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Pál Nyíri
Pál Nyíri
Department of Anthropology
I came to the Anthropology department in 2004 with a diverse intellectual baggage: undergraduate studies of chemistry in Moscow, Budapest, and New Jersey; graduate training in Asian studies in Oregon; a PhD in history in Moscow; and research fellowships in Oxford, Budapest, and Berlin.
My areas of interest are human mobility (particularly migration and tourism) and the cultural politics surrounding its management and containment. I have done fieldwork among Chinese migrants in several European countries, as well as in China itself and in Russia. My latest books are on Chinese in Eastern Europe, on the cultural politics of the construction of tourist sites in China and on migrant children in Hungarian schools. The latter is an outcome of my more policy-oriented work, which has focused on migration policy and xenophobia in Hungary and included commissions from the Council of Europe, the International Organization for Migration, the Hungarian Commissioner for Citizens’ Rights, and the Migration Policy Group (Brussels).
My next book, entitled Mobility and Cultural Authority in Contemporary China, will hopefully be out in 2008 from the University of Washington Press. In it, I argue that encouraging various forms of mobility, from domestic tourism to overseas migration, has become integral to the Chinese state’s modernization project. At the same time, the state tries to limit potential challenges to its view of the nation by controlling the interpretations of places that mobile people encounter.
My teaching interests are in issue-focused cross-departmental teaching; in new approaches to area studies; and in intensive methods (such as summer schools) of teaching pre- and postdoctoral researchers and practitioners (e.g. government, business). Together with Joana Breidenbach, I have developed an Internet-based text on the study of contemporary China in order to reach advanced students and researchers with poor access to libraries and qualified teachers. My courses have focused on migration, ethnicity, diasporas, transnationalism, tourism, transnational religion, and contemporary China.
My research on Chinese migration has received some media attention, including interviews in The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, de Volkskrant, NRC Handelsblad, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, and ORF (Austrian public radio) as well as Hungarian newspapers, radio and television. I have also contributed a number of opinion pieces, essays and documentary fiction to Hungarian, English, Dutch, German and Chinese-language periodicals.
I also contribute to two blogs: China Can’t Stop Saying No (http://chinasaysno.wordpress.com ), on Chinese nationalism, the Internet, and consumer culture; and Culture Matters (http://culturematters.wordpress.com ), the Anthropology department’s blog devoted to contemporary issues on which anthropology has something to say.
Research interests
Political anthropology of ethnicity; migration, mobility, and transnationalism; migration policy and xenophobia; representations of culture in business and government; tourism; comparative post-communism
Research topics
Contemporary Chinese migration and overseas Chinese in Europe and Southeast Asia (transnationalism, organisations, politics, religion, gender, representations); tourism in China and Russia; migration policy and xenophobia in Europe; the idea of “culture” in public institutions; scientists in the Soviet Union
Current research
My current research investigates how Chinese development aid and investment projects abroad are linked to migration; what role these play in ideas about modernity in China itself; and how they affect the relationship between Chinese migrants and local populations. I am planning short-term fieldwork in Cambodia in 2008 and have applied, together with Chris Lyttleton and Debra McDougall, for funding for an ambitious comparative project that would look at Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Projects by several of our PhD students – Merriden Varrall, Johanes Herlijanto, Li Yunxia, Zhang Juan and Caroline Grillot – broadly connect to this theme as they investigate migration and trade across China’s borders with Vietnam and Laos, Chinese development projects in Laos and Indonesia, and the ethnography of Chinese foreign policy-making.
Meanwhile, Joana Breidenbach and I are putting the final touches to a book entitled “Because It’s Their Culture!”, which will be published by the University of Washington Press. The book critically examines the obsession with cultural difference in a range of public debates, from foreign policy to corporate management.
At the same time, recent Chinese demonstrations in support of the Olympic torch around the world have reignited my interest in Chinese nationalism. I am currently writing an article on these demonstrations.
Authored books
Maxikulti (with Joana Breidenbach). Frankfurt: Campus, 2008.
Chinese in Russia and Eastern Europe: A Middleman Minority in a Transnational Era. Abingdon: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2007.
Scenic Spots: The Construction of the Chinese Tourist site and the Question of Cultural Authority. Seattle: University of Washington Press, forthcoming.
