Anthropological Research on Indigenization and Creolization of the Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia

本课题旨在批判性地重新审视人文社会科学领域关于海外华人的研究和话语，尤其是那些同质化、本质化地界定任何一种海外华人身份的话语。相反，我们的目标是打开不同的社会文化现状和他们的民族身份的新视角。在这个项目中，旅居海外的中国人是指从地缘政治意义上迁出中国的中国人，无论他们的身份如何。具体来说，我们对以下几个方面进行了研究：（1）海外华人社会文化的实际状况，包括保持强烈的华人认同感的华人、克理奥尔化的华人、原华人融入原住民社会的华人等;（B）这些华人认同感的建构过程;（3）从一个地方移民到另一个地方的华人认同感的转变。我们发表了许多论文，并在各种国际会议上进行了演讲。例如，我们在亚洲学者国际会议5中组织了两个小组，并提交了关于海外华人本土化过程的论文，关于通过重新移民过程产生亚民族身份的过程，以及民族类别的转变与信仰和宗教实践变化之间的关系。我们还举办了几次研讨会，邀请与我们进行实地考察的当地学者分享我们的研究成果。

This project intended to re-examine critically the preceding researches and discourses on the Chinese living abroad in the humanities and the social science, especially, the discourse which have defined identity of any kind of Chinese living abroad homogenously and essentially. Instead we aimed at opening new perspectives on varied socio-cultural actualities and ethnic identities of them. In this project, the Chinese living abroad means the Chinese who moved out of China in the geopolitical sense, regardless of their identities. Specifically, we clarified the following aspects :a) The actual condition of the societies and cultures of the various Chinese living abroad, including Chinese having kept strong Chinese identity, Creolized Chinese, and people who had originally been Chinese and assimilated into indigenous society.b) The process in which identities of those Chinese mentioned above has been constructed.c) Transformation of identities of the Chinese who re-immigrated from one place to another place.We published many papers and made presentations at various international conferences. For example, we organized two panels in the International Conference of Asia Scholars 5 and presented papers on the process of Indigenization of the Chinese living abroad, on the process of generation of sub-ethnic identities through the process of re-migration, and on the relationship between the transformation of the ethnic categories and the change of belief and practice of their religion. We also held several workshops inviting local scholars with whom we proceeded our fieldwork to share our research results.