Hans Steinmuller is a specialist in the anthropology of China. He has conducted long-term fieldwork in the Enshi region of Hubei Province in central China, focusing on family, work, ritual, and the local state. The main object of his research are the ethics of everyday life in rural China, but he has also written on topics such as gambling, rural development, and Chinese geomancy (fengshui). Recently he has started a new research project on craftsmanship and carpentry in central China.
Selected Publications:
2011. The Reflective Peephole Method: Ruralism and Awkwardness in the Ethnography of Rural China| The Australian Journal of Anthropology 22: 2, 220-235.
2011. The State of Irony in Rural China| Critique of Anthropology 31:1, 21-42.
2011. The Moving Boundaries of Social Heat. Gambling in Rural China| Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17:2, 263-280.
2011 with Wu Fei . School killings in China: society or wilderness? |Anthropology today 27:1, 10-13.
2010. How Popular Confucianism Became Embarrassing: On the Spatial and Moral Centre of the House in Rural China |Focaal: journal of global and historical anthropology 58, 81-96.
2010. Communities of Complicity: Notes on State Formation and Local Sociality in Rural China |American Ethnologist 37:3, 539-549.