Frederick H. Damon, Professor (Anthropology) and Cong (Ellen) Zhang, Associate Professor (History)
Based on textual analysis, historical materials and ethnographic research by Sinologists, Historians, Anthropologists and Archaeologists, this workshop explores social forms running from ancient China to their transformations across Indo-Pacific. This history stretches back 6000 years but includes contemporary movements between China and Island Southeast Asia and existing, if transforming, social orders today. The conference should create new models for social systems across this region (roughly one-third of the globe), define new historical and anthropological questions and explore the significance of chaos and other mathematical models contained in spatial, architectural and artistic constructs throughout the region.