Magnus Fiskesjö

Associate Professor

Overview

I teach in the Department of Anthropology, Cornell University and I am also an elected member of these Cornell units: Southeast Asia Program (SEAP), East Asia Program (EAP); CIAMS (Archaeology); Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA); and Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS)

Research Focus

Some of my research and teaching interests are: General anthropology; the anthropology of children; historical and political anthropology; civilizations and barbarians; spectacles of sovereignty, kingship, and state power; citizenship; autonomy; slavery; genocide and settler colonialism; ethno-politics and interethnic relations; archaeology; cultural heritage, museums and modernity, and more; especially East and Southeast Asia (China, Burma, Cambodia, Taiwan, Japan, etc.); also Europe, and the world at large. 

Publications

Books

  • Stories from an Ancient Land: Perspectives on Wa History and Culture. New York/Oxford: Berghahn: August 2021. Series: Asian Anthropologies. ISBN  978-1-78920-887-0; eISBN 978-1-78920-888-7. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/FiskesjoStories
  • Interview podcast, on Stories from an Ancient Land: Perspectives on Wa History and Culture. New Books Network / Southeast Asian Studies. Hosted by Nick Cheesman. Published Jan. 1, 2023: https://newbooksnetwork.com/stories-from-an-ancient-land
  • China Before China: Johan Gunnar Andersson, Ding Wenjiang, and the Discovery of China’s Prehistory.  Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 2004.
  • The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, the Death of Teddy's Bear and the Sovereign Exception of Guantánamo.  Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.

Book Chapters

Webcast events/lectures/interviews, selection:

Academic Articles, and more:

