IKMAS SEMINAR SERIES

Centre for Occidental Studies

An Insight into the Imagined Eurasian Macanese Community

15 November 2023
2:00pm – 4.00 pm
BILIK MESYUARAT LESTARI Level2, LESTARI Building, UKM Bangi

ABSTRACT

In 1999 Macao, previously a territory under Portuguese rule, was handed over to the People’s Republic of China and transformed into one of the gambling capitals of the world. These political and economic phenomena were accompanied by unprecedented social changes that, ultimately, have redefined the Macanese identity. This talk is about the Macanese living in Portugal and their intimate social networks in loco and interactions with their counterparts in Macao and elsewhere in the diaspora, by the use of Internet. Memory and ambivalence, deeply associated with kinship, language, food and heritage, are the cornerstones of this research, which overturns colonial stereotypes and concepts of Macanese cultural purity.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Marisa C. Gaspar holds a PhD in Social Anthropology. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at SOCIUS/CSG – Research Centre in Economic and Organizational Sociology of the Lisbon School of Economics and Management (ISEG), Universidade de Lisboa. She is also a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of European Studies of Macao. Her current research interests are on cultural and gastronomic tourism in Macao, Macanese community, social change, identity and ambivalence, intangible heritage, anthropology of economy and politics. She is the author of several academic articles and of her most recent book, Heirs of the Bamboo: Identity & Ambivalence among the Eurasian Macanese (2020) published by Berghahn Books.