“We Want to Start With What People Are Worried About in their Own Lives”: Toward an anthropology of “common concerns”
An Interview with Professor Biao Xiang, by Zdeněk Uherek, Adam Horálek
Keywords:
Max Planck IInstitute for Social Anthropology , Biao Xiang, China, Anthropology of common concernsAbstract
Biao Xiang has been the director of the department for the Anthropology of Economic Experimentation at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale in Germany since 2020. Prior to setting up the department, one of three at the institute, he was a professor at St Hugh’s College at Oxford University. Biao Xiang completed his doctoral thesis – Global Body Shopping – at Oxford in 2006. He has become a prominent personality for his work, which focuses on economic anthropology and migration. To date, he has published over 100 articles and books, many of which touch on the theory and methodology of anthropology as a whole, and the position of social anthropology in society. As the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology is a key institution for the academic community, especially in Central Europe, and an important meeting point for PhD students and senior researchers, we asked the new director about his first experiences in the position, his personal academic goals, his ideas about the direction of social anthropology, and his plans regarding communication with the academic community.