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Dr Hans Steinmüller

Dr Hans Steinmüller

Associate Professor

Department of Anthropology

Email
j.steinmuller@lse.ac.uk
Room No
OLD 5.06A
Office Hours
Please book office hours via LSE Hub
Languages
English, German, Mandarin, Spanish
Key Expertise
China

About me

Hans Steinmüller has conducted long-term fieldwork in Hubei Province (central China) and in the Wa hills of the China-Myanmar border. In Hubei, he investigated the major changes that occurred in family lives, in the world of work, in ritual and rural development. The contradictions in all of these fields between local practice and official discourse is the main topic of his first monograph, Communities of Complicity. Related research interests have to do with the meanings of cynicism, irony, and justice in Chinese politics.  

His second empirical project deals with the history of militarism in the highlands of Myanmar. The main interest here is to understand sovereignty in the Wa State, a de-facto state governed by an insurgent army. On the basis of long-term fieldwork in the Wa State, he writes about the relations between village and army, military economies, and para-nationalism.  

Beyond his ethnographic work, Hans is interested in general theoretical questions in Social Anthropology, including attention, care, legibility, and opacity. He has explored some of these themes in recent collaborations, including one special issue on The Ends of Egalitarianism and another one entitled Governing Opacity. 

Hans is the convenor of the MSc programme China in Comparative Perspective and editor of Social Analysis.

Expertise Details

China; political and economic anthropology; moralities and ethics; irony; ritual; gambling

Selected publications

Books

2017 with Brandtstädter (eds.). Popular politics and the quest for justice in contemporary China. London: Routledge. 

2017 with Stephan Feuchtwang. China in comparative perspective. World Scientific, London, UK 

2016. with Susanne Brandtstädter (eds). Irony, cynicism and the Chinese state. London: Routledge.

2013. Communities of Complicity. Everyday Ethics in Rural China. New York: Berghahn.

Articles

2021. Para-nationalism: Sovereignty and authenticity in the Wa State of Myanmar. Nations and Nationalism

2021. with Jiazhi Fengjiang. Leadership Programmes: Success, Self-improvement, and Relationship Management among New Middle-class Chinese. Ethnos

2021. Pioneers of the plantation economy: Militarism, dispossession, and the limits of growth in the Wa State of Myanmar. Social Anthropology

2020. with Natalia Buitron. Les fins de l’égalitarisme, translated by Arianne Dorval, L’Homme 236, 5-44; published in English as The Ends of Egalitarianism, L’Homme 236, i-xxxvi.

2020. with Andrew Ong. Communities of Care: public donations, development assistance, and independent philanthropy in the Wa State of Myanmar. Critique of Anthropology

2020. The Moral Economy of Militarism: peasant village, military state, and Chinese capitalism in the Wa Region of Myanmar. Social Anthropology 28:1, 121-135.

2020. Social transformation in rural China. In Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society, edited by Kevin Latham, 161-173, London: Routledge.

2019. Anthropological theory is serious play. Anthropology of This Century 25

2019. Conscription by Capture in the Wa State of Myanmar: acquaintances, anonymity, patronage, and the rejection of mutuality.  Comparative Studies in Society and History 61:3, 508-34.

2017. Maoist militarism in the Wa hills of Burma, 1947-1989. In Körper Technik Wissen: Kreativität und Aneignungsprozesse in Afrika. In den Spuren Kurt Becks, edited by Markus Verne, Paola Ivanov, and Magnus Treiber, 455-476, Berlin: LIT Verlag.

2015. "Father Mao" and the Country-Family: Mixed Feelings for Fathers, Officials, and Leaders in China. Social Analysis 59:4, 83-100.

2015 with Tan Tongxue. Like a virgin? Hymen restoration operations in contemporary China. Anthropology Today 31:2, 15-18.

2014. A minimal definition of cynicism: everyday social criticism and some meanings of ‘Life’ in contemporary China. Anthropology of This Century 11.

2013. Le savoir-rire en Chine. Terrain 61, 40-43.

2013. The Ethics of Irony: Work, Family and Fatherland in Rural China. In Ordinary ethics in China today, edited by Charles Stafford, 133-153, London: Berg.

2011. The Reflective Peephole Method: Ruralism and Awkwardness in the Ethnography of Rural China. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 22:2, 220-235.

2011. The State of Irony in Rural China. Critique of Anthropology 31:1, 21-42.

2011. The Moving Boundaries of Social Heat. Gambling in Rural China. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17:2, 263-280.

2011 with Wu Fei. School killings in China: society or wilderness? Anthropology today 27:1, 10-13.

2010. How Popular Confucianism Became Embarrassing: On the Spatial and Moral Centre of the House in Rural China. Focaal: journal of global and historical anthropology 58, 81-96.

2010. Communities of Complicity: Notes on State Formation and Local Sociality in Rural China. American Ethnologist 37:3, 539-549.

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