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