Stephan Feuchtwang Livres

Exploring the intersections of state violence in Europe and China during the 20th century, this book uniquely examines the Great Leap famine alongside the rise of Nationalist and Communist tensions in Taiwan, including the White Terror. By weaving personal narratives with official accounts, it highlights the discrepancies in memory and historical representation. The author critiques social memory theories, offering insights into how these traumatic events are understood and transmitted through both individual stories and collective remembrance.

Eva Neurath, co-founder of Thames & Hudson, wrote this memoir for her granddaughters, and it is a private story of a remarkable 20th-century-life. She was born in Berlin and grew up there in the Twenties, when anything was possible. But this was a world in the grip of a traumatic change. Pursued by the Gestapo, Eva and her family left Berlin in 1938, first for Rotterdam, then London. She was offered a job at Adprint by Walter Neurath where she worked before they founded a new publishing house together, Thames & Hudson, in 1949. Her life and marriage with Walter moved in circles of art, archeology and history. The memoir ends in 1981, but Eva's work continued until 1999, the year she died, and the story is filled out by her son, Stephan Feuchtwang

Civilisation is a debated concept. Is it indelibly associated with the prerogatives of the 'West', colonial histories or, as is emerging, a new global politics? How do we understand these new forms of identity politics and claims to possessing long-term histories? The book is intended for courses in humanities and social science.

It has been said that Chinese government was, until the republican period, government through li. Li is the untranslatable word covering appropriate conduct toward others, from the guest rituals of imperial diplomacy to the hospitality offered to guests in the homes of ordinary people. It also covers the centring of self in relation to the flows and objects in a landscape or a built environment, including the world beyond the spans of human and other lives. It is prevalent under the republican regimes of China and Taiwan in the forming and maintaining of personal relations, in the respect for ancestors, and especially in the continuing rituals of address to gods, of command to demons, and of charity to neglected souls. The concept of ‛religion’ does not grasp this, neither does the concept of ‛ritual’, yet li undoubtedly refers to a figuration of a universe and of place in the world as encompassing as any body of rite and magic or of any religion. Through studies of Chinese gods and ghosts this book challenges theories of religion based on a supreme god and that god’s prophets, as well as those like Hinduism based on mythical figures from epics, and offers another conception of humanity and the world, distinct from that conveyed by the rituals of other classical anthropological theories.