  • "Mass Detention and Forced Assimilation of Uyghur Children in China." By Magnus Fiskesjö and Rukiye Turdush. CETNI [Centre for East Turkistan National Interest], July 19, 2024. https://cetni.org/?P=7053
  • “Self-kidnappings by Chinese Students Abroad: Mystery Solved. The puzzle presented by these incidents can only be understood in the context of China’s police brutality and growing transnational repression.” The Diplomat, April 8, 2024. https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/self-kidnappings-by-chinese-students-abroad-mystery-solved/
  • “Cambodia’s Heritage Repatriation Successes in Global Perspective.” Southeast Asia Program Bulletin, Fall 2023, 18-19 (also note, pp. 16-17, “Visiting Cambodia and Angkor”). https://hdl.handle.net/1813/113401
  • "Now You See Me, Now You Don’t – Vanishing Acts of Chinese Companies in Xinjiang.” The Diplomat, 8 June 2023. https://thediplomat.com/2023/06/now-you-see-me-now-you-dont-chinese-companies-vanishing-acts-in-xinjiang/ 
  • "How a CCP Propaganda Campaign Targeted the Dalai Lama: The latest smear campaign succeeded beyond China’s wildest dreams, by playing into Western ignorance about Tibetan culture – and self-righteous “cancel culture” on social media.”  The Diplomat, May 20, 2023. https://thediplomat.com/2023/05/how-a-ccp-propaganda-campaign-targeted-the-dalai-lama/ 
  • + [Japanese version, June 1, 2023]: 「ダライ・ラマは小児性愛者」 中国が流した「偽情報」に簡単に騙された欧米...自分こそ正義と信じる人の残念さ - MANIPULATING BIASES - マグヌス・フィスケジョ（コーネル大学准教授、人類学）, 2023年6月1日（木）. https://www.newsweekjapan.jp/stories/world/2023/06/post-101784_5.php
  • "Genocide and Cultural Genocide in China." YetAgain [UK], June 28, 2022. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368337289_Genocide_and_Cultural_Genocide_in_China_Yet_Again_UK_28_June_2022 
  • "Bulldozing Culture: China’s Systematic Destruction of Uyghur Heritage Reveals Genocidal Intent." Cultural Property News, June 23, 2021. https://culturalpropertynews.org/bulldozing-culture-chinas-systematic-destruction-of-uyghur-heritage-reveals-genocidal-intent/
  • "Uyghur Women in China’s Genocide." By Rukiye Turdush and Magnus Fiskesjö.  Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 15.1 (2021): 22–43. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol15/iss1/6/ 
  • Racism with Chinese Characteristics: How China’s Imperial Legacy Underpins State Racism and Violence in Xinjiang." China Channel, Los Angeles Review of Books, January 22, 2021. New link 2022: https://chinachannel.lareviewofbooks.org/2021/01/22/chinese-racism/
  • "Forced Confessions as Identity Conversion in China's Concentration Camps." Monde Chinois Nouvelle Asie 2020/2 (n° 62), 28-43. Special issue on “Les mécanismes de la répression en région ouïghoure [The mechanisms of repression in the Uyghur region]," ed. Vanessa Frangville and Jean-Yves Heurtebise. https://www.cairn.info/revue-monde-chinois-2020-2-page-28.htm
  • "Research ethics, violated." Allegra Lab, One-shots, Essay. May 7, 2020.
  • "Cultural genocide is the new genocide." Pen/Opp, May 5, 2020.
  • "Bury Me With My Comrades: Memorializing Mao's Sent-Down Youth." Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 16, Issue 14, Number 4 (July 15, 2018).
  • "Confessions Made in China." Made in China 3.1 (January-March 2018), p. 18-22; 108-109 (list of references).https://madeinchinajournal.com/2018/05/17/confessions-made-in-china/
  • The Return of the Show Trial: China’s Televised “Confessions.”  Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 15, Issue 13, Number 1. (June 25, 2017). 
  • “The Legacy of the Chinese Empires: Beyond ‘the West and the Rest.’” Education About Asia 22.1 (Spring 2017), 6-10. Special issue on “Contemporary Postcolonial Asia.”
  • “People First: The Wa World of Spirits and Other Enemies.” Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology. Published online: 19 Apr 2017.
