New book in the Studies of the Americas Series: Chineseness in Chile

5 January 2022

Book cover showing a collage artistic renditions of maps of the American continent, with the book and series titles, and authors' names

We would like to announce the publication of a new book from SpringerLink/Palgrave Macmillan, ‘Chineseness in Chile. Shifting Representations During the Twenty-First Century’, by Maria Montt Strabucchi, Carol Chan and María Elvira Ríos. This title is part of the Studies of the Americas Series.

This book explores the role of Chineseness or lo chino in the production of Chilean national identity. It does so by discussing the many voices, images, and intentions of diverse actors who contribute to stereotyping or problematizing Chineseness in Chile. The authors argue that in general, representing and perceiving China or Chineseness as the Other is part of a broader cultural and political strategy for various stakeholders to articulate Chile as either a Western country or one that is becoming-Western. The authors trace the evolution of the symbolic role that China and Chineseness play in defining racial, gendered, and class aspects of Chilean national social imaginary. In doing so, they challenge a common idea that Chineseness is a stable signifier and the simplistic perception of the ethnic Chinese as the unassimilable foreigner within the nation. In response, the authors call for a post migrant approach to understanding identities and Chilean society beyond stubborn Orient-Occident and us-them dichotomies.

For more information on this title and to purchase it directly from SpringerLink, please click on this link.

About the authors:

Maria Montt Strabucchi is Assistant Professor in the Institute of History and Member of the Center for Asian Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Carol Chan is Associate Professor of Sociology at Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, Chile.

María Elvira Ríos is a researcher in the Institute of Aesthetics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

About the Studies of the Americas Series

The Studies of the Americas Series includes country specific, cross-disciplinary and comparative research on the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada, particularly in the areas of Politics, Economics, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Development, Gender, Social Policy and the Environment. The series publishes monographs, readers on specific themes and also welcomes proposals for edited collections, that allow exploration of a topic from several different disciplinary angles. This series is published in conjunction with University College London’s Institute of the Americas under the editorship of Professor Maxine Molyneux.

Links:

Link to the book publisher's webpage

Studies of the Americas Series website

Professor Maxine Molyneux | academic profile

Image:

Book cover showing a collage artistic renditions of maps of the American continent, with the book and series titles and logos, and the authors' names