Papers by Igor Iwo Chabrowski
Journal of World History, 2022
This article analyzes and discusses the modes and forms of cooperation between various groups of ... more This article analyzes and discusses the modes and forms of cooperation between various groups of foreign nationals sojourning in Ayutthaya during the seventeenth century. It argues that Siamese monarchs' religious and ethnic tolerance toward foreigners as well as the large scope of autonomy they granted to overseas incomers was paralleled by the kings' predatory usage of law and inherently conflictual system of exploitation of foreign merchants that satisfied the court's fiscal needs. In effect, traders residing in Siam reacted by creating among themselves cross-national informal networks and by reaching out to court officials and Buddhist clergy. These networks superseded global conflicts raging between the kingdoms and treading companies (such as Portuguese and Dutch wars and the Dutch East India Company war against Ming loyalists, etc.). Moreover, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the long-standing cooperation between various nations led to a significant cultural amalgamation and growing uniformization in customs and modes of consumption. Due to the strong state institution and specific multiethnic and multireligious social structure, Ayutthaya provides a fascinating early example of reasons, forms, and limits for social and cultural integration within the globalizing entrepôts of early modern Asia.
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Journal of Chinese History
This article analyzes the instrumentalization of “China” in contacts between the Ming and Qing dy... more This article analyzes the instrumentalization of “China” in contacts between the Ming and Qing dynasties and Siam-Ayutthaya. It focuses both on the state-to-state relations and those between various members of the Siamese and the imperial societies. “China” and “Chinese-ness” stood for forms of ascribed identity within the Sinocentric world, for a form of social distinction, and for one of many identities assumed in the games of political loyalty. For the Ming and Qing empires, inclusion of a foreign land within “China” was conducted through the ritual and administrative fictions that situated Ayutthaya within a hierarchy vis-à-vis the imperial capital. Beyond the state's discourses, participation in a vaguely defined Chinese culture were means of building social networks within the merchant and official communities in Ayutthaya. For the junkmen that connected Ayutthaya and South China, multiple Chinese identities were instrumentalized and inflected according to the needs and ne...
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China Perspectives
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This article analyzes the thorough reformulation of opera in Sichuan in the first two decades of ... more This article analyzes the thorough reformulation of opera in Sichuan in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It argues that theater developed in Sichuan during the eighteenth century as a part of the social and religious life of market towns and cities and that it was indivisibly connected with the political and administrative structure of the country. As such, it was fragmented along musical, dialectic, and geographic lines. The introduction of the New Policies in 1905, which most affected the largest urban centers such as Chengdu and Chongqing, was the main cause of organizational reconstruction of theatrical performances. They changed both opera’s place in social life and the way it was produced and staged. Within the new legal framework, opera was placed under the Company Law and therefore moved from the sphere of festivity to that of business, while playhouses’ prosperity was bound with the police departments that taxed and protected them. The mutual dependence of law enforcement and entertainment persisted during the early Republic and was revived in the 1930s, making theaters among the most stable and important institutions of early twentieth-century Sichuan cities. The Sichuan opera we know now is a product of this historical process. The study of the institutional development of opera shows the aims, scope, and limitations of the political reforms that reshaped China in the late Qing and Republican periods.
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Chongqing's " guide songs " form an interesting subgenre among the broad category of haozi (worke... more Chongqing's " guide songs " form an interesting subgenre among the broad category of haozi (workers' songs). These early twentieth-century songs were a form of rhythm-based oral narrative describing Chongqing's urban spaces, river docks, and harbors. Each toponym mentioned in the lyrics was followed by a depiction of the characteristic associations, whether visible or symbolic, of the place. This article aims to analyze the verbal images of Chongqing presented in these songs in order to understand how the city was remembered, reproduced, and represented. The article deconstructs representations of the city produced by the lower classes, mainly by Sichuan boatmen, and links culturally meaningful images of urban spaces with the historical experiences of work, religion, and historical-mythical memory. It also points to the functions that oral narratives had in the urban environment of early twentieth-century Chongqing. Rhythmic and easy to remember, the songs provided ready-to-use guides and repositories of knowledge useful to anyone living or working there. A cross between utilitarian resource books and cultural representations, they shaped modes of thinking and visualizations of urban spaces and Chongqing. Finally, this article responds to the need to employ popular culture in our thinking about Chinese cities and the multiplicity of meanings they were given in pre-Communist times.
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Singing on the River, 2015
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Singing on the River, 2015
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Singing on the River, 2015
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Singing on the River, 2015
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Singing on the River, 2015
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Singing on the River, 2015
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Special Issue by Igor Iwo Chabrowski
The revolutionary process experienced by Portugal between April 1974 and March 1975 aroused a gre... more The revolutionary process experienced by Portugal between April 1974 and March 1975 aroused a great interest all around the world towards a peripheric country which even if it was part of NATO was perceived as one of the leftover of another era. Thus the 26th of April 1974 parties, intellectuals, militants of different groups should start to reflect about the meaning of that revolution which shacked Portugal without blood. Apart from the phenomenon of the political tourism with thousands of young leftist militants who decided to reach the country, this special issue would like to analyze the reaction of different left parties across Europe in order to shed light on deeper changes of European society.
