Justin Haruyama joins Juliet, Erik, and Sisi (welcome to our new team member/producer!) to talk about China-Zambia relations, from the history of Chinese aid in Zambia to the complex people-to-people relations that characterize this bilateral relationship.

Justin Haruyama is an instructor of anthropology at The University of British Columbia whose research explores diverse forms of relationality enabled by Chinese-African encounters, ranging from intimacy and fellowship, to exclusion and xenophobia, to mutual dependence and obligation. He is currently working on a book entitled Mining for Coal and Souls: Modes of Relationality in Emerging Chinese-Zambian Worlds that examines the controversial presence of Chinese migrants and investors in Zambia today. 

Articles:

• Justin Haruyama, "'South-South' Capitalist Extractive Patriarchy" in Transforming Anthropology (2025)
• Justin Haruyama, "Jehovah's Witnesses Are Learning Chinese to Evangelize in Zambia" in Anthropology News (2025)
• Justin Haruyama, "Shortcut English: Pidgin Language, Racialization, and Symbolic Economies at a Chinese-Operated Mine in Zambia" in African Studies Review (2023)

Recommendations:

Justin:

• Sapiens Podcast (Justin's episode comes out in May!)
• Mingwei Huang, Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke University Press, 2024)
• Di Wu, Affective Ecounters: Everyday Life among Chinese Migrants in Zambia (Routledge, 2021)

Erik:

• The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)
• I'm Still Here (2024)

Sisi:

• Jemima Pierce, The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race (University of Chicago Press, 2013)

Juliet:

• Get on BlueSky!
• Northwestern University's 2023 commencement speech by Illinois governor JB Pritzker

Thanks for listening!

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