Periodic Reporting for period 3 - CHINAWHITE (The Reconfiguration of Whiteness in China: Privileges, Precariousness, and Racialized Performances)
Reporting period: 2022-06-01 to 2023-11-30
This research examines the shifting meanings of whiteness in the new historical context of China’s rise and changing power relations between China and major Western countries. It broadens whiteness studies in Western academia and treats China as an emerging site for the global circulation of white privileges and precariousness. The project aims to explore how multiple versions of whiteness are imagined, negotiated, and performed through daily life interactions between multiple groups of white migrants and various institutional and social actors in China. By critically interrogating China’s role in contributing to the fragmentation and reconfiguration of white privileges at the global scale, this research sheds light on the complex ways that white hegemony may reproduce itself, albeit in distorted and contradictory manners, in multiple political, social, and cultural contexts.
The PI has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing and Xi’an among Western English teachers in China. The result is one article published in American Anthropologist and one article accepted for publication in The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. The three postdoctoral researchers each has an article published or accepted by key journals such as Anthropological Quarterly, Ethnicities, and China Information. We organized an online international conference in early December 2020. All team members presented at the conference. We are in the process of editing and publishing two special issues based on nine papers selected from the conference, five of which are written by the team members. We also engage in academic exchanges with scholars from multiple disciplines such as sociology, history, geography, international relations, education, and media studies by organizing and participating in numerous seminars and workshops.
This research contributes to the development of a new theory on critical race studies in China. Existing literature on race and whiteness studies are dominated by a West-centric perspective and there is little consideration of the mediation of specific socio-political and cultural context. We take into consideration the rise of China as a global superpower and changing power relations between China and major Western countries. Our research privileges the role of multiple Chinese actors in redefining and transforming the meanings of whiteness in various social fields. This project will result in three PhD dissertations, one monograph by the PI, and sixteen articles in peer-reviewed academic journals. The team plan to organize three international conferences, publish two special issues and one edited volume.