Magnus Fiskesjö

Source: https://anthropology.cornell.edu/magnus-fiskesjo Parent: https://anthropology.cornell.edu/anthropology-faculty

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

"The Ritual Language of Forced Confessions in China.” Oxford Handbook of Ritual Language, ed. David Tavarez. Oxford: Oxford University Press, January 25, 2025, Chapter 11, pp. 228–248. ISBN: 9780192868091. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-ritual-language-9780192868091
“Silence or Bravery: Museums Facing Contemporary Atrocities in China and Burma.” In: Museums and Mass Violence. Edited by Paul Morrow, Amy Sodaro, and Leora Kahn. London: Routledge, 2024. ISBN 9781032605449. https://www.routledge.com/Museums-and-Mass-Violence/Morrow-Sodaro-Kahn/p/book/9781032605449
"Ancient DNA and the Politics of Ethnicity in Neo-Nationalist China." In Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA, eds. Daniel Strand & Anna Källén, & Charlotte Mulcore. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, July 2024, 145-166. Open access: Ch. 7, https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5800/Critical-Perspectives-on-Ancient-DNA
"Wa History: Agency and Victimization." In Chasing Traces: History and Ethnography in the Uplands of Socialist Asia, edited by Jean Michaud and Pierre Petit. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2024, 77-98. https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/chasing-traces-history-and-ethnography-in-the-uplands-of-socialist-asia/
“Wa Communities in the China-Myanmar Borderlands.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Oxford University Press. Article published March 20, 2024. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.857
"State Strategies to Implement (and Hide) Genocide in China and Myanmar, Since 2017.” Invited contribution, to Handbook of Genocide Studies, edited by David J. Simon and Leora Kahn. Cheltenham, Glos [England]: Edwar Elgar Publishing, 2023, pp. 123-41.
"Identities and Polities in the Maelstrom of World-System Cycles: The Wa of the Burma-China borderlands." Chapter 25, in Routledge Handbook of the Modern Anthropology of Highland Asia, ed. Michael Heneise and Jelle JP Wouters. London: Routledge, 2022, 339-350.
"Agamben and the Chinese Forced-Confession Ritual." Chapter 2, in Philosophy on Fieldwork: Case Studies in Anthropological Analysis, ed. Nils Bubandt and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer. London: Routledge, 2022, pp. 27-47.
"Le Xinjiang chinois, "nouvelle frontière" de l'épuration nationale" [China's Xinjiang: The 'New Frontier' of National Purification]. In: Anne Cheng, ed. Penser en Chine. Paris: Gallimard, 2021, pp. 391-433. Collection Folio essais (n° 669). ISBN: 9782072870927. In French. http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Folio/Folio-essais/Penser-en-Chine
"Who's Afraid of Confucius? Fear of Encompassment in the Global Debates over the Confucius Institutes." Chapter 9, in Franck Billé and Sören Urbansky, eds., Yellow Perils: China Narratives in the Contemporary World. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018, 221-245. Open access (2022): https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/81591 ; http://hdl.handle.net/10125/81591
"China's Animal Neighbors." In: The Art of Neighbouring: Making Relations Across China's Borders. Eds. Martin Saxer and Zhang Juan. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 2017.
"Chinese Autochthony and the Eurasian Context: Archaeology, Mythmaking and Johan Gunnar Andersson's 'Western Origins.'" In: Fitful Histories and Unruly Publics: Rethinking Temporality and Community in Eurasian Archaeology. Eds. Kathryn O. Weber, et al. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016, 303-320. (Proceedings from the Fourth Conference on Eurasian Archaeology, 2012).
"Art and Science as competing values in the formation of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities." In: Collectors, Collections, and Collecting the Arts of China: Histories and Challenges. Ed. Lai, Guolong. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014, 67-98.
"Gifts and debts: The morality of fieldwork in the Wa lands on the China-Burma frontier." In: Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia. Ed. Turner, Sarah. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013, 61-79.
"Science across borders: Johan Gunnar Andersson and Ding Wenjiang." In Denise M. Glover, Stevan Harrell, Charles McKhann, and Margaret Swain, eds. Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands, 1880-1950. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011, 240-66. ISBN: 9780295991177
"Giorgio Agamben och den kommande gemenskapen" [Giorgio Agamben and the coming community]. In: Sociologik: Tio essäer om socialitet och tänkande [Sociologics. Ten essays on sociality and thought]. Eds. Christian Abrahamsson et al. Stockholm: Santérus, 2011, 53-87. In Swedish
"The Politics of Cultural Heritage." In: Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism. London: Routledge, 2010, pp. 225-245.
"The Autonomy of Naming: Kinship, Power and Ethnonymy in the Wa lands of the Southeast Asia-China Frontiers." In: Personal Names in Asia: History, Culture and Identity. Singapore: University of Singapore Press, 2009, pp. 150-174.

Webcast events/lectures/interviews, selection:

“Uyghur Children in China’s Genocide” symposium, Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, 1-5 p.m. Goldwin Smith Hall, room 76, Cornell University. Recording: https://www.cornell.edu/video/uyghur-children-symposium-2023
“How the Chinese Communist Party ran a global propaganda campaign against the Dalai Lama.” May 24, 2023. Online interview, Global Order [New Delhi].  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJVWOWDHmhU
"Chen Quanguo and Reinhard Heydrich: Parallel Features of Communist Chinese and Nazi German genocidal and forced-assimilation policies." Presentation at "Mapping China’s footprint in the world III;" Sinopsis workshop on the CCP’s global influence, Prague, Oct. 12-13, 2020. https://sinopsis.cz/en/workshop3/ [recording for DAY 1, 2:27:30 2:54:50]; + another version of the same recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCOxTS-D0NM (2:59:45-3:27:00)
"TV Tears Made of Fear: Anatomy of the Spectacle of Power in China's Forced Confessions." Cornell Contemporary China Initiative lecture series. Cornell University, November 14, 2016.
"Heritage and Ancestors: The Politics of Chinese Museums and Historical Memory." Elvera Kwang Siam Lim Memorial Lecture/Center for Chinese Studies, University of California-Berkeley, November 6, 2015.

