Review

“China’s most prolific published writer of anthropological studies, essays, and histories,…Wang Mingming reverses the perspective of historical anthropologists who, even when they are as enlightened as Marshal Sahlins, still take European civilisation as a template. Wang Mingming takes Chinese civilisation as his template and comments on Sahlins, Norbert Elias, Eric Wolf and many others as he writes the city of Quanzhou into a history of China and its maritime trade….This is a pioneering work of urban and historical anthropology. It is the work of a highly accomplished and refreshingly non-Western anthropologist.” —From the Foreword by Stephan Feuchtwang

From the Inside Flap

Mingming Wang, one of the most prolific anthropologists in China, has produced a work both of long-term historical anthropology and of broad social theory. In it, he traces almost a millennium of history of the southern Chinese city of Quangzhou, a major international trading entrepot in the 13th century that declined to a peripheral regional center by the end of the 19th century.

Mingming Wang is Professor of Anthropology at Peking University. He is also director of the National Center for Anthropological and Ethnological Inquiries located at Central Minzu University in Beijing and chief editor of Chinese Review of Anthropology. He has a Ph.D. from University of London and is author of many articles and books on Chinese anthropology, history, and sociology in both Chinese and English, including Social Anthropology and Sinology (1997, in Chinese), Grassroots Charisma (2001, in English, co-authored with Stephan Feuchtwang), Beyond Rural China (2003, In Chinese), and The West as Other (2007, in Chinese). .He also writes political comments and travelogues.