Stafford, Charles


Professor Charles Stafford  

Department

Position held

Asia Research Centre

Department of Anthropology

Professor of Anthropology

Experience keywords:

ritual; cognition; social anthropology; Taiwan; religion; cognition; anthropology of learning; China; economic psychology; child development; learning and nationalism

Research summary > [Click to expand]

Charles Stafford is a specialist in the anthropology of China and Taiwan. His research has focused primarily on child development, learning, kinship, religion and economics. He is also interested in the relationship between anthropology and philosophy. Professor Stafford’s first major fieldwork project was conducted in the late 1980s in a Taiwanese fishing community where he examined the relationship between nationalist schooling and Taiwanese popular religion. In the early 1990s he began to conduct research in mainland China on issues related to kinship, religion, and Chinese historical consciousness. During this research, he became especially interested in rituals and practices of "separation and reunion," which help to structure the flow of social life in rural communities. More recently, Professor Stafford has conducted fieldwork, funded by the ESRC, on learning and economic life in rural China and Taiwan. He is currently developing a collaborative research project with colleagues at Nanjing University which will focus on economic life from a cognitive anthropological perspective.

Countries and regions to which research relates:

Taiwan; China

Media experience:

RadioTV

Contact Points

LSE phone number:

+44 (0)20 7955 6241

Publications

The following references are sourced from LSE Research Online|. References that are linked lead to the full text.

2013

Stafford, Charles (2013) Introduction: ordinary ethics in China today. In: Stafford, Charles, (ed.) Ordinary ethics in China today. Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK. ISBN 9780857854599

Stafford, Charles, (ed.) (2013) Ordinary ethics in China. Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK. ISBN 9780857854599

Stafford, Charles (2013) Some good and bad people in the countryside. In: Stafford, Charles, (ed.) Ordinary Ethics In China. Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK. ISBN 9780857854599

2012

Stafford, Charles (2012) Misfortune and what can be done about it: a Taiwanese case study. Social analysis, 56 (2). pp. 90-102. ISSN 0155-977X

Stafford, Charles (2011) Living with the economists. Anthropology of this century, (1).

2010

Stafford, Charles (2010) The punishment of ethical behaviour. In: Lambek, Michael, (ed.) Ordinary ethics: anthropology, language, and action . Fordham University Press, New York, UK, pp. 187-206. ISBN 9780823233175

Stafford, Charles (2010) Some qualitative mathematics in China. Anthropological theory, 10 (1-2). pp. 81-86. ISSN 1463-4996

2009

Stafford, Charles (2009) Numbers and the natural history of imagining the self in Taiwan and China. Ethnos, 74 (1). pp. 110-126. ISSN 0014-1844

2008

Stafford, Charles (2008) Actually existing Chinese matriarchy. In: Brandtstädter, Susanne and Santos, Gonçalo D., (eds.) Chinese kinship: contemporary anthropological perspectives. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, Abingdon, UK, pp. 137-153. ISBN 9780415456975

Stafford, Charles (2008) Linguistic and cultural variables in the psychology of numeracy. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14 (s1). pp. 128-141. ISSN 1359-0987

2007

Stafford, Charles (2007) What is going to happen next? In: Astuti, Rita and Parry, Jonathan and Stafford, Charles, (eds.) Questions of anthropology. Berg, Oxford, UK, pp. 55-76. ISBN 9781845207489

Stafford, Charles and Astuti, Rita and Parry, J. P, (eds.) (2007) Questions of anthropology. Berg, London, UK. ISBN 9781845207496

Stafford, Charles (2007) What is interesting about Chinese religion. In: Sarro, Ramon and Berliner, David, (eds.) Learning religion: anthropological approaches. Berghahn Books, Oxford, UK, pp. 177-190. ISBN 9781845453749

2006

Stafford, Charles (2006) Deception, corruption and the Chinese ritual economy. In: Latham, Kevin and Thompson, Stuart and Klein, Jacob, (eds.) Consuming China: approaches to cultural change in contemporary China. Routledge, London, UK, pp. 42-55. ISBN 9780700714025

2004

Stafford, Charles (2004) Two stories of learning and economic agency in Yunnan. Taiwan journal of anthropology, 2 (1). pp. 171-194. ISSN 1727-1878

Stafford, Charles (2004) Introduction: Learning and economic agency in China and Taiwan.. Taiwan journal of anthropology, 2 (1). pp. 1-10. ISSN 1727-1878

2003

Stafford, Charles (2003) Language and numerical learning in rural China and Taiwan. Terrain, 40 pp. 65-80. ISSN 1777-5450

Stafford, Charles (2003) Living with separation in China: anthropological accounts. RoutledgeCurzon, New York, US. ISBN 0415305713

2000

Stafford, Charles (2000) Chinese patriliny and the cycles of Yang and Laiwang. In: Carsten, Janet, (ed.) Cultures of relatedness: new approaches to the study of kinship. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 35-54. ISBN 9780521656276

Stafford, Charles (2000) Separation and reunion in modern China. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 9780521784344

1999

Stafford, Charles (1999) Separation, reunion and the Chinese attachment to place. In: Internal and international migration: Chinese perspectives. Curzon Press, London. ISBN 9780700710768

LSE Research Online is the primary resource for references to publications. For queries or updates please email the LSE Research Online team at lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk|.

Expert Image

The book examines the kinds of moral and ethical issues that emerge (sometimes almost unnoticed) in the flow of everyday life in Chinese communities.

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