Professor Alan Macfarlane  

 Prof Huang Xing, Depute Director-General of CASS IEA meeting with Professor Alan Macfarlane 

 From left, Alan Macfarlane，Lou Jialing, and Sarah Harrison 

 Sino-UK Dialogue on anthropological approach 

 Discussion 

 Prof. Alan Macfarlane is answering questions. 

 Prof. Macfarlane is expatiate on the concept “modernity” 

Group photo with the academic office of the Organizing Committee of IUAES 2008. 

 Professor Alan Macfarlane from Cambridge University Visited IEA/CASS

    On October 12th, Professor Alan Macfarlane from the Cambridge University UK visited the Institute of Ethnology & Anthropology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (IEA/CASS). Professor Huang Xing, Deputy Director of IEA/CASS welcomed the guests from Cambridge University，Huang hoped that IEA/CASS would like to strength the academic ties with Cambridge, and welcome scholars from UK to attend the 16th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences(IUAES 2008), to be held in Kunming, China, from July 15-23, 2008.

    Accompanied by his wife, Mrs. Sarah Harrison, and his Ph.D student, Ms Jialing Luo from Cambridge University, an informal roundtable discussion has been held, with its theme focused on Difficulty of Understanding Other Cultures: How Anthropology is Approached in Cambridge and in China. Professor Macfarlane first asked two questions: Is it good to understand other cultures? Is it possible to understand other cultures? Then he gave a detailed explanation of the significances, possibilities, the anthropological approaches, and the difficulties of understanding different cultures from his own experiences in UK, India, Nepal, Japan and China during his field research over the past 30 years. Scholars from CASS exchanged views deeply with Dr. Alan Macfarlane on the approaches, goals and importance of understanding the different culture in other countries. There were more than 10 Professors from CASS attended this seminar, such as Dr. WENG Nai-qun, Dr. YANG Chun-yu, Professors PANG Tao, LEI Liang-zhong, ZHANG Xiao-min, DENG Wei-rong, Dr. LIU Zheng’ai, Dr. YI Hua, Dr. MU Shi-hua, Dr. WANG Jian-feng, Dr. GONG Hao-qun, Dr. LIU Shi-feng etc. This event was organized by Professor DU Fa-chun, interpreted by Ms Jialing Luo.

    Alan Macfarlane is a Professor of Anthropological Science at the Cambridge University UK. He is a fellow of British Academy and a member of Academia Europaea. As an anthropologist and historian he has worked on England, Nepal, Japan and China. His research focuses on a comparative study of the origins and nature of the modern world. In recent years he has become increasingly interested in the use of visual material in teaching and research. Dr. Alan Macfarlane works in England, Japan, and Nepal, and he also has research interests in Burma and India. He has done research on English society of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, on the Gurungs of Central Nepal, and on the Nagas of the Burma-India border. He is interested in information retrieval systems and audio-visual media. His ongoing research includes the origins and consequences of capitalism in comparative perspective, individualism, and social theory. His published works cover English social history, demography in Nepal, and the industrial history of both England and Japan, totally there are 20 books have been published so far, three of which translated into Chinese: The Glass Bathyscaphe: How Glass Changed the World, Green Gold: the Empire of Tea, and Letter to Lily. Besides, one of his early works, The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and Social Transition，Blackwell, Oxford 1978, will be published in China in 2008.

    For more information, please visit his website: http://www.alanmacfarlane.com

    (Provided by DU Fa-chun)