Carsten Herrmann-Pillath (Erfurt)

In my recent book 'China's Economic Culture: The Ritual Order of State and Markets' I elaborate on 'ritual' as a theoretical notion to analyze the institutions of the Chinese economy. The term 'ritual economy' originates in Chinese anthropology, both contemporary (Mayfair Yang) and historical (David Faure). One case in point is the economic role of lineages in South China. The modern anthropological concept of the Chinese lineage was mainly developed by studying lineages in Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970, with one of the most influential contributions James Watson's work on the Man lineage. Recent work on lineages in Guangdong, especially Shenzhen, has revealed that lineages continue to play a significant role in the local economy even today in Mainland China. Once we started fieldwork on this topic, we discovered that one of the most powerful lineages in Shenzhen is the Wen lineage, Cantonese Man, who always maintained close relations with their Hong Kong branch, originally studied by Watson. After completing a first paper on this topic (CHP and Guo Man, Ritual and Property, Theorizing a Chinese Case, Man and the Economy, DOI 10.1515/me-2017-0004) we did follow up research, which I will present in my talk.  

Carsten Herrmann-Pillath is Professor and Permanent Fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany. After completing education in economics and sinology at the University of Cologne, between 1992 and 2016 he assumed professorships and chairs in economics, evolutionary/institutional economics and Chinese economic studies at Duisburg University, Witten/Herdecke University and Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. His major fields of research are economics and philosophy, institutional change and economic development, international economics and Chinese economic studies. His publications include 400+ academic papers and 16 books, covering a broad cross-disciplinary range in economics, the humanities and the sciences. His magnum opus on China was published in 2016, building on three decades of research into culture and political economy of China: China’s Economic Culture: The Ritual Order of State and Markets (Routledge). He is currently working on a ‘critical theory of the economy’, integrating cutting edge developments in economics with recent advances in the philosophy of the social sciences.

Website: www.cahepil.net