Summary of SEAA READS, session one 4/2022

SEAA READS met online for its inaugural book club discussion on Saturday, April 2, 2022 from 8 to 9:30 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) to discuss Sylvia M. Lindtner (2020), Prototype Nation: China and the contested promise of innovation, which was awarded the SEAA annual Francis L. K. Hsu book prize at the end of 2021. The Zoom meeting was hosted and moderated by the 2021 prize committee chair, Marvin Sterling, from Indiana University.

The prize committee’s citation follows; the text is online at https://seaa.americananthro.org/awards/past-seaa-awards/

The book is centered on the city of Shenzhen’s maker culture. This is a form of do-it-yourself (or DIY) culture involving the creation or retooling of electronic technology, often initially pursued as a hobby but also sometimes pursued into the realms of entrepreneurial activity, venture capitalism and mass production. Professor Lindtner explores the state’s moves to co-opt the creative and experimental ethos of maker culture in its efforts to reimagine China as a place not only of fakes and knockoff products, but also as a principal site in the global imagination of technological innovation, one that both inspires and seeks to rival America’s Silicon Valley. Professor Lindtner interrogates the rhetoric of openness and egalitarianism surrounding maker culture—in which the possibilities of technological production supposedly rest publicly in the hands of many, not the corporate few—for how it reinscribes a Western imagination of China as exemplary difference, and for its continued marginalizations of individuals on the basis of gender, socioeconomic status and ethnonationality. Built upon a decade of ethnographic research in maker- and related spaces, rich in the stories of makers and entrepreneurs, but also, for example, the female office workers whose affective labor helps make these spaces viable, the book represents an important resource for understanding the growing competition in scientific and technological innovation between China and the United States. An innovative and ethnographically committed work, Prototype Nation offers important insight into our social and technological present and possible futures, richly manifesting and celebrating the potential of anthropological research within and across disciplinary boundaries.

The session began with brief introductions of self, affiliation, research interest, and book impression. After all 9 participants finished a number of discussion topics came up from moderator or from participants. The SEAA READs experiment in scholarly conversation across time zones will try various ways to allow people online and asynchronously offline to engage with a selected text and with each other.

Topics that came up included

<> The value and features of an anthropologically inclined, but not departmentally trained author (able to draw on diverse sources of literature and fieldwork settings; able to speak to audiences in some ways distinct from anthropologists)

<> Ethnography as a method (or tool set & traditions) but also ethnography as a finished product that is characterized by long fieldwork (single-site often rather than multi-sited), ongoing local relationships, lone-researcher (often), attention to tangible attributes of landscape and language and interpersonal patterns, awareness of insider/outsider viewpoints, and so on. Although many social observers cherry-pick the ethnographic tools, almost exclusively it is anthropologically trained writers who create fully formed ethnographies. Rather than a purely analytical exercise in seeing, ethnography is about “knowing” a subject (a personal relationship; not just facts and factoids). Related questions: when does fieldwork start/stop, what duration is enough, would a shadow ethnography (backstories, decisions faced and made, genesis of project as well as “making of” the book or dissertation) be “good to think” or “good to teach”? Related: Kirin Narayan (2012) on creative elements for non-fiction writers, Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov.

     Further discussion of “shadow ethnography” is the parallel to reader marginalia, but instead try a form of ethnography in which author commenting (?director’s commentary) can be toggled on or off. Much as participant-observers draw readers’ attention to what may be unseen or taken for granted by writing Cultural Footnotes, the published work could come with Author Footnotes to shed light on how each part of an argument or position came to be on the page (or was lost in the final draft).

<> Comparing the book’s stated aims or claims to the actual experience of reading stirred some thoughts among the book club readers, too. Several people commented on concepts and theories being slightly dated, but that the way these were applied and the scale of use was valuable.

<> Theory as a subject also bubbled up in conversation: concern that the realm of EA anthropology has exported few widely used anthropology ideas was on the minds of several people (in Japan we have been told… in China we are challenged to.. in Korea they say that…). On the other hand, the enduring value of books with little discussion of theory that is shaping the author’s vision can be celebrated in EA anthropology since there are some books that are read inside and outside of anthropology circles for the ethnographic richness of voice and persons portrayed on the pages. Doubtless somebody has inventoried EA originating social science concepts elsewhere: the archetype for “shaman” is native to NE Asia, maybe the mutual aid societies (“ko”) from Korea and elsewhere is another. Ideas from Confucius and Lao Tzu are familiar in EA, but maybe have been adapted for social commentary in other parts of the world, too?

The SEAA READS session came to a close with the host inviting any final thoughts on the book or ones triggered from reading it. One suggestion is to invite readers to send in a comment or question for the linked blog so that others can react or use for a writing prompt and verbalize additional responses to the ideas in Lindtner’s Prototype Nation.