An Ecological History of Modern China, with Stevan Harrell — Part 1

This week on Sinica, Part 1 of a two-part podcast with Stevan Harrell, Professor Emeritus in Anthropology at the University of Washington. Steve's groundbreaking book An Ecological History of Modern China represents the culmination of a professional lifetime of work in disparate fields. It synthesizes ideas from geography, earth science, biology, anthropology, sociology, political science, and more. It's a book that will make you change the way you think not just about China, but about history more broadly, and about resilience in natural and social systems. In this first part, we focus on some of the core framing concepts of the book and how Steve demarcates China in both space and time. Part 2 is next week!

5:01 How Steve thinks about ecological history and resilience theory/ecology in relation to Chinese history 

17:09 Social-ecological systems and the systems approach

24:46 The importance of etic and emic scale 

30:15 How diversity contributes to resilience 

36:18 The Malthus-Boserup Ratchet 

42:43 The importance of buffers 

51:24 The adaptive cycle 

55:41 Ecological buffers and the threats they face] in the major regions of China: China Proper, Zomia, and Chinese Central Asia 

1:06:28 Steve’s periodization of modern Chinese history from the perspective of ecological history 

Recommendations at the end of Part 2 next week!

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