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前人在人文社会科学领域对华侨华人的研究和论述，尤其是对任何一种华侨华人身份的同质性和本质化界定的论述。相反，我们的目标是对不同的社会文化现状和族裔特性开辟新的视角。在这个项目中，生活在国外的中国人指的是从地缘政治意义上搬出中国的中国人，无论他们的身份如何。具体地说，我们澄清了以下几个方面：a)生活在国外的各种华人的社会和文化的实际状况，包括保持强烈中国身份的华人、克里奥化的中国人和原本是中国人并融入土著社会的人。b)上述华人身份的构建过程。c)从一个地方重新移民到另一个地方的中国人的身份转换。我们发表了许多论文，并在各种国际会议上发表了演讲。例如，我们在第5届亚洲学者国际会议上组织了两次小组讨论，并就海外华人的本土化进程、通过再移民过程产生亚种族认同的过程以及民族类别的转变与其宗教信仰和实践的变化之间的关系发表了论文。我们还举办了几次研讨会，邀请与我们一起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.