Skip to main content

Ralph A. Litzinger

Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology
Box 90091, Durham, NC 27708-0091
201F Friedl Building, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications


Inside the Wuhan cabin hospital: Contending narratives during the COVID-19 pandemic

Journal Article China Information · November 1, 2021 This article examines the making and circulation of vlogs on the Chinese platform Douyin during the Wuhan lockdown. We specifically draw attention to vlogs made in mobile cabin hospitals. Constructed between February and March in 2020, cabin hospitals were ... Full text Cite

Erratum: Dying for an iPhone: Apple, foxconn, and the lives of China's workers (The Journal of Asian Studies (2021) 80:3 (707-708) DOI: 10.1017/S0021911821000760)

Journal Article Journal of Asian Studies · January 1, 2021 In the original publication of this review (Litzinger 2021), the name of one of the book s authors appeared incorrectly at the beginning of the third paragraph. The first sentence of that paragraph, on the bottom of p. 707, should read: In the summer of 20 ... Full text Cite

Eco-media events in China from yellow eco-peril to media materialism

Journal Article Environmental Humanities · May 1, 2020 This article brings together recent writing on eco-media, media materialism, and racialized Otherness to rethink the place of China and Asia in debates about the Anthropocene. We begin by examining the nonwhite postapocalyptic futures imagined in Bong Joon ... Full text Cite

Afterword: The afterlives of shangrila

Chapter · January 1, 2014 Cite

The labor question in China: Apple and beyond

Journal Article South Atlantic Quarterly · December 1, 2013 This essay introduces recent efforts by activists, NGOs, and academics to investigate and report on the working conditions for Chinese workers along Apple's supply chain in China. Tracking the "suicide express" at the Foxconn factory complex in Shenzhen in ... Full text Cite

Labor in China: A New Politics of Struggle

Journal Article South Atlantic Quarterly · January 2013 Cite

Tibet Talk: On Life, Death and the State

Journal Article Cultural Anthropology · March 2012 Link to item Cite

The Mobilization of Nature

Chapter · 2012 Featured Publication Cite

Labor in China Today: Apple and Beyond

Journal Article South Atlantic Quarterly · 2012 Cite

“Introduction: Labor in China Today: Apple and Beyond,”

Journal Article South Atlantic Quarterly · 2012 Cite

Displacing Desire: Travel and Popular Culture in China , by Beth Notar

Journal Article The China Quarterly · September 2007 Cite

“Contested Sovereignties and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund”

Journal Article Political And Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR) · 2006 Featured Publication Cite

The Mobilization of Nature: Perspectives from Northwest Yunnan

Journal Article China Quarterly · March 2004 Cite

“Damming the Angry River”

Journal Article China Review · 2004 Link to item Cite

"Government from Below: The State, the Popular, and the Illusion of Autonomy"

Journal Article Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique · March 2001 Cite

Government from Below: The State, the Popular, and the Illusion of Autonomy

Journal Article positions: asia critique · February 1, 2001 Full text Cite

Screening the Political: Pedagogy and Dissent in The Gate of Heavenly Peace

Journal Article Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique · 2001 Cite

"Race, Taxonomy, and Auto-Ethnographic Critique in Ethnographic Film Criticism"

Journal Article American Anthropologist · September 2000 Cite

Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging

Book · 2000 Featured Publication http://www.dukeupress.edu/ ... Cite

Nationalism and Ethnoregional Identities in China

Journal Article Asian Ethnicity · 2000 Cite

Questions of gender: Ethnic minority representation in post-Mao China

Journal Article Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars · January 1, 2000 The burgeoning scholarship on ethnic minorities in the People's Republic of China has shown how minorities are often represented as feminized subjects in popular culture, film, museums, and tourist encounters. This scholarship has advanced a new critical u ... Full text Cite

Screening the Political: Pedagogy and Dissent in The Gate of Heavenly Peace

Journal Article positions: asia critique · August 1, 1999 Full text Cite

Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia

Journal Article American Anthropologist · September 1998 Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia. Tani E. Barlow. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.454 pp. ... Full text Cite

"The Work of Culture and Memory in Post-Mao China"

Journal Article Asia/Pacific Studies Institute Working Papers Series · 1995 Cite