Thomas Heberer

For other people named Thomas Heberer, see Thomas Heberer (disambiguation).

Thomas Heberer, Ph.D. (born 13 November 1947 in Offenbach/Main) is a Senior professor of Chinese Politics & Society at the University Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He studied Social Anthropology (major), Philosophy, Political Science, and Chinese Studies in Frankfurt, Göttingen, Mainz and Heidelberg. In 1977 he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Bremen on the Mass Line concept of the Chinese Communist Party. The same year he went to China, where he worked as a translator and reader for the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing for more than four years (1977–81). During that time he witnessed the post-Cultural Revolution events in China and the gradual development of reform policies there.

Career

Heberer worked from 1983 to 1985 as a research fellow with the Oversea's Museum in Bremen (Übersee-Museum Bremen), where he was put in charge of the Chinese Collection and established the museum’s permanent China exhibit. He was then appointed as a research fellow at the Institute of Geography of the University of Bremen and carried out a research project, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, on the development of the private economic sector in China. This project was followed by his habilitation (post-doctoral degree) thesis on the role of the individual (“informal”) economic sector of urban and social development in China. In 1989 he received the venia legendi, or authorization to lecture, in Political Science at the University of Bremen.[1]

From 1988 to 1991 Heberer acted as visiting professor at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Duisburg (Chair of East Asian Politics). In 1991 he was appointed professor of Chinese Economic Studies at the University for Applied Sciences in Bremen. In 1992 he was appointed to the Chair of East Asian Politics at the University of Trier and in 1998 to a Chair at the University of Duisburg-Essen's Institute of East Asian Studies.[2] Upon his retirement in February 2013 he was appointed Senior Professor by the university president. From 2013 to 2015 he was Chair Professor of Public Administration at Zhejiang University. He is also a Permanent Visiting Professor at several Chinese Universities, including Zhejiang University, Renmin University, and Nankai University.

Heberer’s thinking has been shaped by sociologists such as James Scott, Pierre Bourdieu, Theodor Adorno, and Michel Foucault. At the same time, his oeuvre is heavily influenced by his field research, a product of his anthropological studies. Field research, he argues, is the most crucial tool for understanding societies from within. He conducted his first field research in 1981 on the issue of Chinese nationalities’ policies and development policies in ethnic minority areas among the Yi (Nuosu), one of the largest ethnic minorities in China, in the Liangshan Mountains in Southwestern Sichuan province.[3][4][5] Since then he has continuously worked on various aspects of Yi society and has been actively involved in creating academic and public awareness for the Yi minority. In 1998 he hosted the “Second International Yi Conference” at the University of Trier, and in 2006 he organized a major exhibition on the history, culture, religion, and society of the Yi at the Duisburg Historical Museum. In 2000/2001 he collected 200,000 Deutsche Mark among several German institutions in order to establish a school for Yi children in Meigu County.

Throughout the following decades, Heberer continued his dedicated field research, extending it into the areas of social and institutional change and investigating such diverse topics as the development of China’s private sector, rural urbanization and social change, the political and social role of private entrepreneurs in China and Vietnam, the diffusion of intellectual ideas into politics, environmental governance, and the agency of local cadres.[6]

Most recently, he has been concerned with the political participation and organizational behavior of social groups in China. In the process, he has further developed the sociological concept of “strategic groups” in the context of both local cadres and entrepreneurial groups in China.[7] In addition, he is concerned with social and policy innovations in China, and with critical junctures of authoritarian systems. Most recently he is working on new political representative claims from a comparative perspective.

Thomas Heberer is also on the editorial board of a number of renowned international academic journals, including the International Journal of Political Science & Diplomacy, The China Quarterly, the Journal of China in Comparative Perspective, the European Journal of East Asian Studies, the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, the Journal of Chinese Governance, etc. He is co-founder of the “Association of Social Science Research on China” (ASC) and was on the Advisory Board of the Europe-China Academic Network (ECAN) of the European Commission.

Publications (Selection)

Heberer has authored or co-authored more than 35 books and has also edited or co-edited 21 volumes in German, English and Chinese. His articles have been published in many international journals and volumes in a total of ten languages. Among his recent English monographs are:[8]

He also attaches great importance to publishing in Chinese and presenting his work to a wider audience in China.[15]

Notes

  1. ↑ CV of Thomas Heberer
  2. ↑ CV of Thomas Heberer
  3. ↑ Heberer, Thomas (1984). Nationalitätenpolitik und Entwicklungspolitik in den Gebieten nationaler Minderheiten in China. Bremer Beiträge zur Geographie und Raumplanung. Bremen: University of Bremen.
  4. ↑ Heberer, Thomas (ed.) (1987). Ethnic Minorities in China: Tradition and Transformation. Aachen: Herodot.
  5. ↑ Heberer, Thomas (1989). China and Its National Minorities: Autonomy or Assimilation?. Armonk and London: M.E. Sharpe.
  6. ↑ 洪雅筠，從红色憧憬到田野现實 - 王海 (Thomas Heberer) 舆德國中國研究的轉型 (From the red expectation to field reality - Thomas Heberer and the transformation of sinology in Germany). Taipeh: Taiwan National University, Master Thesis at the Institute of Political Science. 2011.
  7. ↑ See e.g. Thomas Heberer & Gunter Schubert - County and Township Cadres as a Strategic Group. A New Approach to Political Agency in China’s Local State. Journal of Chinese Political Science, vol. 17 No. 3/2012: 221-249 Research Gate. Accessed January 8th, 2016.
  8. ↑ Literature by and about Thomas Heberer in the German National Library catalogue
  9. ↑ Thomas Heberer - Private Entrepreneurs in China and Vietnam: Social and Political Functioning of Strategic Groups. Research Gate. Accessed 11. January 2016.
  10. ↑ Thomas Heberer & Claudia Derichs - The Power of Ideas - Intellectual Input and Political Change in East and Southeast Asia. NIAS Press. Accessed 11. January 2016.
  11. ↑ Thomas Heberer, Fan Jie & Wolfgang Taubmann - Rural China: Economic and Social Change in the Late Twentieth Century. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed 11. January 2016.
  12. ↑ Thomas Heberer - Doing Business in Rural China: Liangshan’s New Ethnic Entrepreneurs. University of Washington Press. Accessed 11. January 2016.
  13. ↑ Thomas Heberer & Gunter Schubert - Regime Legitimacy in Contemporary China: Institutional Change and Stability. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed 11. January 2016.
  14. ↑ Thomas Heberer & Christian Göbel - The Politics of Community Building in Urban China. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed 11. January 2016.
  15. ↑ For instance: 托马斯•海贝勒， 俞可平，安晓波 （主编）：中共的治理与适应。 比较的视野。北京，中央编译出版社，2015; 托马斯•海贝勒，杨雪冬，舒耕德共同主编： “主动的”地方政治：作为战略群体的县乡干部“。北京 (中央编译出版社)， 2013年; 托马斯•海贝勒，迪特•格鲁诺，李惠彬共同主编：中国与德国的环境治理(比较的视角) (中文)。 北京 (中央编译出版社)， 2012年; 托马斯•海贝勒，舒耕德： 从群众到公民——中国的政治参与。北京 (中央编译出版社)， 2009年; 托马斯•海贝勒，何增科，舒耕德： 城乡公民参与和政治合法性，北京 （中央编译出版社），2007; 托马斯•海贝勒：凉山彝族企业家。 社会和制度变迁的承载者。 北京（民族出版社），2005; 托马斯•海贝勒：作为战略群体的企业家。中国私营企业家的社会与政治功能研究。北京(中央编译出版社) 2003.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/17/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.