Research output per year
Research output per year
Associate Professor, CHL Anthropology
Research activity per year
Tom Cliff is an ethnographer of Chinese political economy at the Australian National University.
Education Activities: Tom is the Deputy Director (Education) of the School of Culture, History, and Language, and the founding convenor of the Bachelor of Philosophy (Humanities and Social Sciences), or PhB (HaSS) — the ANU's elite and demanding undergraduate research program in the HaSS disciplines. He teaches ASIA2099/6099 “Social Power in China: Family to Family-State” and an undergraduate reseach unit.
Research Activities: Tom is currently writing a book on political ideals, social mobilisation, and the structure-agency problem in China. The immediate context is rural non-state welfare and industrial restructuring in the PRC.
Tom’s book project-in-waiting is a study of categorisation and the realms of political consciousness through the Socialist and Post-Socialist eras in the PRC; it will be told through biography, ethnography, and documents of government.
In 2018, Tom's first book Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang (Chicago University Press, 2016) won the Association for Asian Studies' E Gene Smith prize for Best Book on Inner Asia.
Please see Google Scholar for recent publications.
PhD. (Chinese Studies; Ethnographic Political Economy, ANU)
China's Motor: Entrepreneurs and private enterprise. Family and lineage.
Institutions: of production, market, and social order.
Charity: State structures and mobilisation. Non-state welfare and public goods.
Experiences: of frontier settlement; of the Socialist State-Owned Enterprise.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment/debate › peer-review
15/04/18 → 1/01/25
Project: Research
Kipnis, A. & Cliff, T.
5/02/14 → 31/12/17
Project: Research