Lecture | LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series
No one is a censor: How Chinese book editors consider potential consequences of their decisions
- Date
- Wednesday 30 April 2025
- Time
- Series
- LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series
- Location
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 1.30 (KITLV Seminar Room)
Abstract
China’s leadership praises traditional Chinese culture and encourages cultural confidence. Yet, countless foreign books are translated and published in mainland China every year. Chinese book editors are the ones who decide which books to bring to readers and how. They weigh the “quality” of a book, such as its literary or intellectual value, its market potential, and political constraints. As they do so, they need to consider complex institutional structures in which book production is embedded in China. They also need to consider potential consequences of publishing a book. This talk addresses the latter question, and through doing so it discusses the role of the public in censorship practices. This enables us to understand how complicity in censorship happens in China’s book publishing.
About the speaker
Svetlana Kharchenkova is Assistant Professor in sociology of China at Leiden University. Her research interests are at the intersection of cultural sociology, economic sociology and contemporary China. Her current project, funded by the Dutch Research Council, studies everyday practices and attitudes of foreign book editors in China. Her work has been published in Socio-Economic Review, Cultural Sociology, and China Quarterly, among other outlets.