Conference: Animals in Asian Society, History and Thought, Manchester (UK), 25-26 Jan 2013



Conference: Animals in Asian Society, History and Thought, Manchester 25-26.01.2013

While rice dominates the modern view, animals have always played a crucial role in Asian cultures. Cicada, monkeys, crabs, dugs and horses feature prominently in Chinese and Japanese arts and crafts, philosophy and poetry. Much less known is that animals, have also always been central to this region’s historical social, political, and economic development, its ritual and intellectual life. Are animals an overlooked topic? This conference brings together expert to explore animals as a way to gain new insights into the changes of Asian societies and cultures, their scientific approach and technological development, past and present. What role did and does Chinese and Japanese thought assign to animals, as a resource, as a living being, and in state politics and individual lives?

For further information and registration please contact Dagmar.Schaefer@Manchester.ac.uk or Johannes.Lotze@postgrad.Manchester.ac.uk.

Conference venue: The University of Manchester, Sackville Street building, G13B.

Catering will be provided for speakers only.

Friday 25-01-2013
9:15 Introduction

Session 1: Rites and resources
9:30-10:15 Roel Sterckx: Animal to edible: The ritualization of animals in early China.
10:15-11:00 Adam Schwartz: The ritual resources of a non-royal Shang Dynasty ancestral cult, with a discussion of the process by which sacrificial animals are offered.
11:15-12:00 Vincent Goossaert: Animals in Chinese morality books, Song to the present.
12:00-12:45 Todd W. Foley: Wolf Totem and the Paradigm of Human and Animal in Postsocialist China

Session 2: Planning living beings: state management and people
13:45-14:30 Francesca Bray: Where did the animals go? Presence and absence of livestock in Chinese agricultural treatises.
14:30-15:15 Paul Hansen: Becoming Bovine: Mechanics and Metamorphosis in Hokkaido’s Animal-human-machine.
15:30-16:15 Han Yi/Dagmar Schäfer: Medicine for invalids: Song Dynastic institutions for human and veterinary health care.
16:15-17:00 Sare Aricanli, Equine Medicine in the Qing Imperial World.
17:15-18:00 Liz Chee Pui Yee: From Bear to Bile: The Commodification of Animals in Chinese Medicine.
18:00-18:45 Rebecca Wong: Tiger: An Underground Exotic Skin Trade.

Saturday 26-01-2013

Session 3: Scholarly things, living creatures
9:30-10:15 Keith N Knapp: Noble creatures: Filial and righteous animals in early medieval Chinese thought.
10:15- 11:00 Martina Siebert: Animal texts – text animals.
11:30-12:15 Zheng Xinxian: Birds matter: The importance of falcons and falconry in Qing China.
12:15-13:00 Lisa Onaga: Bombyx as bioreactor? How tactile understandings of the domesticated silkworm changed in early twentieth century Japan.
14:00 Final Discussion
15:00 End of conference