Academic Articles, and more:

"Comparing genocides: Forced assimilation in Nazi Europe and East Turkestan (Xinjiang), China." Sinopsis [Prague, Czech Republic]. 26 September 2025. https://sinopsis.cz/en/comparing-genocides-forced-assimilation-in-nazi-europe-and-east-turkestan-xinjiang-china/
"Kinas folkmord i Östturkestan." Aiolos 78–79 (2024), "Centralasien." Pp. 178-187. https://aiolos.info/aiolos-78-79-centralasien/ [Article in Swedish on the historical background to China's genocide against the Uyghurs]
"从帝国遗产到 DNA 政治：中国民族主义与少数民族政策的深层逻辑. [From Imperial Legacy to DNA Politics: The Deeper Logic of Chinese Nationalism and Minority Policies]. Interviewed by Haofeng Yu.《中国民主季刊》2024年第四季 China Journal of Democracy 2.4, October 2024, pp. 26-48. https://chinademocrats.org/?p=4069
"China, Empire, and World Anthropology." Anthropology Today 40.4 (2024), 27–28. Published Sept. 4, 2024. https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12906
"China’s Genocide Tourism Strategy: The Use of Tourism as a Propaganda Weapon is An Old Trick of Authoritarian Regimes." The Diplomat, Aug. 19, 2024. https://thediplomat.com/2024/08/chinas-genocide-tourism-strategy/
"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 Asie2020/2 (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 incl. on the Chinese genocide against the Uyghurs since 2017; on China's kidnapping of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, since 2015, etc. --Samples:

"Princeton Universitys förlagschef deltar i Kinas propagandacirkus i folkmordets Xinjiang." Kina-Media, 10 juli 2025. https://kinamedia.se/2025/07/10/princeton-universitys-forlagschef-deltar-i-kinas-propagandacirkus-i-folkmordets-xinjiang/ [in Swedish, on the director of Princeton University Press covering for the Uyghur genocide]
"Soldaters dödande av civila i Xinjiang läcker ut på Kinas sociala medier." KinaMedia, 9 oktober 2024. https://kinamedia.se/2024/10/09/soldaters-dodande-av-civila-i-xinjiang-lacker-ut-pa-kinas-sociala-medier/ [in Swedish, on the Chinese soldiers chatting online about how they massacred civilians in Xinjiang, some seemingly regretting it]
Guest Room: Cornell Should Suspend Its China Projects.” Cornell Daily Sun, [27 aug. 2019]. https://cornellsun.com/2019/08/27/guest-room-cornell-should-suspend-its-china-projects/
"With Forced Confessions, the Chinese Regime Pushes a Public Lie." The Globe and Mail [Toronto], Opinion, 23 August 2019. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-with-forced-confessions-china-pushes-a-public-lie/
"South Africa should take the lead in criticising the cultural genocide in Xinjiang." OP-ED, The Daily Maverick [Johannesburg], 28 July 2019. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-07-28-south-africa-should-take-the-lead-in-criticising-the-cultural-genocide-in-xinjiang/
"China's Thousandfold Guantánamos." With China's assault on scores of leading academics and intellectuals, business as usual is no longer possible, writes Magnus Fiskesjö. Inside Higher Ed, April 8, 2019. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/04/08/universities-should-not-ignore-chinas-persecution-scores-leading-academics-opinion
"Of Kings and Concentration Camps: Xinjiang and Norway." Asia Dialogue—The Online Magazine of the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute. Dec. 17, 2018. http://theasiadialogue.com/2018/12/17/of-kings-and-concentration-camps-xinjiang-and-norway/
"How Beijing is using the Nazi propaganda playbook to justify its concentration camps to the world." Hong Kong Free Press. 27 October 2018. https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/10/27/beijing-using-nazi-propaganda-playbook-justify-concentration-camps-world/
"The Xinjiang camps as a 'Stanford Prison Experiment.'" Asia Dialogue—The Online Magazine of the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute. Oct. 24, 2018. http://theasiadialogue.com/2018/10/24/the-xinjiang-camps-as-a-stanford-prison-experiment/

Select book (and exhibit) reviews:

Review of Bedross Der Matossian, ed. Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2023). Journal of Peace Research [PRIO, Oslo], Book Notes. 29 September 2025. https://www.prio.org/journals/jpr/booknotes/453
Review of John Beck, Those Who Should Be Seized Should be Seized: China's Relentless Persecution of Uyghurs and Other Ethnic Minorities. Journal of Peace Research [PRIO, Oslo], Book Notes. Aug. 5, 2025. https://www.prio.org/journals/jpr/booknotes/451
Review of Kun Qian, Imperial-Time-Order: Literature, Intellectual History, and China’s Road to Empire. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, May 15, 2025. https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/fiskesjo/
Review of Adam Kuper, The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions (London: Profile Books, 2023). Migrating Minds: Journal of Cultural Cosmopolitanism 2.2 (2024), 116-119. https://repository.digital.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/1100006
"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 Studies82.4 (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 International16.2 (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.

Magnus Fiskesjö

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