbelief in any realm beyond the grave, and the symbolic immortality pursued through ‘leaving something behind’, whether ones creative works, ones children, or ones return to nature, with all the societal implications these different pursuits hold. This articles analysis demonstrates, through its ethnographic exploration of senses of life after death, the linkages between realms of imagination in todays Japan and the different potentially emerging social orders of tomorrows Japan.

Why Anthropologists Don’t Reach the Public: A Rumination on Books of Thomas Hylland Eriksen

ABSTRACT I have been asked in this essay to review two recent books of Thomas Hylland Eriksen and to place them in the context of contemporary debates in anthropology. The first two sections of this review essay discuss the recent Eriksen book Overheating, and the co-edited book Identity Destabilised, outlining the books’ core arguments. Bracketing these reviews, the essay examines the larger issue of anthropologists and the general public. It asks, now that many anthropologists have realised the importance of reaching a larger audience, why are they not being more widely read? It considers various reasons for this, and suggests that since the most fundamental ideas of the discipline have been superseded by more sophisticated and diverse modes of analysis, anthropological explications of the world may no longer have much appeal to a larger audience.

Life After Death/Life Before Death and Their Linkages: The United States, Japan, and China

This chapter, based on 231 interviews in three societies, explores how people envision what happens after they die in Japan, China, and the United States, and relates these envisionings to how they live their lives. We have found that in the United States life before/after death remains defined by the Christian God in moral guidance, which, whether believed in or not, cannot be escaped; life after death in Japan is defined by its myriad possibilities, a realm of personal choice felt to be lacking in the world before death; and life after death in China is defined by moral loss—the promise of a now-discredited communist paradise that can only be partially replaced by nationalism and senses of familial immortality.

Overcoming the gap between East Asian and American anthropologies

In June 2016, there was a meeting of the Society for East Asian Anthropology in Hong Kong. The Society for East Asian Anthropology is a section of the American Anthropological Association, and the majority of its members are American or American-based anthropologists doing ethnographic research on East Asian topics. At this meeting, a keynote panel made up of well-known East Asian anthropologists from Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea addressed what was termed “overcoming the gap between East Asian and American anthropologies.” I organized this panel; what I meant by this gap was the fact that anthropologists based in East Asia and American anthropologists studying East Asia – many of whom were in the audience of this keynote panel – generally do not communicate with one another much. Why? Why do American anthropologists studying East Asia and anthropologists who live and work in these East Asian countries talk to each other so little, to the extent that they may not even know of one another’s existence? This special issue results from this keynote panel. In the paragraphs that follow, I will briefly outline some of the findings of this panel, and also briefly discuss the articles in this special issue. The most basic reason why this gap exists is that while Japanese anthropologists, many Korean anthropologists, and some Taiwanese anthropologists used to primarily study their own societies, many no longer do, but study other societies, often societies across the globe. Sixty years ago, when Japanese anthropologists primarily studied Japan, and thirty years ago, when Korean anthropologists primarily studied Korea and Taiwanese anthropologists studied Taiwan, foreign anthropologists who studied their societies could read their works, since they were presumably trained to read the language of the society that they did research in. Today, however, when Japanese and Korean anthropologists study societies the world over and write in their own languages, their writings won’t be read by foreign anthropologists – a foreign anthropologist who studies Latin America or Africa or South Asia will be unlikely to be able to read Japanese or Korean or Chinese. In effect, as Japan, Korea, and other East Asian societies have become wealthier, able to support anthropologists studying not just their own societies but the entire world, they are becoming more distant from the anthropological world, since Anglophone anthropologists around the world cannot read them. If anthropologists from these societies write in English, then they may indeed have a global audience of anthropologists, but then, members of their own societies may not be able to read what they write, which may be more important to them.

Religious Pluralism, State and Society in Asia

I approached this book not as a specialist in religion, but as an anthropologist who has casually traveled through Asia and sometimes been surprised at the degree of religious pluralism that can be...

Ecologies of comparison: An ethnography of endangerment in Hong Kong

toward its appropriation, and reification, as part of Vietnam’s national heritage’ (p. 159). Changes in spirit possession rituals parallel these shifts in perspective, especially with the increased emphasis on performance and the reduction of fortune telling and healing, the two aspects of the ritual most likely to be perceived as superstitious. Lastly, she questions the future of Four Palace spirit possession. Will it become a national religion, as some mediums hope? Sadly, it may only exist as an ‘aesthetisised folk performance of spiritual music and dance’ (p. 184), stripped of all its healing functions. In sum, this volume addresses several timely issues and theoretically provocative ideas surrounding relationships between ritual, markets, and modernity. The author has a talent for explaining complex theory in understandable terms, and illustrates her points with fascinating ethnographic examples. By emphasising the fluid and multivocal nature of ritual practice she has managed to convey the glorious unruliness of the Four Palace religion, as well as past and contemporary attempts to control it.