In and Out of China: Customs Inspection and Shipping Culture at the Port of Fuzhou

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Dr. Julie Chu, of the University of Chicago, along with colleagues in China, will undertake research on changing laws and cultures of the regulation of international borders. Previously, the predominant focus of scholarship on border control has focused on the regulation of flows of migrants and commodities. Dr. Chu will break new ground by concentrating instead on the technocrats and technologies charged with monitoring and managing these flows. Her research focus will be on the work of customs and border control on the ground and how their activities affect conceptions and practices of sovereignty, territoriality, and global security. The research will be carried out at the Port of Fuzou, China, which recently has been promoted by central and provincial government policies for an expanded role in regional and global networks of economic and cultural exchange. The researcher will employ a mixture of social science methodologies, including policy analysis, archival research, participant-observation, and extensive interviews, to provide a comparative, historical, and ethnographic account of the management of mobile goods and mobile persons in and out of Fuzhou. The core data collection will focus on the everyday operations, material culture, and rituals of state workers and other facilitators of mobility through which the regulation of transnational flows and territorial boundaries are managed and negotiated. This study will advance theory and knowledge across several normally separate areas of social science, including anthropology, legal studies, immigration and refugee studies, and science and technology studies. The research will contribute to better understanding of how globalization is created and maintained in different local contexts. It also will foster international research cooperation and contribute to public policy for customs and border control in an era of global trade and security concerns.