New Books in Sociology

Tamara Jacka, "Ginkgo Village: Trauma and Transformation in Rural China" (Anu Press, 2023)

Oct 21, 2024

Tamara Jacka, Emeritus Professor at The Australian National University, shares her insights on the transformative experiences in Ginkgo Village, rural China. She discusses the impact of traumatic historical events, like the civil war and famine during the Great Leap Forward, on villagers’ lives. Jacka emphasizes the importance of ethnographic storytelling to foster empathy and understanding. The conversation also delves into evolving gender dynamics, challenges faced during fieldwork, and the resilience of communities navigating socio-economic changes.

56:15

Episode guests

Tamara Jacka

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

The podcast emphasizes the lasting effects of historical trauma on Ginkgo Village's social fabric, highlighting the resilience and transformation of its residents.

It discusses the collaborative ethnographic research approach used in the book, illustrating the importance of genuine connections for understanding rural life complexities.

Deep dives

Trauma and Transformation in Ginkgo Village

The book focuses on Ginkgo Village, illustrating the profound impact of historical events on its villagers' lives. It examines the trauma stemming from past hardships, such as violence during revolutionary periods and the devastating effects of famine during the Great Leap Forward. These experiences have shaped the community's social fabric, emphasizing the resilience of villagers while acknowledging the weight of their shared history. The narrative interweaves personal stories with broader socio-political analysis, emphasizing the importance of understanding local experiences in the context of national history.

Intro

2min

Ginkgo Village: Trauma and Transformation

15min

Collaborative Research in Ginkgo Village: A Deep Dive into Fieldwork Methodology

4min

Fieldwork Chronicles in Rural China

10min

Echoes of Ginkgo Village

8min

Gender Dynamics in Rural China

14min

Ginkgo Village: Trauma and Transformation in Rural China (Anu Press, 2023) provides an original and powerfully intimate bottom-up perspective on China’s recent tumultuous history. Drawing on ethnographic and life-history research, the book takes readers deep into a village in a mountainous region of central-eastern China known as Eyuwan. In the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, villagers in this region experienced terrible trauma and far-reaching socio‑economic and political change. In the civil war (1927–1949), they were slaughtered in fighting between Nationalist and Communist forces. During the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), they suffered appalling famine. Since the 1990s, mass labor outmigration has lifted local villagers out of poverty and fueled major transformations in their circumstances and practices, social and family relationships, and values and aspirations.

At the heart of this book are eight tales that recreate Ginkgo Village life and the interactions between villagers and the researchers who visit them. These tales use storytelling to engender an empathetic understanding of Ginkgo Villagers’ often traumatic life experiences; to present concrete details about transformations in everyday village life in an engaging manner; and to explore the challenges and rewards of fieldwork research that attempts empathetic understanding across cultures.

Tamara Jacka is an Emeritus Professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. A feminist social anthropologist, her main research interests are in gender, rural-to-urban migration and social change in contemporary China. She is the author of Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Change (2006), which won the Francis L.K. Hsu prize for best book in East Asian Anthropology.

Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of economic anthropology, medical anthropology, hope studies, and the anthropology of borders and frontiers. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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