Fuji Lozada's Fieldnotes

Anthropologist at Davidson College

  • About Fuji
    • My Stuff
    • c.v.
    • Email me
  • Teaching
    • Fall 2017
    • Previously Taught Classes
    • Teaching Style
      • Complex social theory can be said in plain English
      • Social/cultural theory should be relevant
      • Methodology is Important
      • Writing is a form of thinking
        • Writing a strong thesis statement
        • Making an Argument
        • Response Papers
      • Doing your own field-based research is the best way to learn about anthropology
    • Davidson in China
  • Research
    • Projects
    • Abstracts
    • My Work as a Wordle
    • Fieldnotes
      • Ghana
      • Cyberia
      • Youtube Worth Watching
  • Hack College
    • Make the digital work for you
    • Stalking your professors using Outlook
    • Read with an agenda
    • Write a research proposal
    • Outline to make research easier
    • Use theory
    • Write a literature review
    • Structure of an abstract
    • Notes on teaching and learning

Project: Off the Top of the Dome

March 6, 2004 By Fuji

An ethnographic film by Ryan Carvalho (’04), Derek Loh (’04), Mbye Njie (’04), Julie Rowell (’04), and Chelsea Staires (’07) for ANT 372 at Davidson College.

Filed Under: Davidson College, student films

Science, Computers, and Society

January 7, 2003 By Fuji

Analysis of the social impact of computer technology has a particular edge due to the impact of hegemony-reinforcing political discourses on China. Despite the monumental works of China scholars like Needham, the absence of science, like the absence of capitalism, has justified Orientalist actions and attitudes towards China. Both internal (as seen in Maoist rhetoric) and external analysts have argued that Chinese culture itself is inimical to the development of science. For example, Richard Baum writes: “the institutionalization of the ethos of modern scientific rationalism in China is significantly impeded by the contemporary persistence of a number of atavistic cultural traits that have survived the passing of China’s traditional Confucian order” (1982: 1167). Science and technology studies (STS), a discipline that critically examines the social and cultural aspects of science and technology, is uniquely positioned to evaluate such issues in an emerging, postsocialist Chinese modernity.
In the case of China, science and technology, in particular, have been dominant parts of political thought in the history of twentieth century China. As Western imperialists further challenged Chinese sovereignty on the littoral (the areas most affected by contact with foreign people, ideas, and technology), “Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy” became a rallying symbol for reformers and revolutionaries of the early 20th century. The development of Western scientific institutions reflected wider shifts in Chinese society towards a new regime that was ultimately characterized by “scientific socialism.” Science and technology, as a discursive system, is of course a “cultural invention, in the sense that it brings forth a world; it emerges out of particular cultural conditions and in turn helps to create new ones” (Escobar 1994: 211). It is, however, a particularly powerful cultural invention because science and technology naturalizes its epistemological origins. The laboratory (or by extension the factory, the market, and other territorial spaces where scientific and technological knowledge is produced) is portrayed as an “objective space.” These spaces artificially reconfigure natural objects by transforming or making partial versions (reducing), taking it out of context, and controlling the timing of particular occurrences. Knowledge thus produced through the social institutions of science and technology asserts a universalistic applicability that masks the particular cultural conditions of scientists and technologists. People involved with computers and other information technologies can draw upon a universalizing authority seemingly empty of social and cultural particularities. The social and cultural outcomes of the localization of computer technology – such as the increasing stratification of economic and educational opportunities – are then justified as a necessary aspect of modernity.

As a result, I have conducted fieldwork research on technology and popular culture. To study technology, I examined a Hakka cyberspace community, the Hakka Global Network (a listserv), and other Hakka Internet resources illustrated how Hakka all over the world use the internet to shape ideas of what it means to be Hakka in the 1990s. I have continued this line of research through an examination of the computer industry (The Legend Group, aka Lenovo) and “Chinese cyberspace” in Shanghai.

Filed Under: China, Cyberia, Featured, Science

Religion and Politics in China

January 7, 2001 By Fuji

This research started with my Ph.D. dissertation research. Based on extensive fieldwork in rural Guangdong and archival research, I examined how transnational processes shape social life in a local Hakka (a diaspora Chinese ethnic group) Catholic community. With the liberalization of the Chinese economy following the ascension of Deng Xiaoping to power in 1977, Chinese society has dramatically transformed nearly every aspect of everyday life. Many issues, such as the role of transnational religious organizations, continue to be contested both within China and between China and other nations as postsocialist structural adjustments mature. On one level, my research addressed the connection between a local, resurfaced Chinese Catholic Church to the global Church and how Catholicism is practiced under an avowedly atheistic political system that in the past (and to some extent today) has persecuted Catholics. On a more theoretical level, I explored what modernization and globalism mean to Hakka villagers in a remote area of southern China. A multiplicity of transnational processes – diasporic ethnicity, Catholicism, global capitalism, and popular media – converge in the social life of these villagers and are made local through a variety of social mechanisms that I explore throughout my dissertation. This ethnography was published by Stanford University Press in 2001.

Filed Under: Anthropology, China, Featured, Religion

Food, Popular Culture, and Globalization

January 7, 1999 By Fuji

Analysis of food and popular culture reveals much about the cultural ideologies central to very different societies throughout the world and the initimate dynamics of family life. All peoples participate in some fashion and to varying degrees in the production, distribution, and consumption of food. Food culture can also be seen as the most basic of cultural activities — in the transformation of nature (as raw food or natural products) to culture. The cultural variety of what and how people eat — including the religious, political, and economic constraints on food — provide an ideal lens to study other anthropological issues such as cultural concepts of health, beauty, and body image.
To examine the relationship between food and globalization, I did a study of a particular Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Beijing to examine how global capital provides a new medium for local contestations and self-definitions of Chinese childhood in postsocialist China. My focus on KFC’s relations with children in Beijing is mainly warranted by two considerations. First, fast food restaurants like KFC and McDonald’s have had particular success among children in large Chinese urban centers. Children are often the decision makers in determining whether or not an urban family will patronize a KFC restaurant. Moreover, what children eat is a fundamental part of their socialization, and changes in children’s dietary patterns are indicative of changes in their social environment. Second, children’s consumption of both material and cultural goods are becoming a domain of fierce contestation in many parts of the world and among different social groups seeking to implement their particular visions of the future by shaping childhood experiences. As an organizational actor, KFC is a part of the social life of Beijing children, and influences Chinese experiences of childhood through its becoming part of local Beijing life. Before the ethnographic context of KFC in Beijing is set up for analysis, a few remarks should be made on this essay’s theoretical framework.

Filed Under: Anthropology, China, Featured, Food, Globalization

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Eriberto P. Lozada Jr. is a Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies, and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. He is a sociocultural anthropologist who has examined contemporary issues in Chinese society ranging from: religion and politics; food, popular culture and globalization; sports and society issues; and the cultural impact of science and technology. more...

Dept. of Anthropology
Davidson College
Box 6969
Davidson, NC 28035 USA

Fall 2016 Office Hours:
MWF 9:30-10:30am
TR 9:00-10:00am

office: Chambers B12
tel. 704-894-2035
fax. 704-894-2842
erlozada [at] davidson.edu

Past President, Society for East Asian Anthropology

Make the digital work for you

Make the digital work for you

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2017 NMHS Men’s Soccer

2017 NMHS Men’s Soccer

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