  • "Self and Subjectivity in a World of Diasporas: Nicholas Tapp's Anthropology of Hmong Identities." Journal of Social Science (Chiang Mai University, Thailand), (Special issue: "Ethnicity and Mobility: Nicholas Tapp's Anthropology," ed. Aranya Siriphon). 28 (2017), 125-148.
  • "Foreword." In Samak Kosem, ed. Border Twists and Burma Trajectories: Perceptions, Reforms, and Adaptations. Chiang Mai: Center for ASEAN Studies, Chiang Mai University, 2016, pp. iii-v.
  • "Lyxkonsumtion och utrotningskrig" [Luxury consumption and wars of extinction]. Kina-Rapport (Göteborg: Svensk-Kinesiska Föreningen) no. 4 (2015), 32-35. (In Swedish; on the Chinese smuggling and trade in elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn from Africa)
  • "Terra-cotta Conquest: The First Emperor's Clay Army's Blockbuster Tour of the World." Verge: Studies in Global Asias 1 (2015): 162-183.
  • "Universal Museums." Article for "World Heritage" section, ed. Helaine Silverman, in _Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology_. Claire Smith, general editor. New York: Springer, 2014, pp. 7494-7500.
  • "Oscar Montelius and Chinese archaeology." Co-authored with Chen Xingcan. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology [Melbourne, Australia] 24:10 (2014).
  • "Wa Grotesque: Headhunting Theme Parks and the Chinese Nostalgia for Primitive Contemporaries." Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 79 (2014): 497-523.
  • "Introduction to Wa Studies." Journal of Burma Studies 17 (2013): 1 -27.
  • "Outlaws, Barbarians, Slaves: Critical Reflections on Agamben's homo sacer." Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2012): 161-180.
  • "Slavery as the Commodification of People: Wa 'Slaves' and Their Chinese 'Sisters.'" Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 59 (2011): 3-18.
  • "The Reluctant Sovereign: New Adventures of the US Presidential Thanksgiving Turkey." Anthropology Today 26 (2010): 13-17.
  • "Mining, History, and the Anti-State Wa: The Politics of Autonomy Between Burma and China." Journal of Global History 5 (2010): 241-264.
  • "Participant Intoxication and Self–Other Dynamics in the Wa Context."  The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11 (2010): 111-127.
  • "The global repatriation debate and the new 'universal museums,'" in The Handbook of Postcolonialism and Archaeology, eds. Jane Lydon and Uzma Rizvi. World Archaeological Congress Research Handbooks. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2010, in Part III, "Addressing/Redressing the Past: Restitution, Repatriation, and Ethics," 303-310. 
  • "The Trouble with World Culture: Recent Museum Developments in Sweden." Anthropology Today 23.5 (October 2007), 6–11. 
  • "Collections of Chinese Antiquities Outside China: Problems and Hopes." Public Archaeology 5 (2006): 111-126.
  • "Rescuing the Empire: Chinese Nation-Building in the Twentieth Century." European Journal of East Asian Studies 5 (2006): 15-44.
  • "A Foreign Bird in a Golden Cage: Sweden's Asia Collections." Res Publica 65 (2005): 68-80. In Swedish.
  • "Lost Civilizations, Lost Choices." Dushu 4 (2003), 72-75. In Chinese.
  • "The Barbarian Borderland and the Chinese Imagination -- Travellers in Wa Country." Inner Asia 4.1 (2002): 81-99.
  • "Rising From Blood-Stained Fields: Royal Hunting and State Formation in Shang China." Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 72 (2001): 48-192.
  • "The barbarian borderland and the Chinese imagination—Travellers in Wa country." Inner Asia [ISSN: 1464-8172] 4.1 (2002): 81-99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23615425 
  • "The Question of the Farmer Fortress: On the ethno-archaeology of fortified settlements in northern Southeast Asia." Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 21. Special issue: Indo-Pacific Prehistory: The Melaka Papers V, 124-31. 
  • "On the 'Raw' and the 'Cooked' Barbarians of Imperial China." Inner Asia 1.2 (1999), 139-68. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23615574 
     

