From around the year 2000, Malian women have begun to actively involve themselves in trans-national trade with Dubai (UAE) and Guangzhou (China). They travel alone and purchase commodities by themselves using the help of the Malian diaspora and the commercial network.

Although there have been women merchants in Mali’s past, they have gone unnoticed because of the mono-gendered view of the history of long-distance trade. Even in current-day Mali, studies on women’s economic activities tend to be limited to those describing vending in the market.

Observing Malian women working in the market as well as conducting trans-national trade in contemporary Mali, we realise the diversification of their economic activities and the social change that has occurred in Malian society.

Focusing upon the disciplinary formations of Chinese anthropology in the pre-war years (1929-1945), the author examines the “contests” between the varied sub-traditions, chiefly including the Yanda school of sociological ethnography and Academia Sinica school of historical ethnology. These scholarly traditions were invented by different groups of newly returned “students studying abroad” (liuxuesheng) who, having learnt sociology, anthropology, and ethnology in different Western nations, brought home different conceptions of the disciplines. As the author argues, the formations were derived from “Westernization”; but neither were they the same, nor were they opposed to “indigenization.” As varied approaches to disciplinary modernity, they were different combinations of Western and Eastern discourses, each of which was in turn internally varied. Despite their origins in “international exchanges,” they did not develop any concept of internationality or, from Marcel Mauss’s perspective, “civilization.” The problem has continued to trouble Chinese anthropologists in the past decades.

This paper aims to summarize the academic influence of Japanese anthropology in the Mainland of China. It focuses on the post-1980s and also involves The Customary Practice Survey of China Village (中国農村慣行調査) by the prewar South Manchuria Railway Company (満鉄 — hereinafter referred to as “SMRC”). The “Japanese Anthropology” mentioned in this paper refers to that based in Japan. The researchers include not only ethnic Japanese nationals, but also their Chinese counterparts working in Japan, Japanese people studying (or working) in China, and also Chinese Mainland scholars with anthropology training in Japan. The results of the research are not restricted to the Japanese language; there are more anthropology works in Chinese translation or published in Chinese.

The series of academic symposia conducted by JASCA in recent years reflects the anxiety of Japanese cultural anthropologists about their “presence” in the world academic system of anthropology, which is always conducted/led by anthropologists from Europe and the U.S. It also shows that JASCA is taking the initiative in raising its profile, through using the English language to construct or reconstruct an interactive network of anthropology among the three major countries in East Asia, that is Japan, China and South Korea. This move is initiated with the strong intention to promote Japanese anthropology and East Asian anthropology’s influence in the world academic system of anthropology.