David Davies
Professor
Biography
David Davies is an Associate Professor of Anthropology. He has extensive research,
fieldwork, and work experience in East Asia with a primary emphasis on
China where, for the past 30 years, China's economic and cultural
transformations have captivated his professional attention. While
teaching and developing new classes for Hamline students takes up quite a
lot of time, he has managed to maintain an active research
agenda--publishing on a wide range of topics, from the social memory and
nostalgia for socialism in China to the rise of celebrity
businesspeople in China's freewheeling market economy. Recently he
published two chapters on Wal-Mart's corporate culture and localization
in China in a book of collected scholarly essays on Wal-Mart in China.
One of the chapters was co-authored with a Hamline undergraduate—-the
direct result of a summer collaborative research project. Other
collaborative student research projects in recent years include an
hour-long documentary on study abroad to China, an examination of
Chinese high school history textbooks, and even a project on narrative
and sociality in role playing games.
Teaching Style
Professor Davies enjoys teaching anthropology with a firm
foundation in the liberal arts—-taking the perspectives, theoretical
approaches, and research methodologies of the academic discipline and
connecting them in challenging and practical ways to the lives and
experiences of students. Anthropology within the tradition of a liberal
education offers important insights into our contemporary world and for
this reason he teaches on a wide range of topics from development and
globalization to the social and cultural history of museums, travel and
tourism. In recent years he has developed new classes in digital and
visual anthropology. As sociocultural anthropologist, with extensive
experience working, living and doing fieldwork in China, many of
professor Davies' classes connect students directly to the history and
society of one of the most important and influential places in our
contemporary world. He occasionally leads study abroad seminars to China
during May term.
Regardless of the subject, professor Davies' courses emphasize the
careful, patient collection of data combined with group discussion,
critique and analysis in a global context. Whether a neighborhood
documentary film project, a museum exhibit design competition or a
twenty-page single-author term paper, class projects are not only
assignments for class, but are connected to larger ongoing projects that
connect to other classmates, local communities or global questions.
Additional Links
Collaborative Projects
Midway Conversations: A Midway Documentary
"Never Seen Before": A Senior Documentary Project
Bringing Archaeology and Sociocultural Anthropology Together in the Classroom
Professor Dave Davies created a new world called Mineclass for his digital anthropology students and a WCCO reporter recently visited.
Publications
"Qin Shihuang's Terracotta Warriors and Commemorating the Cultural State" in Places of Memory in Modern China: History, Politics, and Identity. Leiden and Boston: Brill. 2012. Pp. 17-50.
"Corporate Cadres: Management and Corporate Culture at Chinese Wal-Mart Stores" in Wal-Mart in China. Anita Chan, ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2012. Pp. 97-129.
"A Store Manager's Success Story" with Taylor Seeman in Wal-Mart in China. Anita Chan, ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2012. Pp. 130-150.
"China's Celebrity Entrepreneurs: Business Models for 'Success'" in Celebrity in China. Louise Edwards and Elaine Jeffreys, eds. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 2010. Pp. 193-216.
"'Go China! Go!': Running Fan, the Other Runner of China's Olympic Summer" in The International Journal of the History of Sport. Vol 26. No. 8 (July 2009), 1-25.
"Wal-Mao: The Discipline of Corporate Culture and Studying Success at Wal-Mart China" in The China Journal. No. 58. (July 2007).
"Visible Zhiqing: The Visual Culture of Nostalgia Among China's Zhiqing Generation" in Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution. Guobin Yang and Ching Kwan Lee, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2007. Pp. 166-192.
"Old Zhiqing Photos: Nostalgia and the "Spirit" of the Cultural Revolution" in The China Review Vol. 5. No. 2 (Fall 2005), 97-123.