Jottings from the Granite Studio

Mainlanders love to poke fun at Taiwan politics as chaotic, corrupt, and living proof that full democracy is somehow incompatible with “Chinese culture.” (Of course when I suggest the corollary to their theory–that only Westerners and Japanese seem “culturally able” to handle free elections–they usually backtrack a little bit, but I digress.)
It’s worth remembering that [...]

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Ming dynasty historian Craig Clunas, author of the classic Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Ming China, has been named chair of the Art History department at Oxford University. Clunas’ work explores the intersection between material and social culture, most notably in his application of Bourdieu’s theories of ’social capital’ to describe elite [...]

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