CRCAO / Research / Research programmes
Historical anthropology of the margins of the Chinese empire
China Team
This program brings together historians and anthropologists of the Sinitic world around questions of perception, representation and administration of imperial margins. Historical anthropology offers perspectives that combine classic historical questions such as the measure of time and change with anthropological goals seeking to understand social and spatial logics of a given society. The margins of the Chinese empire will be approached as geographical border zones and as social spheres distinct from traditional political spaces. Understanding them implies geographical and ethnographic knowledge whose collection and use are challenged by such borderland areas.
During most of the imperial era, ethnographic descriptions were usually done by bureaucrats, but in the modern era foreigners, explorers, scholars, diplomats and soldiers became increasingly involved in ethnographic productions; such descriptions were also reappropriated by indigenous populations, who created and inscribed their own narratives within a larger frame. Therefore, the production of ethnographic knowledge needs to be reassessed through a historiographical prism, between philological activities and the constitution of oral archives.
The goal of the program is to reassess ethnographic and bureaucratic practices in contexts of crisis or uncertainty, but also of expansion and discovery. Instead of opposing centers and peripheries, submission and rebellion, it will address these issues through the lens of negotiation and accommodation. Beyond religious communities and marginalized social groups, polymaths, experts and other remarkable figures, it seeks to go beyond the distinction between individuals and human groups.
Upcoming events
Conferences and symposiums
May 2023: a study day on the description of localities
October 2023: international workshop on nomadic and sedentary mobility
February 2026: Lecture by Fu Yang (National Taiwan University), “Sea, Islands and Conceptions of Boundary in Early and Medieval China”
Laboratory seminar
– May 24, 2024: Aurore Dumont, “Transregional and Cross-Border Migrations from the Qing to the Republic”
– June 17, 2024: Alexis Lycas, “Introduction to the Translation of Fan Chuo’s Manshu (9th century)”
– December 20, 2024: Chen Ming-Zong, “The Legal Construction of the Miao Territory during the Qing Dynasty”
– November 18, 2025: Raphaël Louvet, “Inspecting the Northwest Borders: The Role of Nationalist Field Surveys in the Invention of Post-Imperial Governance (1920s-1940s)” »
– March 30, 2026: Frédéric Constant, “The reasons for law. Research on the intellectual foundations of the codification of law in China”
– June 19, 2026: Isabelle Charleux, “A banner map from the end of the Qing dynasty”
Collective publications
2025: dossier “Describing the Local,” Chinese Studies 44
2025: special issue “Nomadic and Sedentary Mobilities on China’s Margins,” Far East Far West 49
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Discipline(s)
historical anthropology bureaucracy ethnography borders
Participants
Leaders
Alexis Lycas
(École Pratique des Hautes Études)
Aurore Dumont
(Université Paris Cité)
CRCAO members
Full members
Alexis Lycas
(École Pratique des Hautes Études)
Isabelle Charleux
(CNRS)
Damien Chaussende
(CNRS)
Aurore Dumont
(Université Paris Cité)
Associated members
Annie Chan
(Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München)
Adrien Dupuis
(Université de Pékin)
Emanuela Garatti
(Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Romain Lefebvre
(Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Frédéric Constant
(Université Côte d'Azur)
Post-doctoral
Liang Zhong
(Université Paris Cité)
Xiaolong Shao
(École Pratique des Hautes Études)
Doctoral students
Alice Crowther
(École Pratique des Hautes Études)
Francis Xuanyun Gong
(École Pratique des Hautes Études)
Ping-ju Lin
(École Pratique des Hautes Études)
Outside Participants
Paula Suméra
(INALCO, IFRAE)
Claude Chevaleyre
(CNRS, IAO)
Pan Junliang
(Paris Cité, IFRAE)
Laurent Chircop-Reyes
(Université Bordeaux Montaigne, D2iA)
Chen Ming-Zong
(EHESS, CCJ)
Raphaël Louvet
(EHESS, CCJ)