My main fields of interest have been the anthropology of law, the anthropology of politics and the politics of culture. This is primarily an exploration of power and modernity, but also asks how we can study them from the bottom up, in contrast to traditional approaches to these subjects. Moreover, the nationalizing and modernizing experiences engendered by imposition of national law in Taiwan can contribute to critical examination of state strategies in different cultures. One must then see how law operates in light of pervasive and ongoing changes in the framework of state-local interactions and global-local relationships.
Recently, I turned my focus to Hong Kong. I especially look at civil society in local contexts, within which people act collectively based upon the mutual engagement of local culture and modern imagination. I will explore the meanings of publicity and political subjectivity in building social economy, the current popular form of collective gathering, where reciprocity, cooperation, and mutual support, even good will, re-shape the relationship of the individual to the collective among community members. When the social economy boosts the individual and also the collective capacity to construct public interest in the public sphere, we can anticipate conflict and negotiations about what to do with state, ethnicity, and city, some of them backward, some progressive. I will look at publicity as a reflection of how people can mediate communication among individuals, as well as between individuals and the collective whole. From the perspective of the anthropology of politics, which seeks ways to understand how (new) sociality functions, the social economy can offer a critical space in which to examine political configurations and dynamics that shape legal ideas and cultural forms.
Anthropology of Law, Political Anthropology, Politics of Culture, Community Studies