Hong Kong Anthropological Society
|
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
30 November
2005
Wednesday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
<>
100
Chatham
Road
South
This talk will focus on the research recounted in Dan Watersˇ¦ recently published book. Up until World War II, Western-Chinese intermarriage was not generally accepted in ˇ§politeˇ¨ society, neither by Europeans nor by Chinese. Today, mixed marriages are common, as Dan Waters himself , with half-a-century of experience, can attest. This lecture will explore questions such as these: In mixed-race marriages, what sort of life styles do couples lead? What kinds of compatibility and communications problems take place? What cuisine do such couples prefer, and how do they bring up their Eurasian children? ?Can such couples overcome cultural obstacles to lead happy lives together, or is such a thing merely an impossible dream?
Dr Dan Waters is past president of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, and the author of Faces of Hong Kong: An Old Handˇ¦s Reflections, and the recently published One Couple, Two Cultures, upon which this talk is based.
THE
DEPARTMENT
OF
ANTHROPOLOGY,
CUHK
AND
THE
HONG
KONG
MUSEUM
OF
HISTORY
PRESENT
2 November
2005
Wednesday
7:
00pm
Hong
Kong
Museum
of
History
Lecture
Hall
Ground
Floor
<>
100
Chatham
Road
South
Taking a close look at a villagerˇ¦s bookkeeping practice, this talk explores how the art of calculating and budgeting (locally known as suanji) is developed in village society. The skill of suanji is intertwined with cultural symbolism in folk accounting, and has to be learned as part of the local culture of reciprocity and moral economy.? This shows that economic agency is part of a more complicated process of social practice and that calculating and budgeting are as much cultural as they are economic.
Yunxiang Yan is a professor of anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles.? He is the author of The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village (1996) and Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999 (2003).? His current research interests include urban consumerism and the impact of cultural globalization on Chinese society.