教师及职员
Gordon Mathews

Professor / Chairperson
OfficeNAH 409
OfficeTel.3943 7718
Emailcmgordon"at"cuhk.edu.hk
EducationqualificationPh.D., CornellUniversity
LanguagesEnglish, Japanese; Cantonese (basic), Spanish(basic)
Introduction

Prof. Gordon Mathews haswritten or edited books about what makes life worth living in Japan and theUnited States, about the global cultural supermarket and the meanings ofculture today, about the Japanese generation gap, about what it means to"belong to a nation" in Hong Kong and elsewhere, about how differentsocieties conceive of happiness, about Chungking Mansions as a global building,and about low-end globalization around the world. He is currently writing booksabout African traders in Guangzhou (an RGC grant enabled him to spend a year inGuangzhou in 2013-2014), about asylum seekers in Hong Kong and the globaltreatment of asylum seekers, and about the meanings of life after death in theUnited States, Japan, and China, and how these shape people’s lives beforedeath. Over the past year, he has written papers on anthropology in East Asia,on happiness and neoliberalism in Japan, and on how to smuggle goods pastcustoms in China. Mathews is really happy to be an anthropologist because thediscipline enables him to investigate so many different topics. Anthropology isincredibly fun because so many different things in this world can be explored!
Research interests

Meanings of life,culture and identity, low-end globalization, asylum seekers, life after death
Geographicalareas of research

Japan, the United States, Hong Kong, ChungkingMansions
Courses taught

Fall 2015ANTH 1010/ UGEC 1681Humans and Culture


ANTH 2350/ UGED 2980/ANTH 5315 Meanings of Life


Spring 2015

ANTH 2520 / UGEC2990 Globalization and Culture

ANTH 3630 Language, Symbols and Society
Current research

(Belief in) Life After Death as a Window into ContemporarySocietiesAsylum Seekers in Hong Kong and the world

African Traders in Guangzhou andlow-end globalization

Anthropological Approaches to Happiness

Awards

ViceChancellor’s Exemplary Teaching Award for General Education, CUHK, 20147th HongKong Book Prize, for Chinese translation of Ghettoat the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong, 2014 (translated by Yang Yang)

Humanities and SocialSciences Prestigious Fellowship 2013/2014

Research Excellence Award 2011-2012, Arts andLanguages Panel, CUHK

Vice-Chancellor’sExemplary Teaching Award, Faculty of Social Science, CUHK, 2000.
Other positions held

Co-editor, Asian AnthropologyCo-editor DejaLu

President of the Society for East AsianAnthropology of the American Anthropological Association

ViceChairperson, Hong Kong Anthropological Society

Member, Organizing Committee of the World Councilof Anthropological Associations

Selected Publications

Books
2012Globalization From Below: The World's Other Economy, edited by GordonMathews, Gustavo Lins Ribeiro andCarlos Alba Vega. London: Routledge.
2011Ghetto at the Center of the World. Chicago: The University ofChicago Press. The simplified Chinese translation by Yang Yang was awarded the 2015 Phoenix Top 10 Book of the Year Award in China.
2008Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation. Written byGordon Mathews, Eric Kit-wai Ma and Tai-lok Lui. London: Routledge.
2008 Pursuits of Happiness: Well-Being in AnthropologicalPerspective, edited by Gordon Mathews and CarolinaIzquierdo. New York: Berghahn.
2004Japan’s Changing Generations: Are Young PeopleCreating a New Society? edited byGordon Mathews and Bruce White. London: Routledge.
2001ConsumingHong Kong,edited by Gordon Mathews and Tai-lok Lui. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UniversityPress.
2000Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searchingfor Home in the Cultural Supermarket. London:Routledge.
1996What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japaneseand Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds. Berkeley:University of California Press.

