Myron L. Cohen
Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology;
Director, Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Research interests include Chinese culture and society: economic culture, popular religion, family and kinship, social change since the seventeenth century; Taiwan and northern, eastern, and western mainland China
Professor Cohen has conducted extensive fieldwork and other research in Taiwan and mainland China. One of his field research foci has been on the family, and he has been concerned to determine variations and uniformities in traditional family organization and in the patterns of change during modern times. Other major research interests in the context of social change include Chinese kinship; popular religion; community organization; the interconnections between local society and state organization and ideology; the cultural foundations of modern Chinese nationalism; social stratification; and economic culture.
He is currently working on several projects: 1) historical anthropology of Minong, a rural community in southern Taiwan during late imperial times (present-day Meinong Township); 2) changes and continuities in family organization in rural China, with emphasis on villages in Hebei, near Shanghai, and in Sichuan; 3) Chinese late imperial economic culture and its implications for modern development: transactions, contracts, and the heritage of commodification; 4) contracts in a community context: an analysis of over 200 contracts, all dating from before the 1895 Japanese occupation, and all from Minong, one community in southern Taiwan; 5) revision and expansion of House United, House Divided, (originally published in 1976) so as to include chapters on changes in family life during the more than 40 years that have passed since the original fieldwork.
Professor Cohen's most recent publications include Kinship, Contract, Community, and State: Anthropological Perspectives on China(Stanford University Press, 2005) and "House United, House Divided: Myths and Realities, Then and Now" in House, Home, Family: Living and Being Chinese( University of Hawai'i, 2005. Earlier publications include House United, House Divided: The Chinese Family in Taiwan( Columbia, 1976); Asia Case Studies in the Social Sciences: A Guide for Teaching (editor and contributor) (M. E. Sharpe, 1992); "Family Management and Family Division in Contemporary Rural China" China Quarterly 130 (June, 1992).
Professor Cohen received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University in 1967, after having joined the Columbia faculty in 1966Email: mlc5@columbia.edu
