Kevin Carrico

Biography

Kevin Carrico teaches contemporary Chinese society and modern Chinese history in the Department of International Studies: Languages and Cultures, Macquarie University. His research examines nationalism, identity, and imaginings of the past in contemporary China. His Ph.D. research focused upon the grassroots majority nationalist group known as the Han Clothing Movement (Hanfu yundong). This movement, which first originated on the Internet and has associations in most major Chinese cities, is dedicated to revitalizing traditional culture, from clothing to Confucian ritual to classical education, towards an explicitly Han-centric vision of China. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork with members of this group in locations across the country, Kevin's research examines the gaps between idealizations of traditional China and banal experiences in contemporary city life to interpret the lacks and desires leading regular citizens to this conservative movement and its grandiose vision of a traditional land of rites and etiquette (liyi zhi bang). Alongside this anthropology of everyday urban life, this project also examines rising nostalgia and popular Han-based nationalism, as well as their implications for China as an officially multi-ethnic country.

Research Interest

Kevin has also written on the recent rise of self-immolation as a form of political protest in Tibet, seeking to understand how the spread of this dramatic method of protest, which is without precedent in Tibetan culture, has become the primary means of resistance to Chinese rule following the protests of 2008. Toward these goals, Kevin has contributed to a special online issue of Cultural Anthropology on the rise of self-immolation in Tibet, written a survey of the scholarship on self-immolation in Tibet for the Oxford Handbook of Religions, and has translated Tsering Woeser's volume Immolation au Tibet- la honte du monde (Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations against Chinese Rule, Verso, 2016). Kevin is pursuing two research projects at the moment. The first, an ethnographic study of localist anti-PRC movements in Hong Kong, builds upon his work on ethnic relations to trace the emergence of the idea of a Hong Kong nationality and the corresponding ideal of a Hong Kong nation. The second, building upon his studies of nostalgia in contemporary China, is a critique of China's "New Left," as well as a sociological analysis of its promotion in Western academia.