My Other Research
Collective Memory and Social Movement
I have done a research project about the Chinese World War II Reparations Movement against Japan (中国对日索赔运动). Two publications come out of this project:
Bin Xu and Gary Alan Fine. 2010. “Memory Movement and State-Society Relationship in Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement against Japan.” Pp.166-189 in Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory, edited by Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz. Palgrave-McMillan.
Bin Xu and Xiaoyu Pu. 2010. “Dynamic Statism and Memory Politics: A Case Analysis of the Chinese War Reparations Movement.” China Quarterly 201(1): 156-175.
- Winner of Best Graduate Student Paper from Asia and Asian America Section of American Sociological Association, 2010
One of my dissertation chapters is about commemoration in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake: the three-day national mourning.
I have also worked with Gary Alan Fine on reputation of a China expert Owen Lattimore in the McCarthyist era. The paper is being revised and submitted to a journal.
Social Theory
I am particularly interested in Durkheimian social theory and micro-sociological theories about interactions. This unusual combination leads to my dissertation about solidarity and its fate after collective effervescence and its relationship to civil society and public sphere.
Disaster Research
This is my developing interest based on my fieldwork in the Sichuan earthquake zone. In addition to its practical aspect, I am more interested in political aspect. An essay with some of my ideas about the topic can be found in:
Bin Xu. 2009. “Durkheim in Sichuan: The Earthquake, National Solidarity, and the Politics of Small Things” Social Psychology Quarterly 72 (1)