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Books by Igor Iwo Chabrowski
Ruling the Stage: Social and Cultural History of Opera in Sichuan from the Qing to the People's Republic of China, 2022
Through an innovative interdisciplinary reading and field research, Igor Chabrowski analyses the ... more Through an innovative interdisciplinary reading and field research, Igor Chabrowski analyses the history of the development of opera in Sichuan, arguing that opera serves as a microcosm of the profound transformation of modern Chinese culture between the 18th century and 1950s. He investigates the complex path of opera over this course of history: exiting the temple festivals, becoming a public obsession on commercial stages, and finally being harnessed to partisan propaganda work. The book analyzes the process of cross-regional integration of Chinese culture and the emergence of the national opera genre. Moreover, opera is shown as an example of the culture wars that raged inside China’s popular culture.
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This thesis, based on Eastern Sichuan boatmen’s work songs, haozi, analyzes the way river workers... more This thesis, based on Eastern Sichuan boatmen’s work songs, haozi, analyzes the way river workers understood and interpreted the world, work and society that they lived in. Spanning the period between 1880s and 1930s, it explains how such professional groups dealt with the dissolving social and economic order of the late-Qing China and the chaotic republican decades. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part reconstructs the social history of Sichuan boatmen, discusses the methodological issues connected with working on popular song traditions, and explains the importance of work songs as tools of boatmen’s work. The second part is devoted to reading, analysis and discussion of these traditions. Three fundamental topics are analyzed in this section: boatmen’s understanding of the social world they lived in; the way they perceived their work and the manner in which they comprehended their social position. The thesis demonstrates that boatmen created representations of the Sichuan river towns to claim their own social, cultural and physical spaces. Boatmen largely refused elite aesthetics and shaped their own ones, corresponding to their tastes, habits and forms of socialization. Analyzing the issue of work and labor relations, the thesis demonstrates that boatmen resisted exploitation by stating their moral superiority enshrined in the ideal of brotherhood; and by bemoaning their harrowing labor, cruelty of the bosses and lack of family life. Finally, by examining boatmen’s imagination of death, the thesis unveils how culturally potent representations were exploited in order to protest against the social injustice, at the same time expressing vulnerability, weakness and lack of control over one’s destiny. The thesis provides us with deeper understanding of the way early twentieth century non-industrial Chinese workers conceptualized their social standing, interpreted surrounding reality and struggled to adjust to oppressive social conditions.
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Many cities across the globe are rediscovering their rivers. After decades or even centuries of e... more Many cities across the globe are rediscovering their rivers. After decades or even centuries of environmental decline and cultural neglect, waterfronts have been vamped up and become focal points of urban life again; hidden and covered streams have been daylighted while restoration projects have returned urban rivers in many places to a supposedly more natural state. This volume traces the complex and winding history of how cities have appropriated, lost, and regained their rivers. But rather than telling a linear story of progress, the chapters of this book highlight the ambivalence of these developments.
The four sections in Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained discuss how cities have gained control and exerted power over rivers and waterways far upstream and downstream; how rivers and floodplains in cityscapes have been transformed by urbanization and industrialization; how urban rivers have been represented in cultural manifestations, such as novels and songs; and how more recent strategies work to redefine and recreate the place of the river within the urban setting. At the nexus between environmental, urban, and water histories, Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained points out how the urban-river relationship can serve as a prime vantage point to analyze fundamental issues of modern environmental attitudes and practices.
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Papers by Igor Iwo Chabrowski
Special Issue by Igor Iwo Chabrowski
Books by Igor Iwo Chabrowski
The four sections in Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained discuss how cities have gained control and exerted power over rivers and waterways far upstream and downstream; how rivers and floodplains in cityscapes have been transformed by urbanization and industrialization; how urban rivers have been represented in cultural manifestations, such as novels and songs; and how more recent strategies work to redefine and recreate the place of the river within the urban setting. At the nexus between environmental, urban, and water histories, Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained points out how the urban-river relationship can serve as a prime vantage point to analyze fundamental issues of modern environmental attitudes and practices.
The four sections in Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained discuss how cities have gained control and exerted power over rivers and waterways far upstream and downstream; how rivers and floodplains in cityscapes have been transformed by urbanization and industrialization; how urban rivers have been represented in cultural manifestations, such as novels and songs; and how more recent strategies work to redefine and recreate the place of the river within the urban setting. At the nexus between environmental, urban, and water histories, Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained points out how the urban-river relationship can serve as a prime vantage point to analyze fundamental issues of modern environmental attitudes and practices.