Various of these books have beentranslated into Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Spanish. Complex Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.
Bookchapters and journalarticles
2016"The Globalization of Anthropology and Japan's Place Within It." Keynote Lecture, 2d JASCA International Symposium, Japanese Review of Cultural Anthropology. Vol. 16, 2015, Pp. 75-92.
2016"Médiateurs culturels africains en China de Sud" [African Cultural Brokers in South China]. In Karsten Giese and Laurence Marfaing, eds., Entrepreneurs africains et chinois: les impacts sociaux d'une reconntre particulière [African and Chinese entrepreneurs: social impacts of their encounter] Paris: Karthala, pp. 95-126.
2015"The Promise and Problems of African Traders in Guangzhou: When Will We See a Chinese Barack Obama?" in Zhou Yongming ed. China's Anthropology (zhong guo ren lei xue) vol.1, pp. 138-157. Beijing: The Commercial Press (shang wu yin shu guan).
2015"Africans in Guangzhou," in topical issue of Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, "Foreign Lives in a Globalising City: Africans in Guangzhou," 44(4): 7-15.
2015"African Logistics Agents and Middlemen as Cultural Brokers in Guangzhou," in topical issue of Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, "Foreign Lives in a Globalising City: Africans in Guangzhou," 44(4): 117-144.
2015"Taking Copies from China Past Customs: Routines, Risks, and the Possibility of Catastrophe." Journal of Borderland Studies 30(3): 423-435.
2015"East Asian Anthropology in the World." American Anthropologist 117(2): 364-383.
2014"Howto Evade States and Slip Past Borders: Lessons from Traders, Overstayers andAsylum Seekers in Hong Kong and China." By Gordon Mathews, Lin Danand Yang Yang. City & Society 26(2): 217-238.
2014"Beinga Man in a Straitened Japan: The View from Twenty Years Later." InSatsuki Kawano, Glenda S. Roberts, and Susan Orpett Long, eds., CapturingContemporary Japan: Differentiation and Uncertainty. Hawai’i:University Of Hawai’i Press. Pp. 60-80.
2014"AsylumSeekers in Hong Kong: The Paradoxes of Lives Lived on Hold." InJijiao Zhang and Howard Duncan, eds., Migration in China and Asia:Experience and Policy. New York: Springer. Pp.73-85.
2014"TheUrban Geography of Chungking Mansions" in Kowloon CulturalDistrict: An Investigation into Spatial Capabilities in Hong Kong, editedby Esther Lorenz and Li Shiqiao. Hong Kong: MCCM Creations. Pp.286-293.
2012"Nihonni okeru ikigai to raifukōsu no henka" [Ikigai andChanging Life Courses in Japan]. In Hiromi Tanaka, Maren Godzik, andKristina Iwata Weickgenaant, eds. Raifukōsu sentaku noyukue [Beyond a Standardized Lifecourse]. Tokyo: Shinyosha. Pp.360-380.
2012"ContestingAnglo-American Hegemony in Publication." Journal of WorkplaceRights 16(3-4): 405-421.
2012"Happiness,Culture and Context." International Journal of Wellbeing 2(4):299-312. (OnlineArticle)
2012"AfricanTraders in Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong." In David W. Haines, KeikoYamanaka, and Shinji Yamashita, eds., Wind Over Water: Migration in anEast Asian Context, New York: Berghahn. Pp. 208-218.
2012"Death and 'the Pursuit of a Life WorthLiving' in Japan." In Hikaru Suzuki, ed., Death and Dying inContemporary Japan, London: Routledge, 2012. Pp. 33-48.
2012GordonMathews and Yang Yang. "How Africans Pursue Low-end Globalization in HongKong and Mainland China." Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 41(2): 95-120. (OnlineArticle)
2012"AnotherWay to Resist Wall Street: Copies, Smuggling, and "Globalization fromBelow."" In Jane Byrne, ed., The Occupy Handbook, NewYork: Back Bay Books. Pp. 480-493.
2012"Identities,Traditional," "Identities in Global Societies," in Helmut K.Anheier and Mark Juergensmeyer, eds. Encyclopedia of Global Studies.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pp. 850-859.
2011"TheMall of the World,"Foreign Policy. (OnlineArticle)
2011 "TheWorld in a Building,"Berfrois. (OnlineArticle)
2011"UnderstandingJapanese Society Through Life After Death." Japan Forum, Vol.23, no. 3, Pp. 363-384.
2010"Onthe Referee System as a Barrier to Global Anthropology." TheAsia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 52-63.
2010"LesTraders Africains à Hong Kong et en China :L'abondance (du faux) à domicile." Les Temps Modernes,Jan-March 2010, No. 657, pp. 110-124
2009"HongKong Chinese Professors Within the "Western" UniversityModel." In Gregory S. Poole and Ya-chen Chen, eds., HigherEducation in East Asia: Neoliberalism and the Professoriate. Rotterdam:Sense Publishers. Pp. 99-106
2008"WhyJapanese Anthropology is Ignored Beyond Japan." Japanese Review ofCultural Anthropology, Vol. 9. Pp. 53-69
2008“ChungkingMansions: A Center of ‘Low-End Globalization.’” Ethnology XLVI(2): 169-183.
