The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Today's News
Friday, May 9, 2008
Unexplained 'Difficulties' Force Postponement of Scholarly Conference in
China
By DAVID GLENN
One day after warning its members that a postponement was likely, the
International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences made
the bad news official on Thursday: Its July conference in Kunming,
China, will not take place.
More than 6,000 scholars had registered to attend the meeting, and the
abrupt and unexplained cancellation has left many anthropologists
speculating about possible interference by the Chinese government.
The association's international executive board received two messages
this week from its Chinese affiliate that referred to "complex
difficulties" in carrying out the conference, but the messages did not
specify what those difficulties are.
On blogs and e-mail lists on Thursday, anthropologists interpreted those
vague phrases to mean that Chinese authorities have forced a
postponement because they were nervous about a conference that would
touch on sensitive topics of ethnic diversity only months after an
uprising in Tibet and weeks before the Summer Olympics, in Beijing.
"We've been working on this meeting for five full years," said Faye V.
Harrison, a professor of anthropology and African American studies at
the University of Florida, in an interview on Thursday. "This has been
a shock—demoralizing, disheartening."
Ms. Harrison, who is a member of the association's international
executive board, said that the conference might be postponed for a full
year. She said it was possible that the conference would be moved
outside of China, but she hopes to avoid that outcome.
The Chronicle attempted to contact four Chinese scholars who have been
involved in the conference's planning, but none immediately replied on
Thursday.
Search for a Reason
Emily E. Wilcox, a graduate student at the University of California at
Berkeley who is conducting research in Beijing and who had been
scheduled to speak at the conference, wrote in an e-mail message to The
Chronicle that she had spoken with Du Fachun, a professor at the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who is a member of the conference's
organizing committee. When she asked about the reason for the
postponement, Mr. Du replied that, if she thought about it, she could
surely guess why. He then assured her it had nothing to do with the
quality of the organizing committee's work thus far, she said.
Ms. Wilcox said she took that to mean that "the Chinese government is
taking every precaution to avoid problems leading up to the Olympics,
and this is just one among a long list of compromises that have been
made to this end."
The conference's program included papers on such potentially sensitive
topics as "Marxist Theory About Ethno-National Issues and Practice" and
"Bilateral Exchanges Between Tibetan and Chinese Culture."
Ms. Wilcox added, however, that the Chinese government generally
tolerates scholarly discussions of ethnic diversity and social justice.
She recently attended a small conference in Beijing that dealt with
ethnic tensions in China and Canada, and her perception was that
opinions were freely expressed. Only the large scale and prominence of
the planned Kunming conference, she speculated, led to the official
pressures that forced its postponement.
Gregory Guldin, a professor of anthropology at Pacific Lutheran
University who has written a history of anthropology in China, said in
an interview that social scientists there have far more liberty than
they did two decades ago. He said that the conference's postponement is
unfortunate, but he hoped that Chinese anthropologists themselves would
not "come under opprobrium from people who are willing to be
supercritical of China or unfairly critical of China."
Ms. Harrison was more bluntly critical of the Chinese government's
apparent action, but she, too, emphasized that scholars there were not
at fault.
"It's important not to conflate them with the government," she said.
"They have in earnest worked very hard. We want to promote cooperation,
and we want them to be part of the international community of
anthropologists."
The international association was formed at a meeting in Brussels in
1948, and holds its major conferences every five years. Ms. Harrison
described it as the single most important international association in
anthropology.
"It's been a very important part of my life and professional identity
for the last 15 years," she said. "I've established relationships with
colleagues in Kenya, India, and South Africa. ... The IUAES has been a
space where I can break down some of the usual hierarchies and
establish collaboration with colleagues in an egalitarian and inclusive
way."
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