China-Africa Relations and the Moral Politics of Geopolitical Imaginaries

Principle Investigator：Derek Sheridan

This project takes Sino-African relations as an opportunity to critically reflect on the theoretical categories of “empire” and world order. Through the ethnography of the interpersonal ethics of global inequality, Sheridan conducts research on the issue of Chinese migration in Tanzania, East Africa. He points out that the life projects of Chinese migrants and ordinary Tanzanians have become interdependent within the context of international geopolitics like the Belt and Road Initiative and South-South collaboration. He also examines the contexts in which different social actors evaluate their comparative privileges, vulnerabilities, and agency and produce everyday forms of global knowledge.