Institute of Ethnology

My anthropological research uses health issues around AIDS, drug use, and leprosy, as well as Anthropocene environmental issues on water governance, to analyze the nature and trajectories of contemporary social change in China and Taiwan. By examining governance of epidemics and waterscape, we can see how the lives of individuals and collectives have been transformed by competing moral, cultural, economic, and political forces over recent history. My main field sites are in Taiwan and China. 

I have published many journal articles and book chapters in English and Chinese, as well as an English monograph Passage to Manhood: Youth Migration, Heroin, and AIDS in Southwest China (Stanford University Press, 2011) and its Chinese versions in both Taiwan and China. This book has won various book awards in Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong, and become widely known especially in China’s public arena. This has pushed me to engage more frequently in public speaking and writing as a public intellectual. In addition to academic research and public service, I also served as co-editor for the journal of Asian Anthropology and on editorial boards for international journals such as Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Human Organization, and American Anthropologist, and for local journals such as Taiwan Journal of Anthropology, Taiwan Journal for Human Rights, and Router: A Journal for Cultural Studies. I have also served on the committees for international academic communities such as the East Asian Anthropological Association and the Society for East Asian Anthropology.