Opinion pieces (on the Chinese genocide against the Uyghurs since 2017; on China's kidnapping of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, since 2015, etc.) Mostly left out here. --Samples of pieces in English:

 

Select book (and exhibit) reviews:

  • "Cycles of History: Review Essay on Alfred McCoy's To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change." International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, June 2024. https://www.iias.asia/the-review/cycles-history
  • Review of Bertil Lintner, The Wa of Myanmar and China’s Quest for Global Dominance (Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books: 2021), Journal of Asian Studies 82.4 (2023), 759-61. 
  • Review of two books:  by Darren Byler, In the Camps: Life in China’s High-Tech Penal Colony (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), and by Gulbahar Haitiwaji, How I Survived a Chinese "Re-education" Camp: A Uyghur Woman's Story (New York and Oakland: Seven Stories Press, 2022). Journal of Asian Studies 82.4 (2023), 663-665. 
  • Review of Gregory Forth, Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid (New York: Pegasus,2020; 336 pp. ISBN 978-163-936-143-4). Kvartal, 1 dec. 2022. https://kvartal.se/artiklar/har-paabo-fel-ar-vi-inte-ensamma-kvar/ [In Swedish]. 
  • Review of Justin M. Jacobs, The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020; vii, 348 pp. ISBN 978-0-226-71201-7). American Historical Review 127.3 (Sept. 2022), 1496–1497. Published: 29 November 2022. 
  • Review of John McWhorter, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2021). Kvartal, 11 augusti 2022. https://kvartal.se/artiklar/antirasismen-som-infantiliserar-svarta/  [In Swedish]. 
  • Review of Enze Han, Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State Building between China and Southeast Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019; 240 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-006078-7). South East Asia Research [Great Britain], Online, 24 Feb 2021. 
  • Review of Jonathan Friedman, PC Worlds: Political Correctness and Rising Elites at the End of Hegemony (New York: Berghahn, 2019). Kvartal, 8 sept. 2020. https://kvartal.se/artiklar/politiskt-korrekt-ar-ett-maktmedel/
  • Review of Haiming Yan, World Heritage Craze in China: Universal Discourse, National Culture, and Local Memory. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018. ISBN 978-1-78533-804-5). Asian Perspectives 58.2 (2019), 401-404.
  • Review article: "Ancient China reconsidered." Review of Katheryn M. Linduff, Yan Sun, Wei Cao, & Yuanqing Liu, Ancient China and its Eurasian neighbors: Artifacts, Identity, and Death in the Frontier, 3000-700 BCE (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Roderick Campbell, Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State: The Shang and Their World (Cambridge, 2018); and Xiaolong Wu, Material Culture, Power, and Identity in Ancient China (Cambridge, 2017). Antiquity, Volume 92, Issue 366 (Dec. 2018), pp. 1671-1673.
  • Review of Alice Yao, The Ancient Highlands of Southwest China: From Bronze Age to the Han Empire (Oxford 2016); & Erica Brindley, Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c.400 BCE-50 CE (Cambridge 2015), for the Zhejiang University Journal of Art and Archaeology (Hangzhou, China), Vol. 3 (2018), 260-272.
  • Review of Pál Nyíri and Danielle Tan, eds., Chinese Encounters in Southeast Asia: How People, Money, Ideas from China are Changing a Region (Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press, 2017). ISBN: 9780295999302; 9780295999296. China Quarterly 234 (2018), 577-578.
  • Review of Craig Clunas, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017). The Art Newspaper, 295 (Nov. 2017), p. 22.
  • Review of Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Flowers That Kill: Communicative Opacity in Political Spaces (Stanford 2015). American Anthropologist 118.3 (2016), 685-686.
  • Review of Tamara T. Chin, Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (Cambridge, 2014). Journal of Asian Studies 75.3 (2016), 806-807.
  • Review of Sarah Turner, Christine Bonnin, and Jean Michaud, Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22.3 (2016), 750-751.
  • Review of David Faure and Ho Ts'ui-p'ing, eds. Chieftains into Ancestors: Imperial Expansion and Indigenous Society in Southwest China (Vancouver 2013). Asian Highlands Perspectives 40 (2016), 479-488.
  • Review essay: "The Museum Boom in China and the State efforts to Control History" (on Marzia Varutti, Museums in China: The Politics of Representation after Mao [Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 2014]; Kirk Denton, Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory & the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China [Honolulu, 2014]; Amy Jane Barnes, Museum Representations of Maoist China: From Cultural Revolution to Commie Kitsch [Surrey, UK, 2014]. Museum Anthropology Review 9.2 (2015), 96-105.
  • "Hail to the King!" Review of two books by David N. Keightley: Working for His Majesty: Research Notes on Labor Mobilization in Late Shang China (ca.1200-1045 B.C.), as Seen in the Oracle-Bone Inscriptions, with Particular Attention to Handicraft Industries, Agriculture, Warfare, Hunting, Construction, and the Shang's Legacies (Berkeley: University of California-Berkeley, Institute of East Asian Studies, 2012); and The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China, ca. 1200-1045 B.C. (Berkeley: University of California-Berkeley, Institute of East Asian Studies, 2000). Early China 37.1 (2014), 567-573. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/eac.2014.1
