Cecilia Nathansen Milwertz

Primary fields of research

Cecilia Milwertz works as senior researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. With communication studies scholar Professor Bu Wei from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences she is developing a research project on linkages and inseparabilities between workers in the PRC and consumers in urban China as well as in the Nordic countries. Together with philosopher/sociologist Wang Fengxian, the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences she has for many years been, and is still, doing research on non-governmental organizing in the PRC.

Her more than twenty years of research on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has included a study of the population control policy as viewed from the perspective of one-child mothers, work on the first bottom up women’s organizations in Beijing and on non-governmental gender and development organizing in three PRC provinces. She applies a hybrid and always inductive approach in her research projects based on a humanities and social sciences educational background in China studies and cultural sociology and a lot of borrowing and inspiration from anthropology, gender studies and other fields.

Cecilia Milwertz is editor of the Gendering Asia Book Series published by NIAS Press http://www.niaspress.dk/books/series/gendering-asia. She heads the Gendering Asia Network http://genderingasia.net/, and is coordinator of the Sino-Nordic Gender Studies Network.

Short presentation

Current research field: 

Research project: 'Manufacturing the World: the interconnectedness of Chinese workers and Danish consumers'.   

Many companies from the global North have moved their production to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), leading China to become ‘the factory of the world’ (Zhang 2006) based on the labour of 270 million Chinese workers. This means that China is present on the body and in the home of virtually every Dane in the form of products ‘Made in China’. For instance 40 percent of smartphones in Denmark are Apple iPhones produced in the PRC. At the same time there is worldwide concern today about the impact of the current culture of production and consumption on diminishing global resources and it is broadly acknowledged that there is an urgent need for change to sustainable practices (IPCC 2014). This research project is concerned with the paradox between, on the one hand, acknowledging how our current system creates inequality and threatens the possibility of a sustainable future on the planet and, on the other, our continuing perpetuation of this system. It explores this paradox at the micro-level, in the encounter between two groups of actors – factory workers in China and consumers in Denmark. The focus is on how workers and consumers are interconnected in maintaining the system and how they may either promote or obstruct what has been called ‘the great transition’ (Raskin et al. 2002) that is needed to achieve a sustainable and equitable global system. Based on qualitative studies in China and Denmark the project will engage in action research and communication activism involving a theatre performance and it will collaborate with the investigative journalism NGO Danwatch.

Short presentation

Research group:

The interconnections of Chinese workers – global consumers.

With Bu Wei (Institute of Journalism and Communication, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Liu Jun (Institute of media, Cogntion and Communicatuion, Uiversity of Copenhagen), Michala Hvidt Breengaard (Institute of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Bo Ærenlund Sørensen (Oxford University and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen)

The Construction of Non-government Initiated Gender and Development Organizations in the People’s Republic of China

With Wang Fengxian (Institute of Sociology, Beijing Academy of Social Sciences)

Revisiting Gender: Reflections on the Research Process'

Led by Rebecca Elmhirst (Brighton University), Philippe Doneys (Asian Institute fo Technology) and Raghild Lund (NTNU Norwegian University of Technology)

Sino-Nordic Gender Studies Network

http://nias.ku.dk/fudan/sino-nordic-gender-studies-

Gendering Asia Network

http://genderingasia.net/

CV

MAIN APPOINTMENTS

2001-                   Senior Researcher, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies - NIAS

1999-2001           Research Fellow, the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies - NIAS

1996-1999           European Science Foundation Research Fellow, University of Oxford

1995-1996           Associated Fellow, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies - NIAS

1990-1994           Research Fellow, Center for East and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen

EDUCATION

1995                    PhD in Chinese Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen

1989-90              five-month Diploma Course, School of Journalism, Aarhus, Denmark

1988                    MA (cand.mag) in Cultural Sociology, Institute of Cultural Sociology and Chinese Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen

1981-83               Language studies, Beijing Languages Institute, Beijing

Knowledge of languages

Danish - mother tongue

English - nearly fluent

Chinese - relatively acceptable

French, Spanish, German - oral practically disappeared, some reading ability remains

Current research