{"id":1047,"date":"2017-09-27T22:53:38","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T22:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/china\/?p=1047"},"modified":"2025-07-09T00:28:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T00:28:33","slug":"stevan-harrell-reflects-successful-career-anthropology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/china\/news\/stevan-harrell-reflects-successful-career-anthropology\/","title":{"rendered":"Stevan Harrell Reflects on a successful career in Anthropology"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This past Spring, Steve Harrell retired after a successful 30+ year career focusing on minorities in China. Here, Steve reflects on his history and development in the field of anthropology.<\/h5>\n

1. What inspired you to become a professor? What was the biggest challenge you encountered in your journey there?<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When I was an undergraduate, majoring first in German and then in Chinese, I did not particularly want to become a professor; I thought I would go into some sort of social service or charity work. \u00a0All I knew by the time I graduated was that I wanted to do something dealing with China, though at that time \u201cChina\u201d meant Taiwan or Hong Kong. \u00a0Right after I graduated, as part of a Master\u2019s Program in East Asian Studies, I spent a year in Taipei, where Barbara and I got married, and when I returned I needed a summer job. \u00a0I found one working for Professor G. William Skinner, a very scary figure who nevertheless had money for graduate students. \u00a0After about half a summer working for him as a research assistant, I found that he could praise as well as damn, and that allowed me to think of becoming a professional anthropologist. \u00a0I transferred to the Ph.D. program in anthropology, did another year in Taiwan, this time ethnographic research, and when I finished, I was lucky enough to be hired by the Institute for Comparative and Foreign Area Studies at the UW. \u00a0Readers can look up that Institute and find out what happened to it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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2. What is your fondest memory of your work with minority groups in China?<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The opening ceremony of the Yangjuan Primary School, which Professor Beno\u00eet Vermander and I raised money to build, in September 2000. \u00a0There was lots of singing, dancing, drinking, speaking, and eating, and village children and their parents were ecstatic over having a school in their community.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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3. How has the landscape changed for\u00a0minorities in China over your career?<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I assume you mean their general social situation, not their physical environment (if you want, I could talk about that, but it\u2019s specific to particular groups). \u00a0Anyway, for Tibetans and particularly for Uyghurs, the situation has gotten worse and worse as the government deals with complaints and dissent using ever more violent and intrusive means of surveillance and repression. For the minorities of the southwest where I work, the course of history has been much kinder. \u00a0When I \u00a0began to work there, in the late 1980s, many communities were isolated; I was the first-ever white person to visit many communities, people typically did not go to school at all or attended for only a few years, and when they grew up they married, had children, and settled down to farming and\/or herding and forestry. \u00a0Many had no electricity, spoke only their local language, and never ventured far from home. \u00a0Now everyone goes to school at least through the 8th or 9th grade, many go on to high school and college, others migrate to China\u2019s industrial areas to work in construction or factories, most everyone under 40 or so is bilingual, people watch TV and use smartphones, and a white person is an object of only mild interest. \u00a0Discrimination remains, but most people are loyal Chinese citizens who want their children to get ahead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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4.What work would you like to see happen in the future?<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the area of minorities in China? \u00a0I think the most important thing is to document how they deal with the disadvantages of relative poverty and social discrimination, but also what is happening to local languages, traditional ecological knowledge, and other valuable aspects of culture that are either dying out or being standardized by the state and the media.\u00a0
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5. What advice do you have for people interested in minority issues in China?<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Learn the local language or dialect. \u00a0So many people think they can get by with only Chinese, and they can, but they miss out on a lot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past Spring, Steve Harrell retired after a successful 30+ year career focusing on minorities in China. Here, Steve reflects on his history and development in the field of anthropology. 1. What inspired you to become a professor? What was the biggest challenge you encountered in your journey there? When I was an undergraduate, majoring<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":468,"featured_media":1048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStevan Harrell Reflects on a successful career in Anthropology - China Studies Program<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/china\/news\/stevan-harrell-reflects-successful-career-anthropology\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stevan Harrell Reflects on a successful career in Anthropology - China Studies Program\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This past Spring, Steve Harrell retired after a successful 30+ year career focusing on minorities in China. 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