A core member of the BorderWork(s) Lab, Ralph Litzinger is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology. His research has focused on the culture and politics of ethnic minorities in China. He has written on Marxist nationality theory in China, on ethnic and indigenous revitalization in the post-Cold War global order, on gender and ethnic representation, and on ethnographic film, photography, and popular culture in China and elsewhere. Other Chinas: the Yao and the Politics of National Belonging (Duke University Press, 2000) was the first major ethnographic study to examine the role of minority intellectuals and other elite cultural producers in the critique of socialism and the imagining of post-socialist futures.
He has also published numerous essays and in anthropology, cultural studies, and East Asian studies journals. He is completing a book project focusing on global conservation movements and environmentalism in China. This research is engaged with new work on bio-politics, governmentality, activist anthropology, and the making of alternative political spaces. In relationship to this research, he has published several key essays on the transnational and media dimensions of anti-dam protest in southwest China. Finally, he has begun a new project on migrant labor politics in China, with a particular focus on non-official education projects for migrant kids, and the role of non-governmental organizations and corporate social responsibility projects in these experimental ventures.
In all of his research, teaching, and thinking, he is committed to forging an anthropology of critical advocacy and activism, one which addresses structures of domination, exploitation, and inequality and the struggle to make the world a better place. Litzinger is also Faculty Director of Global Semester Abroad, Coordinator of Duke Undergraduate Initiatives in China, and Director of DukeEngage Beijing.