Paul Steven Sangren ( zh, t=桑高仁, born April 2, 1946) is a socio-cultural anthropologist of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

and

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

, and is a leading expert in the study of Chinese religion. He is

Hu Shih Hu Shih ( zh, t=胡適; 17 December 189124 February 1962) was a Chinese academic, writer, and politician. Hu contributed to Chinese liberalism and language reform, and was a leading advocate for the use of written vernacular Chinese. He part ...

Distinguished Professor

Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

of Chinese Studies and Anthropology at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

. His research interests include socio-cultural anthropology,

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

and

ritual A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning. Traditionally ...

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...

practice Practice or practise may refer to: Education and learning * Practice (learning method), a method of learning by repetition * Phantom practice, phenomenon in which a person's abilities continue to improve, even without practicing * Practice-based ...

and

Early life

Sangren was born on April 2, 1946, in

Kalamazoo Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 73,598. It is the principal city of the Kalamazoo–Portage metropolitan are ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. He earned his B.A. from

Woodrow Wilson School The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (''abbrev.'' SPIA; formerly the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of co ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1968. After Princeton, he joined the

Navy A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the military branch, branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral z ...

and attended the U.S. Naval Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island. Subsequently, Sangren was commissioned as a

LTJG Lieutenant junior grade is a junior commissioned officer rank used in a number of navies. United States Lieutenant (junior grade), commonly abbreviated as LTJG or, historically, Lt. (j.g.) (as well as variants of both abbreviations), i ...

and served in the

Underwater Demolition Team The Underwater Demolition Team (UDT), or frogmen, were amphibious units created by the United States Navy during World War II with specialized missions. They were predecessors of the Navy's current United States Navy SEAL, SEAL teams. Their pri ...

Eleven from 1969 to 1972. In 1972, Sangren headed for

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

to pursue his Ph.D. in anthropology under the supervision of G. William Skinner. He conducted fieldwork on the

Mazu Mazu or Matsu is a sea goddess in Chinese folk religion, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. She is also known by several other names and titles. Mazu is the deified form of Lin Moniang (), a shamaness from Fujian who is said to ...

's cult in

between 1974 and 1977. Sangren received his Ph.D. in January 1980.

Academic career

After completing his Ph.D. in 1980, Sangren became an assistant professor of anthropology at Cornell University. He was promoted to associate professor in 1986 and to Professor in 1992. Sangren was the associate director of Cornell's East Asia Program between 1988 and 1989, and chair of Cornell's Anthropology department between 1997 and 2000. Sangren was named the Hu Shih Distinguished Professor of China Studies in 2017.

Publications

Books 2017 ''Filial Obsessions: Chinese Patriliny and Its Discontents''. Palgrave Macmillan. 2000 ''Chinese Sociologics: An Anthropological Account of Alienation and Social Reproduction''. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 1997 ''Myth, Gender, and Subjectivity''. Hsin Chu Bank Endowed Lecture Series on Thought and Culture. The Program for Research of Intellectual-Cultural History, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Tsing Hua University, Hsin-chu, Taiwan: R.O.C. 1987 ''History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community''. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Academic Articles 2013 The Chinese family as instituted fantasy: or, rescuing kinship imaginaries from the ‘symbolic'. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19(2):279-299. 2012 Fate, Agency, and the Economy of Desire in Chinese Ritual and Society. Social Analysis 56(2):117-135. 2010 Lessons for General Social Theory in the Legacy of G. William Skinner from the Perspectives of Gregory Bateson and Terence Turner. Taiwan Journal of Anthropology 8(1):47-64. 2009 'Masculine Domination': Desire and Chinese Patriliny. Critique of Anthropology 29(3):255-278. 2007 Anthropology of Anthropology? Further Reflections on Reflexivity. Anthropology Today 23(4):13-16. 2006 Introduction to Turner Special Issue. Critique of Anthropology 26(1):5-13. 2006 ‘Fraught with Implications’, or Turner's Back-burner. Critique of Anthropology 26(1):121-130. 2004 Psychoanalysis and Its Resistances in Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: Lessons for Anthropology. Ethos 32(1):110-122. 2001 China: Sociocultural Aspects. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. N. K. Smelser and P. B. Baltes, eds. 3:1:1733-1738. Elsevier Ltd. Chapters 2009 Chinese Ghosts: Reconciling Psychoanalytic, Structuralist, and Marxian Perspectives. In Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions. Poo, Mu-chou, ed. pp 299–310. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. 2005 Fate and Transcendence in the Rhetoric of Myth and Ritual. In The Magnitude of Ming: Command, Allotment, and Fate in Chinese Culture. Christopher Lupke, ed. pp. 225–244. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. 2003 Separations, Autonomy, and Recognition in the Production of Gender Differences: Reflections from Consideration of Myths and Laments. In Living with Separation in China: Anthropological Accounts. Charles Stafford, ed. pp. 53–84. London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sangren, P. Steven American anthropologists American sinologists 1946 births Cornell University faculty Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni Stanford University alumni Living people