The McDonalds of Ancient China

The McDonald's of Ancient China

I'm really glad I attended an early China talk at AAS, because it gave me a chance to think about what we learn from considering the earliest origins of culture once again. Culture spreads virally throughout all kinds of human societies. But not quite "virally," says, Sarah Allan, because it spreads from the centers of power to the fringes of power. People will copy and adapt the powerful culture to get the power themselves. "Just as an archaeologist finding the Golden Arches in Beijing two millennia from now could not assume that the United States exercised political authority in China, we cannot assume from the discovery of Shang-style ritual vessels in Anhui, Guangxi, or Guangdong that the political reach of the Shang extended so far." (Sarah Allan, "Erlitou and the Formation of Chinese Civilization," p. 471)

If culture is spread by means of cultural hegemony, then modes of identity -- the ways we think of ourselves as who we are and can be -- also must spread by means of cultural hegemony. The first example that comes to my mind is the modern homosexual male. My gay-boy friends in Taiwan go to the bar, listen to the loud music, and order alcoholic drinks. Not because this is a tradition of theirs, and not because they've discovered they like this. Rather, they are participating in a set of activities that makes up what it means for them to be gay. The gay activities just also happen to be Western.

Returning to early China again, I learned in Chicago that divination practices, especially the cracking and inscription of hot animal bones, or "Pyro-osteomancy," offers much more insight into early Chinese identity than I ever considered before. Just as a quick aside, presenter Adam Smith mentioned that many of the inscription texts are "personal." An effort to figure out what he meant by that has so far taken me first to a recent paper by archaelogist Rowan K. Flad, who reminds us that "the personality and charisma of independent diviners are a significant part of the effectiveness of their prognostications." This is so exciting! I want to present my students next year with a portrait of these diviners, suggesting that they represent very early ways of being. Sort of like the original Chicago McDonald's, I suppose. More to come...