Panel
Title:
Reflexive Economic Geographies and China Studies: a Dialogue
Organized
by You-tien
Hsing (UC Berkeley)
Panel Description:
What are the promises and dilemma of reflexive geographies, defined as a
collective yet diverse effort of de-naturalizing theory and discipline
production? What is the methodological implication of such promises and
dilemma? How do recent cultural turns of economic geography inspire and set
limits on geographical imagination? If ambiguous, partial and often
contradictory comprehension is the most one can realistically hope for from
reflexive geographies, as concluded by some reflexive geographers, how does
such reflexivity shed lights on the controversies over Area Studies that have
been seen as being too narrow for theory building, and too scattered for
argument making?
China today offers a geographical and historical opportunity for us to examine
these questions, and to experiment with innovative research approaches and
projects. China has been one of the fastest changing societies of a
similar scale, diversity and global aspiration. The reconfiguration of
the relationship between the Chinese state, market and society has posed great
challenges to and generated new interpretations by scholars in social sciences
and humanities. China scholars in and outside of China have established
an expansive research infrastructure that started to redraw the map and
boundaries of China scholarship in the past two-three decades, which also has
significant implications in the policy worlds and discourses. While
China offers research possibilities, the production of China knowledge is
complex and contentious.
At this panel, we hope to initiate a dialogue between reflexive economic
geographers and China geographers. We feel that the second Global
Economic Geography Conference in Beijing provides a meaningful and timely
platform for this exercise. In addition to the larger issue of the
interaction between reflexive economic geography and China studies, we also
hope to talk about something more programmatic, such as research topics
concerning the crossroad of gender/race, culture/economy, and culture/nature in
and of China; the possibilities of balancing between critical commentaries and
grounded ethnographies; the methodologies and strategies of information
gathering, processing, interpretation, and presentation in and of China.
Our panelists are:
Trevor Barnes (University of British Columbia)
Cindy Fan (UCLA)
You-tien Hsing (UC Berkeley)
George C.S. Lin (University of Hong Kong)
Weidong Liu (Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research,
Chinese Academy of Science)
Laurence Ma (Larry: what would you prefer to use as your affiliation?)
James Sidaway (University of Plymouth)