Dear all
Join us for a China Seminar talk at The University of Nottingham on ‘Chinese overseas social organization. Time for a paradigm shift?’ With Dr Karsten Giese
11th November 2014 at 4pm in A18, Si Yuan Building, Jubilee Campus.
The seminar format is:
4.00-5.00 Guest speaker
5.00-5.30 Q&A
Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided on arrival
Title: Chinese overseas social organization. Time for a paradigm shift?
Abstract:
Chinese overseas are organized in tight knit communities based on ethnicity and informal social institutions. Interpersonal networks along shared home areas and economic interests constitute the core of such communities. So far the social organization paradigm in a nutshell. But the latest wave of Chinese migration to Africa challenges this longstanding conception and eventually also the interpretation of comparable historic phenomena.
Based on three waves of qualitative research in Ghana and Senegal I will discuss reasons for the lack of community building and the only rudimentary networking among new Chinese entrepreneurial migrants. I will elaborate that social organization and community building are depending on historically specific sets of socio-economic conditions both within and outside of China, that social institutions are contingent on particular constellations of social actors, and – finally – that the prevailing paradigm of Chinese social organization may have to be put into question.
Bio of Speaker:
Dr. Karsten Giese, Senior research Fellow at the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies and editor of the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, has been studying Chinese migration and issues of socio-economic change in China since the late 1980s. Since 2011 his work has also focused on the interaction of Chinese entrepreneurial migrants and African actors.
The seminars are free and open to the public unless otherwise stated. Admission is on a first-come, first-served basis.
|