Magnus Fiskesjö

Bio: Magnus Fiskesjö is an academic researcher from Cornell University. The author has contributed to research in topic(s): China & Civilization. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 30 publication(s) receiving 251 citation(s).

Rescuing the Empire: Chinese Nation-building in the Twentieth Century

Abstract: This paper takes modern China's dilemma of how to deal with the legacy of its imperial past as the starting point for a discussion of the drawn-out re-creation of China in the twentieth century. The particular focus is on the important role of non-Han ethnic minorities in this process. It is pointed out that the non-recognition and forced assimilation of all such minorities, in favour of a unified citizenship on an imagined European, American or Japanese model, was actually considered as a serious alternative and favoured by many Chinese nation-builders in the wake of the overthrow of the last imperial dynasty in 1911. The article then proceeds to a discussion of why, on the contrary, ethnic minorities should instead have been formally identified and in some cases even actively organised as official minorities, recognised and incorporated into the state structure, as happened after 1949. Based on the formal and symbolic qualities of the constitution of these minorities, it is argued that new China is also a new formulation of the imperial Chinese model, which resurrects the corollary idea of civilisation as a transformative force that requires a primitive, backward periphery as its object.

Participant Intoxication and Self–Other Dynamics in the Wa context

Abstract: Self–other distinctions are always made in a dynamic process of incorporation and exclusion, based on locally produced sociocultural rules constantly redefined in practice. In the present paper, I discuss the formation of Wa identity and xenology through rice beer drinking, a key arena of social interaction governed by intricate rules. The shared drinking of home-made beer not only shapes Wa sociality and invites the ‘participant intoxication’ of anyone who would submit to Wa mores (including foreign ethnographers), but also defines as outsiders those who would refuse to share, including those appalled by the beer's uncleanliness, real or imagined. Rice beer drinking is briefly compared with betel chewing and smoking tobacco, and is also contrasted with commodified Chinese liquor in terms of their use and effect in social interaction and ethnic distinction in the Wa lands at the China–Burma frontier, with special attention to the problem of Wa autonomy.

Mining, history, and the anti-state Wa: the politics of autonomy between Burma and China

Abstract: Historically autonomous and fiercely egalitarian, yet far from isolated and extensively implicated in regional, and global, economies of trade and exchange, the Wa people on the Burma–China frontier stand out in the history of marginal peoples refusing to be marginalized. This article addresses the place of mining in the political history of the Wa area – a key part of what has recently been called the Zomia region, but one which differs from many other cases because of its activist statelessness. The history of the Wa areas is outlined and discussed with reference to larger debates over agency, autonomy, and state formation, with particular attention to mining resources and their relation to Wa politics before the mid twentieth century.

Outlaws, barbarians, slaves: Critical reflections on Agamben’s homo sacer

Abstract: Agamben’s political philosophy of state power as founded on the expulsion of outcasts, who are embraced as key components of the system precisely by virtue of their potential exclusion, strangely omits such cardinal and long-familiar figures of sociopolitical inequality as the slave and the barbarian. These are neglected despite how they, together, stare us in the face from the very same pages in Aristotle from which Agamben derives his theory of bare life, and despite their key historical role in imperial state ideology and in the formation of empires. Agamben instead resurrects the obscure figure of homo sacer , an ancient Roman form of outlaw interpreted as bare life, mainly for the purpose of rethinking and debating citizenship, exclusion, and the ruse of the “rule of law” in the modern Western state form. As a transhistorical-paradigmatic figure it leaves aside not only its obvious counterparts—slaves and barbarians (whose real-life referents, like homo sacer, are also both historical and contemporary)—but also the pre-state and pre-law excommunication of outcasts. In this article I discuss the historical and political anthropology of outcasts and outlaws, slaves, and barbarians, what is obscured by homo sacer, and what this “limit figure” can bring to light.

A Complete Bibliography of Publications in Isis, 2000{2009

Abstract: accademiche [38]. Ada [45]. Adrian [45]. African [56]. Age [39, 49, 61]. Al [23]. Al-Rawi [23]. Aldous [68]. Alex [15]. Allure [46]. America [60, 66]. American [49, 69, 61, 52]. ancienne [25]. Andreas [28]. Angela [42]. Animals [16]. Ann [26]. Anna [19, 47]. Annotated [46]. Annotations [28]. Anti [37]. Anti-Copernican [37]. Antibiotic [64]. Anxiety [51]. Apocalyptic [61]. Archaeology [26]. Ark [36]. Artisan [32]. Asylum [48]. Atri [54]. Audra [65]. Australia [41]. Authorship [15]. Axelle [29].

Zooarchaeology in Complex Societies: Political Economy, Status, and Ideology

Abstract: The zooarchaeology of complex societies provides insights into the interrelated social and economic relationships that people and animals created. I present a synthesis of zooarchaeological research published since the early 1990s that addresses political economy, status distinctions, and the ideological and ritual roles of animals in complex cultures. I address current approaches and applications as well as theoretical shifts in zooarchaeological practice. Research indicates there is great variability across space and time in how past peoples used animals to generate economic surplus, to establish status differentiation within societies, and to create symbolic meaning through sacrifices, offerings, and in feasts. The study of human/animal interactions in complex societies can contribute to fundamental questions of broad relevance regarding political and social life.