The Invention of Tradition in China: Story of a Village and a Nation Remade

With speaker Suvi Rautio a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki. 

In China, heritage projects are sprouting across the countryside carrying the promise of Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” as a call for the great revival and rejuvenation of the nation. The Invention of Tradition: Story of a Village and a Nation Remade unravels the workings behind these promises through the story of remaking Meili, a Dong ethnic minority village nestled along the margins of China, into a “Traditional Village” heritage site. In a past riven by deep political and societal disruptions, Meili becomes a medium for contesting, mediating and continuously inventing representations of tradition that aligns with the Chinese Communist Party’s mission towards continuity and stability. The outcome is an original depiction of the compromises that shape heritage-making in a rural ethnic corner of China. Filled with rich, fine-grained narrative and analysis, Suvi Rautio offers a unique lens to the politics of inventing tradition and its far-reaching consequences in steering China's national identity under Xi Jinping rule.

Biography 

Suvi Rautio a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki. Trained as a social and cultural anthropologist specialising on China, her academic interests cover a range of fields that help her unpack the historical and social orderings of marginalised populations living in China. She has conducted fieldwork in rural Guizhou on heritage and in Guangzhou with African dancers studying the growing Popular African dance trend (feizhou wu). Currently she is working on the politics of memory by collecting oral histories of Beijing’s intellectual class during the Maoist era. Alongside her writing and research, she is the editor-in-chief of Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society and an active podcast host for New Books Network Chinese studies.

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