The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies

Jade and Guanxi in China

Henrik Kloppenborg Møller — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This article discusses how the gemstone jade mediates guanxi (‘personal relationships’), and how guanxi mediates jade trade in China. Outlining some affective, spiritual, moral and somatic meanings and efficacies of jade, especially as a gift, the article first discusses how jade materialities, cultural history and ontology influence human interactions with, and through, jade in contemporary China. Secondly, the article presents some more economically instrumental investments in, and exchanges of, jade and discusses why and how a national anti-corruption campaign engendered fluctuations in Chinese jade markets. Finally, the article discusses how guanxi ideally forges personal trust that facilitates transactions of jade, even though some younger jade traders consider guanxi insincere. Studies of guanxi in China’s reform era have conventionally given analytical primacy to how social relationships structure and give meaning to material exchanges. In contrast, this article argues that jade itself can be a catalyst for social relationships that span affect and instrumentality. Combining object–oriented, ontological and institutionalist approaches, the article conceptualises the outlined relations between jade and guanxi as material–social congruity and contingency in the Chinese context.

Resistance and Suffering

Frederik Schröer — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This article traces forms of resistance in the early Tibetan diaspora (c. 1959–79) in India as both political and emotional practices. It thereby seeks to make productive recent insights of research into the history of emotions for the study of migration and diaspora in general and Tibetan exile in particular. It zooms in on resistance and suffering as key concepts of Tibetan diasporic public discourse, both constituting complex semantic networks that entangle elements from Tibetan and Buddhist heritage as well as the refugees’ historical experiences. The article demonstrates the centrality of emotions to exilic morality and moral renegotiations, by probing into their historical effectivity and change. Furthermore, it will show how these concepts and practices are temporalised. This will uncover the ways in which key concepts such as resistance and suffering establish and negotiate multiple temporal relations to diverse pasts, presents and futures.

Research Note: The New Role of a Central Asian Diaspora

Vera Skvirskaja — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

One of the common features of post-Soviet Central Asian diapora is its close connection to the homeland (the independent countries of the former Soviet Central Asia) manifested in various economic ties, including investments into kinship networks and business ventures. This research note discusses the transnational Bukharan Jewish diaspora and its links to Uzbekistan that do not fit into this general pattern. Drawing on the history of Bukharan Jews as a ‘go-between’ minority at the time of Russia colonisation of Central Asia in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, it investigates the ways in which this structural role has been actualised after the collapse of the USSR and mass emigration of the Bukharan Jews from Central Asia. While the Bukharan Jewish diaspora do not seem to establish new economic lniks to Uzbekstan, the Bukharan Jewish community ogranisaitons strive to become a recognised player in the field of people’s diplomacy.

Mona Chettri and Michael Eilenberg (eds.), Development Zones in Asian Borderlands, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. 284 pp, with illustrations. ISBN 9789463726238

Swargajyoti Gohain — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Lena Kaufmann, Rural-Urban Migration and Agro-Technological Change in Post-Reform China. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. 306 pp. ISBN 9789463729734

Jørgen Delman — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000