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Copyright 2013 Wenyi Zhang © Copyright 2013 Wenyi Zhang CONSENSUS AND ATTRACTORS: THE DYNAMICS OF KNOWLEDGE CIRCULATION AND TRANSFORMATION IN SOUTHWEST CHINA BY WENYI ZHANG DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Janet D. Keller, co-Chair Professor F. K. Lehman, co-Chair Associate Professor Andrew Orta Associate Professor Martin F. Manalansan IV ABSTRACT This research, though a case study with the ethnic Jinghpo, proposes an inter-disciplinary framework for addressing a basic question in the cognitive sciences and in anthropology – how people reach agreement in daily life. Jinghpo live astride the border of Burma, China, and India, and were well-known in anthropological literature as Kachin. Since the early 2000s, Jinghpo have undergone a crisis in drugs/AIDS. People’s learning and use of knowledge about drugs/AIDS are shaped by four inter-woven knowledge systems: Jinghpo sacrifice healing, Christianity, modern bio-medicine introduced by the Chinese government, and southwest Chinese folk religions. Based on my 20 months of fieldwork, I investigate how public health information transforms into individually tailored effective knowledge, or a social consensus that shapes behavior. Such consensus derives from micro-level chaotic interactions among individuals of quasi-infinite diversities, who strive to be ethical citizens, religiously righteous persons, and morally un-stigmatized patients. Scholars generally highlight initial conditions and resultant consensus, but neglect or normalize the “middle course” of chaotic interactions among subjects who may eventually reach consensus. To explore such neglected chaotic processes, I draw on the concept of an “attractor” from chaos theory to formulate my Major Hypothesis: In chaos theory an “attractor” is regularities more or less accidentally emerging from, then normalizing, micro-level chaotic interactions. I hypothesize that a social consensus arises as an “attractor”. I define an “attractor” in knowledge circulation as a convincing argument that attracts people, reduces micro-level interactional chaos, bridges and absorbs controversies, and creates relative uniformity. A consensus is also influenced by the political economy of drugs /AIDS and of the politics of knowledge production in China. To accommodate such ii influence, I formulate an Alternative Hypothesis: inter/intra-ethnic power functions as an “attractor” in the derivation of a social consensus. In fieldwork, I followed the flow of 9 cases of knowledge circulation, with complementation from interviews and filming. Analysis demonstrates that at certain moments, a balance among knowledge systems formulated a stable configuration of initial conditions and contingencies, by which one could predict what future interactions would be. More often, a balance was broken, leading to a different balance or maintaining a state of disorder. Using the concept of an “attractor” I analyze how micro-level chaos in each case generates such a balance. Using my data I am also able to argue that power functions as an “attractor” during the derivation of a consensus. I therefore verify both hypotheses. This project combines my prior work in physics and in anthropology, and will contribute to the broader currents in the Chinese studies, the cognitive sciences, and anthropology. First, I propose a dynamic framework that understands Southwest China as not only an intersection between China and mainland Southeast Asia, but as an active space that drives the two areas into interaction. By focusing on the interactions among the four knowledge systems, my framework integrates three approaches in the literature to understanding Southwest China: 1) That of historians who explore the politico -economic incorporation of ethnic minorities in Southwest China into the imperial Chinese court. 2) That of anthropologists who focus on the Chinese government’s current agenda of nation-state building, treating minorities in Southwest China as a way to reflect on modern China’s transformations or to “annotate” contemporary mainland Chinese reform. 3) That of scholars with a Southeast Asia perspective, who consider Southwest China a politico-economic and socio-cultural intersection between China and mainland Southeast Asia. iii Second, this research reveals the cognitive dynamics of achieving social consensus in real-life contexts rather than in the restricted contexts of artificial modeling. An “attractor” represents a contingent combination of socio-cultural structures, power relations, socio-historical contingencies, individual particularities, and human agent. A focus on an “attractor” enables me to explore alternation of order and chaos, and of predictability of structures and randomness of contingencies. I therefore propose a framework for understanding social complexity derived from quasi-infinite diversities and inherent socio-historical randomness, which is a critical yet under-addressed issue in anthropology. My research, by formulating quasi-infinite diversities organized by an “attractor”, tames untraceable patterns of interaction and reflection into traceable regularities. Third, taking the two hypotheses together I argue that the source of a social consensus and the function of power relations can be treated as two instantiations of an “attractor” in knowledge circulation. My project unifies the cognitive process of a social consensus and the socio-political function of power relations. It bridges cognitive / psychological anthropology and studies of power relations, fields long separated by a lack of communication and dynamic reconciliation. Fourth, my framework integrates two parallel, though connected, approaches to human cognition: the computational approach that treats cognition as a Turing Machine of information-input/output, and the non-computational approach that explores knowledge acquisition through situated learning, the senses, and imagination, etc. I propose that cognition functions (as illustrated by the derivation of a social consensus) as an “attractor”, its computational mechanism serves as a structural force, and situated learning as contingencies. iv To my parents v Notes on Jinghpo and Chinese Orthography All Jinghpo language used in the dissertation is in italics. The orthography and phonetic transcription used here are based on the standard Jinghpo (nhkum33 ga31, Jinghpo spoken in Tongbiguan Village Tract, Yingjiang County, which was traditionally the political domain of the most powerful orthodox chiefs in China, Nhkum33, before 1953. Ga31 means language). My fieldwork village, Sama, was traditionally the headquarters of the Nhkum33 chiefs. The standard Jinghpo orthography does not mark tones. Many factual errors in Jinghpo studies are partially due to the use of the Jinghpo-English dictionary by Hanson (1913), in which tones are not marked. I will mark tones for all used Jinghpo words used here, except for places and personal names. The four tones of Jinghpo are marked by superscript numbers: 33 (mid-level); 31 (low falling); 55 (high-level); 51 (high falling). For details see Xu et al. 1983. All Chinese used in the dissertation is in quotes. I provide both Pinyin spelling and characters. The four tones of Chinese are marked as the follows (take the vowel a as an example): ā mid-level á low rising ǎ low falling à high falling vi Preface and Acknowledgements In this dissertation, I address a basic question in the cognitive sciences and in anthropology – how people reach agreement in their daily life. Sometimes an idea stands out and people reach an agreement, at other times people simply disagree. The process leading to agreement becomes exponentially complex when more individuals involve themselves in it. I aim to understand how an agreement derives from the micro-level complex interactions among individuals by drawing on complexity/chaos theory. I consider my research a technical treatment of chaos theory for exploring the cognitive dynamics of knowledge circulation and transformation, though it is not expressed in mathematical terms. I examine details of the good and bad fortune of people’s daily life, love, hatred, etc. These details are deeply bound in particular time and space, but I aim to specify the underlying principles and dynamics that go beyond the locality of specific time and space. In this sense, my research should not be treated as a metaphorical use of chaos theory. An exploration of the details of individuals’ daily life requires systematic and objective investigation on the one hand, and sensitive as well as subjective appreciation of villagers and their life on the other hand. It requires a view that highlights the integratedness of human life. Unfortunately, our knowledge about humans and their societies has been partitioned by various subjects of science, the humanities, and art. Each subject provides understandings of particular aspects of integrated human life, which might otherwise be inaccessible. And the partition also seduces people to unconsciously set up single-minded views and cultivates indifference, or even hostility, among these views. Current antagonism between humanist and scientific approaches in anthropology has undermined the goal of anthropology as a comprehensive endeavor to understand humans and their cultures. I heartily resist such demarcation and consider the antagonism detrimental. I aim to vii understand
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