2008“La‘brecha generacional’ en Japón” [The Japanese ‘Generation Gap’]. In Anuario Asia Pacifico 2007. Barcelona: CasaAsia. Pp. 485-492
2008“Anthropology,Happiness, and Well-Being.” “Finding and Keeping a Purpose in Life: Well-Beingand Ikigai in Japan and Elsewhere.” “Towards an Anthropologyof Well-Being.” In G. Mathews and C. Izquierdo, eds, Pursuitsof Happiness: Well-Being in Anthropological Perspective. London andNew York: Berghahn. Pp. 1-19, 167-185, 248-266.
2008"Kangjuguojia rentong de xianggang: shi zhimin shidai de fuhezhe haishi quanqiuhua dexianqu [Hong Kong's Resistance to National Identity: Echo of a Colonial Past orHarbinger of a Globalized Future?]" In Hao Zhidong, ed., Guojiarentong yu liang’an weilai [National Identity and the Future ofCross-Strait Relations]. Macau: University of Macau Press. Pp. 123-140.
2007"CulturalIdentity in an Age of Globalization: Implications on Architecture." In Sang Lee and Ruth Baumeister, eds., The Domestic and the Foreign inArchitecture. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Pp. 47-54.
2006"Happinessand the Pursuit of a Life Worth Living: An Anthropological Approach.” InYew-kwang Ng and Lok Sang Ho, eds., Happiness and Public Policy. Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 147-168.
2006“IfAnthropology is a Science, then the East-West Dichotomy is Irrelevant: MovingTowards a Global Anthropology.” In J. Hendry and H. W. Wong, eds., Dismantlingthe East-West Dichotomy: Essays in Honour of Jan van Bremen. London:Routledge. Pp. 183-188.
2005“Contextand Consciousness in the Practice of Transnationality.” City andSociety (American Anthropological Association / Society for Urban,National, Transnational, and Global Anthropology), vol. XVII, no. 1, pp. 35-48.
2004“Onthe Tension Between Japanese and American Anthropological Depictions ofJapan.” In S. Yamashita, J. Bosco, and J. Eades, eds.,The Making ofAnthropology in East and Southeast Asia. New York: Berghahn. Pp. 114-135.
2004“Fence,Flavour, and Phantasm: Japanese Musicians and the Meanings ofJapaneseness.” Japanese Studies 24(3): 335-349.
2004“Seeking a Career, Finding a Job: How Young People Enterand Resist the Japanese World of Work.” In G. Mathews and B. White,eds., Japan’s Changing Generations: Are Young People Creating a NewSociety?, London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. Pp. 121-136. Reprinted in D. P. Martinez, ed, Modern Japanese Society andCulture, Volume II: Life Courses, Gender, and the Self. London:Routledge, 2007.
2002“Can‘a Real Man’ Live For His Family? Ikigai and Masculinityin Today’s Japan.” In J. Roberson and N. Suzuki, eds., Men andMasculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. Pp. 109-125.
2002ReviewEssay: “Japan’s Alternative Modernity in a Globalizing World.” AmericanAnthropologist 104(3): 958-961
2001“ACollision of Discourses: Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese During theDiaoyu/Senkaku Islands Crisis.” In H. Befu and S. Guichard-Anguis,eds., Globalizing Japan. London and New York:Routledge. Pp. 153-175.
2001“Bunkatekibunmyaku kara mita ikigai” (The Cultural Context of What Makes LifeWorth Living). In Y. Takahashi and S. Wada, eds., Ikigai noshakaigaku (The Sociology of What Makes Life Worth Living). Tokyo:Kōbundo. Pp. 53-90.
2001“CulturalIdentity and Consumption in Post-Colonial Hong Kong.” In G. Mathews andT. Lui, eds., Consuming Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press. Pp.287-317.
1998“TheContemporary Meanings of Culture: Why Hong Kong May Be the Most Exciting Placein the World to Do Anthropological Research.” In S. Cheung, ed., On theSouth China Track: Perspectives on Anthropological Research. Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Pp.111-130.
1997“Hèunggóngyàhn:On the Past, Present, and Future of Hong Kong Identity.” Bulletin ofConcerned Asian Scholars 29(3): 3-13. Reprinted in BenjaminLeung, ed., Hong Kong. International Library of Social Change inthe Pacific, Aldershot U.K. Ashgate, 2003, and in Pun Ngai and Yee Lai-man,eds., Narrating Hong Kong Culture and Identity. Hong Kong:Oxford University Press, 2003.
1996“Namesand Identities in the Hong Kong Cultural Supermarket.” DialecticalAnthropology 21 (3,4): 399-419.
1996“TheStuff of Dreams, Fading: Ikigai and ‘the JapaneseSelf.’” Ethos 24 (4): 718-747. Reprinted in D. P. Martinez, ed, ModernJapanese Society and Culture, Volume II: Life Courses, Gender, andthe Self. London: Routledge, 2007.
1996“ThePursuit of a Life Worth Living in Japan and the United States.” Ethnology XXXV(1): 51-62.
Personal interests

I also play musicsometimes. Here is some brief performances with Leah Cheung:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1PlEdTuUaM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBWdjCz3elk