On November 29, 2019, Prof. Gao Bingzhong, Director of the Center for World Social Studies of Peking University, brought the 5th session of IIAS Anthropology Lecture Series in Fall 2019, with the topic of “Exploring the Ethnographic Studies of World Society”.

First of all, Prof. Gao explained the collaboration between two types of ethnography as observation report and as anthropology major involved in observation.

Second, he reviewed the rise and conceptualization, empirical facts, common consciousness and the Chinese perspective of world society, that is, the rise of overseas ethnography.

Then, he introduced an overview of the overseas ethnography of Chinese anthropology. There are more than 70 Chinese scholars doing ethnography overseas in about 35 countries, working in more than 20 languages and involving comparison of world religious life, countries along the Belt and Road, BRIC countries, American society, overseas Chinese and development of Chinese companies overseas.

Finally, Prof. Gao elaborated on the study of world society from overseas ethnography in anthropology to Chinese social sciences, and added that area studies at this stage are the soft platform of Chinese social sciences. He used examples to illustrate the practical considerations of area studies, the status quo of country studies and the need for improvement. The focus was on the direction of anthropology and the implementation of area and country studies.

By Ji Ruobing & Cheng Yao