Transnational Chinese: Fujianese Migrants in Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, with Frank N. Pieke, Pál Nyíri, Mette Thunø and Antonella Ceccagno.
New Chinese Migrants in Europe. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 1999.
Edited books
Nem kívánt gyerekek? Migránsok a magyar közoktatásban (Unwanted children? Migrants in Hungary’s public education system). Budapest: Centre for International Migration and Refugee Studies, Institute for Political Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, forthcoming, with Margit Feischmidt.
China Inside Out. Contemporary Chinese Nationalism and Transnationalism. 2002. http://cio.ceu.hu. Paper edition: Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004, with Joana Breidenbach.
Globalising Chinese Migration. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2002, with Igor R. Saveliev.
Diasporas and Politics. Budapest: Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies, 2001, with Maryellen Fullerton and Judit Tóth.
Selected book chapters, articles and reports in English
‘Struggling for Mobility: Migration, Tourism, and Cultural Authority in Contemporary China,’ in Stephen Greenblatt, ed. Cultural Mobility. A New Manifesto for Cultural Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Between encouragement and control: tourism, modernity and discipline in China,’ in Tim Winter, T. C. Chang and Peggy Teo, eds. Asia on Tour: Exploring the Rise of Asian Tourism. London: Routledge, 2008.
‘A Requiem for Songpan, or Once More about China’s Civilizing Mission,’ in Christophe Jaffrelot and Peter van der Veer, eds. Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and China. New Delhi, Los Angeles, London, and Singapore: SAGE, 2008, pp. 140-156.
‘The Altai Road: Visions of Development across the Russian-Chinese Border,’ Development and Change, 39(1) (January 2008),with Joana Breidenbach, ‘”Our Common Heritage:” New Tourist Nations, Post-‘Socialist’ Pedagogy, and the Globalization of Nature,’ Current Anthropology, 48: 322-330 (2007), with Joana Breidenbach.
‘The Yellow Man’s Burden: Chinese Migrants on a Civilizing Mission,’ The China Journal, 56:83-106 (July 2006).
‘The Nation-State, Public Education and the Logic of Migration: Chinese Students in Hungary,’ The Australian Journal of Anthropology 17(1):32-46 (2006).
‘GlobalModernizers or Local Subalterns? Parallel Perceptions of Chinese Transnationals in Hungary,’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31(4):659-674 (2005).
'Moving Targets: Chinese Christian Proselytism among Transnational Migrants from the PRC,' European Journal of East Asian Studies, v. 2, no. 2 (Autumn 2003), pp. 263-302.
'Chinese in Hungary and their Significant Others: A Multi-Sited Approach to Transnational Practice and Discourse', Identities, 9(1):69-86 (2002).
'Expatriating is Patriotic? The discourse on ‘new migrants’ in the People’s Republic of China and identity construction among recent migrants from the PRC', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27(4): 635-653 (October 2001), reprinted in Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Katie Willis, eds. State/Nation/Transnation: Perspectives on Transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific. London andNew York: Routledge, 2004, pp. 120-143.
Xenophobia in Hungary: a regional comparison. Systemic sources and possible solutions. Budapest: Center for Policy Studies, Central European University, 2003. http://www.ceu.hu/cps/pub/pub_polstud.htm
Media experience
Interviews on Hungarian television and public radio, on ORF (Austrian public radio) English service, in NRC Handelsblad and De Volkskrant (Dutch), Népszabadság (Hungarian), Frankfurter Allgemeine (German), The Los Angeles Times and The Guardian newspapers on Chinese migration to Europe and on physicists in the Soviet Union
Contributor of opinion pieces, essays and documentary fiction to Hungarian, English, Dutch, German and Chinese-language periodicals, including Népszabadság, Heti Világgazdaság, Mozgó Világ, NRC Handelsblad, brand eins, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Consultancy
Hungarian Statistical Office, Transnationalism and Localization in an Ethnic Economy: Entrepreneurship and Employment Strategies of Chinese Migrants in Hungary, 2003,
International Organization for Migration, Chinese Migration to Eastern Europe, 2002,
Council of Europe, New Ethnic Groups in Eastern Europe: The Case of Chinese in Hungary, 2002,
Migration Policy Group, Hungary country report on approaches to the management of immigration,
British and German law firms (asylum cases, 2000-2004)