The Worldly Engagement of Maritime South China: A Strategic Cultural Mapping
POSTPONED: This event was postponed. Thank you for your understanding.
South China has long engaged with the circulation of goods, people, and ideas along the Maritime Silk Road. These movements over the centuries have bridged continents from Asia to Africa. In this talk, Helen F. Siu discusses historical layers of economic and cultural resources, multi-ethnic identities in trading hubs, and the strategic footprints of mobile populations between south China and the inter-Asian world. She also discusses China’s ambitious Belt and Road initiative, which stresses the building of hardware and infrastructure but also requires areas of development to support China’s ambitious global march—not without potential contestations.
Meet the speaker
Helen F. Siu is a professor of anthropology and former chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. She has conducted decades of fieldwork in Southern China, exploring agrarian change and the nature of the socialist state. Lately, she has explored rural-urban interface in China, inter-Asian connections, popular music, and the new…
