Macau and the Question of Chineseness

Center for Chinese Studies

Fall 2009 Research Seminars on China series

presents

"Sovereignty on the Edge: Macau and the Question of Chineseness"

by Cathryn Clayton, Assistant Professor, UHM Asian Studies

November 10 (Tuesday), 3:00 p.m.

Tokioka Room (Moore 319)

How have conceptions and practices of sovereignty shaped how Chineseness is imagined? This talk addresses this question through the example of Macau, a southern Chinese city that was a Portuguese colony from the 1550s until 1999. As the Portuguese administration prepared to transfer Macau to Chinese control, it mounted a campaign to convince the city’s residents, 95 percent of whom identified as Chinese, that they possessed a "unique cultural identity" that made them different from other Chinese, and that resulted from the existence of a Portuguese state on Chinese soil. This attempt sparked reflections on the meaning of Portuguese governance that challenged not only conventional definitions of sovereignty but also conventional notions of Chineseness as a subjectivity common to all Chinese people around the world.

Cathryn Clayton, Assistant Professor in the Asian Studies Program, School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the University of Hawai’i, received an MA in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Before joining UH, she taught in the Contemporary China Studies at the University of Macau. Her forthcoming book, Sovereignty at the Edge: Macau and the Question of Chineseness, will be published as part of the Harvard University East Asia Monograph Series.

Event Sponsor
Center for Chinese Studies, Manoa Campus

More Information
Daniel Tschudi, 808-956-8891, dtschudi@hawaii.edu, Macau and the Question of Chineseness (PDF)

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