Allen Chun – författare

Unstructuring Chinese Society is a culmination of long term field work and archival research that challenges existing theories of social organisation and cultural change. The book makes new sense of historical contradictions, political conflicts and deep seated social transformations that have underlined the experience of colonial rule and the practices of local institutions in Hong Kong over the past century. By focusing on the ongoing interactions of discourse, practices and global-local relations in cultural terms, Unstructuring Chinese Society puts forth a fresh perspective in the field of historical anthropology, while addressing ongoing critical concerns in postcolonial theory and our understanding of tradition and modernity.

Examining the cultural, political, economic, technological and institutional aspects of popular music throughout Asia, this book is the first comprehensive analysis of Asian popular music and its cultural industries. Concentrating on the development of popular culture in its local socio-political context, the volume highlights how local appropriations of the pop music genre play an active rather than reactive role in manipulating global cultural and capital flows.Broad in geographical sweep and rich in contemporary examples, this work will appeal to those interested in Asian popular culture from a variety of perspectives including, political economy, anthropology, communication studies, media studies and ethnomusicology.

Examining the cultural, political, economic, technological and institutional aspects of popular music throughout Asia, this book is the first comprehensive analysis of Asian popular music and its cultural industries. Concentrating on the development of popular culture in its local socio-political context, the volume highlights how local appropriations of the pop music genre play an active rather than reactive role in manipulating global cultural and capital flows.Broad in geographical sweep and rich in contemporary examples, this work will appeal to those interested in Asian popular culture from a variety of perspectives including, political economy, anthropology, communication studies, media studies and ethnomusicology.

Critiques the idea of a Chinese cultural identity and argues that such identities are instead determined by geopolitical and economic forces.Forget Chineseness provides a critical interpretation of not only discourses of Chinese identity-Chineseness-but also of how they have reflected differences between "Chinese" societies, such as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, People's Republic of China, Singapore, and communities overseas. Allen Chun asserts that while identity does have meaning in cultural, representational terms, it is more importantly a product of its embeddedness in specific entanglements of modernity, colonialism, nation-state formation, and globalization. By articulating these processes underlying institutional practices in relation to public mindsets, it is possible to explain various epistemic moments that form the basis for their sociopolitical transformation.From a broader perspective, this should have salient ramifications for prevailing discussions of identity politics. The concept of identity has not only been predicated on flawed notions of ethnicity and culture in the social sciences but it has also been acutely exacerbated by polarizing assumptions that drive our understanding of identity politics.

Critiques the idea of a Chinese cultural identity and argues that such identities are instead determined by geopolitical and economic forces.Forget Chineseness provides a critical interpretation of not only discourses of Chinese identity-Chineseness-but also of how they have reflected differences between "Chinese" societies, such as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, People's Republic of China, Singapore, and communities overseas. Allen Chun asserts that while identity does have meaning in cultural, representational terms, it is more importantly a product of its embeddedness in specific entanglements of modernity, colonialism, nation-state formation, and globalization. By articulating these processes underlying institutional practices in relation to public mindsets, it is possible to explain various epistemic moments that form the basis for their sociopolitical transformation.From a broader perspective, this should have salient ramifications for prevailing discussions of identity politics. The concept of identity has not only been predicated on flawed notions of ethnicity and culture in the social sciences but it has also been acutely exacerbated by polarizing assumptions that drive our understanding of identity politics.

On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification explores the discursive spaces of our speaking position, or what has routinely been referred to in the literature as the poetics and politics of writing culture. At issue here are its problematic underlying notions of cultural identity, authorial subjectivity and postcolonial critique. Contrary to the widespread assumption that cultural studies and the social sciences share a common discourse of culture and society, Allen Chun argues that 'modern' disciplinary practices and axioms have in fact produced inherently incompatible theories. Anthropology's ethical relativism has also created obstacles for a critical theory of culture and society.

The effects of globalization have led to accentuated social inequality in most first-world countries, above all the U.S. and U.K. International trade and capital flows have tended to redistribute income in ways that aggravate inequality in advanced industrialized nations where relative income levels of the salaried middle class and the working class are being eroded, resulting in a downward mobility of these classes. At the same time, unwaged forms of labor, including forced labor and slavery, in poorer regions more and more replace wage labor in developed countries. Informed by an anthropological, humanistic perspective, the contributors in this provocative volume offer critical analyses and alternative visions.

This book began as a year-long ethnography of a school in Taiwan in 1991 then evolved more into a historical sociology of national formation and its cultural mindset. There are clear ramifications also for a comparative study of the cultural politics of other Chinese speaking or Asian societies and their histories.