Xin Liu

Anthropology at Berkeley

Anthropology Faculty

Xin Liu
Social Cultural Anthropology
301 Kroeber Hall
510.642.0705
xinliu@berkeley.edu

Office Hours: W 3-6

Research Interests

My primary research interests concern the condition of life in the contemporary world, with reference to (East) Asia and China in particular. Specifically, I hope to understand the effects of transnational capital and capitalism in the transformation of (East) Asian societies, past or present. In terms of research strategy and methodology, I emphasize the significance of ethnographic fieldwork, however, not only as a major means of inquiry but also as a possible theoretical site for further discussions on the nature of anthropological knowledge.

A few topics of my current interests: the Chinese modernizing process and its relevance to the discussion of modernity in anthropology; the problem of agency and/or subjectivity in social theory; the practice of everyday (business) life (in China and other Asian societies); the urban question in and of China; time, memory and different ways of being in history; the nature of narrative and its function in the configuration of our senses of self and belonging; the problem of media and imagery; the ideology of science in East Asia and, in particular, in today's China; etc.

2005. Ziwo de Taxing (The Otherness of Self in Chinese; trans. S. Chang). Shanghai: Shanghai Century Press.

2004. ed. New Reflections on Anthropological Studies of (greater) China. China Research Monograph (58), the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley.

2002. The Otherness of Self: A Genealogy of Self in Contemporary China. University of Michigan Press.

2000. In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Reform Rural China. University of California Press.


Anthropology 250X-5: Reason & Religion Syllabi *

Regular Faculty

Emeritus Faculty

Visiting Faculty

Affiliated Faculty/Researchers

Visiting Scholars

Office Hours