The Center for Global Peace & Conflict Studies Faculty Expert Series presents

“Scandals: Uncanny Socialities and the Dramatization of the Inhuman in China”
with Mei Zhan, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine

Friday, October 29, 2010
Social Science Plaza B, Room 5250
12:00-1:30 p.m.

About the talk:
Scandals have become a national pastime in China.  Simply turn on your television during primetime: the channels are inundated with programs on scandals, ranging from journalistic investigations and expert analyses, problem-solving talk shows, to amateur reenactments of scandals of various natures and scales.  Television, print media, and the Internet form a network of mass media and information through which scandals are created, circulated, performed, and contested.  The proliferation of scandals suggests dynamic socialities that exceed the binary of “authoritarianism” and “democracy” which so often frames Western academic and popular discussions of China. Scandals are networks of performance, contestation and reenactment: critical sites and events where alternative forms of social and political participation take place, often in dramatized ways.  This talk in particular focuses on the recent surge in medical scandals to examine the ways in which the general public--especially patients in urban China--participate in and critique China's healthcare form, and in due process call into question some of the fundamental tenets of socialist and postsocialist humanisms.

Light refreshments will be provided.

Please RSVP to Jayne Yang, cgpacs@uci.edu or 949-824-2566.

Funding provided by the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) of the University of California, and the Vice Chancellor for Office of Research (OR) at UCI.