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Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS)
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Andrew Kipnis, MA, PhD (North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Senior Fellow, Contemporary China Centre, Department of Anthropology

Email: andrew.kipnis@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

Andrew Kipnis head and shoulders
I am currently working on two projects. The first is called "Regimes of Suzhi: Discipline, Governance and Social Reproduction in Contemporary China." In this project I examine education reform as a lens onto broad processes of governing and social and cultural change. The second project is in the planning stages and involves a comparative study of urban citizenship in different types of rapidly urbanizing areas in China. Finally, I have just completed a book on the implications for anthropological theory of issues that arise in the governing of socialist states.

Research Interests

Anthropology of governing; postsocialism and postsocialist societies; anthropology of education; processes of subjectification; kinship and gender; language and culture; China; East Asia; USA.

Key Publications

  • China and Postsocialist Anthropology: Theorizing Power and Society after Communism. Norwalk, CT: Eastbridge Books, 2008.
  • 'Audit Cultures: Neoliberal governmentality, socialist legacy or technologies of governing?' American Ethnologist, 2008 (May).
  • "Neoliberalism Reified: Suzhi Discourse and Tropes of Neoliberalism in the PRC" Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13:383-399, 2007.
  • 'Suzhi: a Keyword Approach', China Quarterly, 186: 295-313, 2006.
  • 'The disturbing educational discipline of peasants', The China Journal, 46, 1-24, 2001.
  • Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self and Subculture in a North China Village, Duke University Press, Durham, 1997.
  • '"Face": an adaptable discourse of social surfaces', Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, 3(1), 119-148, 1995.

Dr Kipnis' Journal Articles