  • Review of Unearthing the Nation: Modern Geology and Nationalism in Republican China. By Grace Yen SHEN. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Journal of Asian Studies 73.4 (2014), 1120-1122. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021911814001259
  • Review of Mandy Sadan, Being and Becoming Kachin: Histories Beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma. (Oxford & London: Oxford University Press & the British Academy, 2013; with an accompanying website, "Research Notes: Fieldwork Notes, Photographs and Translations" ). Thailand-Laos-Cambodia [TLC] network/New Mandala Review LXX.  In: New Mandala: New Perspectives on Southeast Asia, May 16, 2014.
  • Review of Michael Oppitz et al, eds. Naga Identities: Changing Local Cultures in the Northeast of India (Gent: Snoeck Publishers, 2008). Asian Highlands Perspectives 28 (2013): 299-304.
  • Review of Gunnar Skirbekk, Multiple Modernities: A Tale of Scandinavian Experiences (Hong Kong: Chinese Univ. Press, 2011). Journal of World History 24.3 (2013), 707-10.
  • Review of Berma Klein Goldewijk et al, eds. Cultural Emergency in Conflict and Disaster (Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2011). Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology (2012); iFirst article, pp. 1–3.
  • Review of Michael Keevak, Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). Journal of World History 23.3 (2012), 676-80.  
  • Review of Koen Wellens, Religious Revival in the Tibetan Borderlands: The Premi of Southwest China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010). Anthropos 107.1 (2012), 314-15. 
  • Review of Flora Sapio, Sovereign Power and the Law in China: Zones of Exception in the Criminal Justice System (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Journal of Asian Studies 70.4 (2011), 1143-44. 
  • Review essay, "Writing identities—or weaving the social fabric?" on Writing With Thread: Traditional Textiles of Southwest Chinese Minorities by Angela Sheng, et al. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Art Gallery, 2009. Museum Anthropology Review 4.2 (2010), 196-201. http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/mar/issue/archive
  • Review of Perry Johansson, Sinofilerna. Kinakunskap, samlande och politik från Sven Hedin till Jan Myrdal [The sinophiles: China studies, collecting and politics from Sven Hedin to Jan Myrdal]. Stockholm: Carlssons, 2008. China Review International 16.2 (2009), 216-219. (Issue appeared in 2010)
  • "The Reappearance of Yangshao? Reflections on Unmourned Artifacts." (Review essay, on the 2007 Chinese documentary Cutting through the fog of history: The re-appearance of the Yangshao cultural relics). China Heritage Quarterly 23 (2010) http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/scholarship.php?searchterm=023_yangshao.inc&issue=023
  • Review of Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters, by David Westbrook. Journal of World History 21.1 (2010), 172-76.
  • Review of Fieldwork Connections: The Fabric of Ethnographic Collaboration in China and America, by Bamo Ayi, Stevan Harrell, & Ma Lunzy. Journal of Asian Studies 68.3 (2009), 927-28.
  • Review of Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-250 BC) by Lothar von Falkenhausen. American Anthropologist 110.1 (2008), 150–51. 
  • Review of the exhibit "Treasures of the Sons of Heaven: The Imperial Collection from the National Palace Museum, Taipei," Altes Museum, Berlin, 2003. East Asian Journal [London], 1.2 (2003/2), 98-100. 
  • Review of 1421: The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin Menzies. Axess [Stockholm, Sweden], February 25, 2003, 42-43 (In Swedish). 
  • Review of Exploring China's Past: New Discoveries and Studies in Archaeology and Art, ed. R. Whitfield and Wang Tao (London, 2001). Arts Asiatiques 57 (2002), 240-41. 
  • Review of Leshi yanjiu [Studies on the History of the Le Kingdom] and Daizu shenling chongbai mizong [Dai spirits worship] by Zhu Depu. Crossroads–An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12.2 (1999), 115-18. 
  • Review of An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of China, by James S. Olson. H-NET Book Review, published by H-Asia, the H-Net list for Asian History and Culture, Dec. 15, 1998; archived at: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
  • Review of The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia by Charles Higham. Journal of Asian Studies 56.1 (1997), 251-53.

 

 

In the news

Image of Magnus Fiskesjö
201 McGraw Hall
magnus.fiskesjo@cornell.edu

Education

Lund University, Sweden, BA equivalent 1986 (undergraduate studies also at the University of Stockholm, Sweden; Copenhagen University, Denmark; and Fudan university, Shanghai, China).

Koobi Fora Field School in African Archaeology & Paleoanthropology, 1992.

University of Chicago, Dept. of East Asian Languages & Civilizations, MA, 1994.

University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology, and Dept. of East Asian Languages & Civilizations, joint PhD degree, 2000.

Departments and programs

  • Anthropology
  • Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS)

Affiliated Colleges

  • College of Arts and Sciences

Links