KEYNOTE SPEAKER: DR. JING JING LIU
We were thrilled to welcome Dr. Jing Jing Liu as the keynote speaker for the 29th Annual Richard Frucht Memorial Lecture Series and Student Conference.
The hybrid lecture was held at 7:00 pm MST on March 23, 2023. If you'd like to watch a recording of the lecture, click the button below.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Dr. Jing Jing Liu is an assistant professor of anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, Economics, and Political Science at MacEwan University, in Edmonton, Alberta. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Economic Experimentation at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, in Halle, Germany. Her Ph.D. research (University of Toronto) examined Africa-China engagements through the everyday lives of Nigerian and Chinese traders in China. Dr. Liu’s current book project traces how global south migrants use trade with China to fight for long-term success in the face of western financial hegemonies, post-colonial development histories, and global racial hierarchies. Her current research continues to interrogate Africa-China relations, with expanding interest to include the political economy of new forms of money in Nigeria and the education migration of Nigerian youths to global south destinations, such as China and Northern Cyprus, and global north destinations, such as Canada and Germany.
Keynote Lecture: March 23, 2023 at 7:00 pm MST in ED 2-115 and via Zoom
"Disruptive Futures: What the Anthropology of Africa-Asia can tell us about Western Hegemony"
By 2100, the three most populous nations in the world will be Nigeria, China, and India. In fact, nine of the ten most populous countries will be in Africa and Asia. This demographic shift is already creating new political, economic, and social conditions of global engagement, altering ongoing encounters born of colonial violence and capitalist expansion. Africa-Asia then provides an instructive lens to theorize anew. I draw on the intersection of Nigeria-China specifically to interrogate four contemporary themes within sociocultural anthropology: migration, money, race, and development.
Regarding migration and money, while the opening of new global south corridors promises migrants faster paths to affluence, their attempts to build financial bridges between China and Nigeria expose the struggles of challenging the prevailing US-dominated global monetary system. In the case of race and development, Nigeria-China social relations bear the possibility of remaking identities constructed away from the gaze of whiteness. Yet, because ‘Chinese’ development is ensnared in a logic defined by the West, it ensures that, for now, Nigerian and Chinese alike still labour against the kindred sightlines of whiteness: English linguistic capital and Euro-American cultural capital.
Theorizing from Africa-Asia then is an intervention with the aim to understand the future of inequality, inclusivity, and innovation through an ethnographic and conceptual decentering of Euro-America in our contested world.