Get to Know Prof. Dr. Jean-Baptiste Pettier, SDAC’s New Director
SDAC would like to extend a warm and hearty welcome to our new director, Prof. Dr. Jean-Baptiste Pettier. He was kind enough to answer some of our questions for him about his research interests, pre-SDAC life, and where he will take the program in the future. See his full profile here. Thank you, Prof. Dr. Jean-Baptiste, for answering our questions!
Q1. What about the SDAC program interested you and made you want to direct the program?
This is a very exciting program! To me, two dimensions of it are crucial. The first one is that one of its focus points is the anthropological study of China and of Asia more generally. The anthropological discipline is diverse, and where the regional focus lies depends on academic regions and traditions. However, so-called Chinese societies have not historically been as often a core focus of anthropological research as are south Asian, African or Latin American ones. The grounds behind this gap are historical, but this situation is hard to change and it makes this program all the more exciting for an anthropologist of China like me. The second dimension which I find truly interesting in this program is how it attempts to question the classical issue of decision-making on the base of social and cultural sciences rather than from a managerial perspective.
Q2. What is your educational/career background, and how do you connect it with SDAC’s themes of decision-making and cultural studies?
I have a very interdisciplinary background. In France, my country of origin, I could study in parallel sociology, anthropology, political sciences and Chinese studies. My will to study all these disciplines in parallel resulted from a deep curiosity for what makes us human and what is behind the differences and common points between all of us. All dimensions, from environmental ones to historical backgrounds, contribute to shape us as we are. This is not to say that we have no personal agency, but rather to acknowledge and attempt to understand how our agency and personal will and capacity to act is strongly shaped by pre-existing conditions. My curiosity for these questions was very strong, and if I could, I would have certainly studied even more disciplines, from medicine to economics, psychology or philosophy. The main reason why I chose to turn into an anthropologist by the end—rather than a specialist in any other discipline—is that it allowed me to touch all of these matters at once, as nothing concerning humans is completely out of the scope of an anthropologist. Yet, it is unfortunately not possible to study everything in every place. Relatively early in my studies, I realized that I had to choose where I wanted to carry out research, as it would take a long time to learn the language and get to understand another society and culture. I chose to focus on China and after that, all my efforts were turned towards the understanding of that society. My PhD research was dedicated to mate choice in the context of marriage markets in urban China, a very classical decision-making issue…
Q3. What research are you currently working on?
In recent years, my research has explored new paths. In my study of mate choice in urban China, I was very interested in how people deal both with sentimental and material issues. In contemporary societies, most people consider that marriage should be based on romantic love. Yet, marriage is a material issue as well. With whom you share your life and their economic conditions will have an impact on your life. Different societies and social groups deal with these issues in different ways, and this is what I try to understand. In my current research, I somehow pursue this questioning but with a completely different research object: the environment. I work on the global commerce of a protected marine species which is used in traditional Asian medicines. How people who either fish, commerce, use, or engage themselves to protect this species, take the decision to do so has to do with a large number of historical, material and cultural conditions. This is what I try to explore and understand by working with all the involved sides. Thus, I spent the last year in Madagascar in order to work with fishing communities involved in this commerce in order to understand their perspective. I will continue working on this topic in the next years, while leading the SDAC program, and this will be reflected in my teaching.
Q4. Could you briefly describe the courses you plan to teach at SDAC?
The classes I have planned conflate my research interests and the core issues of the SDAC program: decision-making and China. For the next semester, my courses will be dedicated respectively to the issue of mate choice and romantic love, the study of contemporary Chinese society, and theories of decision-making across cultural and social analysis. In the next semesters, I intend to develop further classes on moral and ethical questioning, environmental issues, East Asia, as well as on Indian Ocean societies.
Q5. What knowledge and skills do you hope your students will gain?
I cannot know for sure what students will gain or retain from my classes. Yet, it is my hope that, beyond the specific content of each class, I can encourage them to remain always curious and open to the new and to the different. The world is large, diverse, nuanced, complex, and so should be your ideas and vision.
Q6. What do you think you will bring to SDAC as a director?
A lot of great things already exist in this program, not least the fact that it exists in the first place! As a director, I hope to bring a cohesive spirit, and to reinforce progressively the geographical breadth of the program through the people we invite, particularly in the context of the Guest Lecturer Series. It would interest me as well to give it some non-academic resonance by opening new dialogical formats with the societies we live in and work with.
Q7. Finally, could you please give a message to current and prospective SDAC students?
How lucky you are to be at this point of your life! Studying with us will widen your horizon, but you as well will widen ours and the ones of your fellow students by bringing in your own experiences. Those are precious. Youth is not always an easy time, in particular because you have to choose between a lot of options, career paths, potential lifestyles, and that you learn sometimes brutally that not every option is available to you. Yet, every choice will be a good one if it can make you happy, nurture you, and that you give it sense. At SDAC, we will collectively do our best to make sense of the world we live in, so that you can find meaning in your decision to join us.