Sociology/Anthropology

Ruth Toulson

Affiliation	Faculty
Title	Instructor
Email	toulsonr@denison.edu

Ruth Toulson is a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, England. Her B.A. and M. Phil degrees are also from the University of Cambridge, where she is a member of NewnhamCollege. She teaches courses in classical and contemporary social theory, contemporary China, and the anthropology and sociology of cities and complexity.

My dissertation work focuses on visions of death and the afterlife among Chinese diaspora populations in Singapore and in mainland urban China. I consider how death ritual makes visible changing perceptions of the ideal family, ideas about love and the danger of desire, and conceptions of belonging and identity in the urban context, where the ancestral village is recreated in the imagination. I focus particularly on the controlled sterility of dreams within the post-modern city, studying ideas of the ideal life and changing conceptions of the afterlife.

My work focuses particularly on changes to death practices, considering the changing economies of death, and the culture of capitalism, which extends even to the perceived afterlife. New institutions are emerging that allow individuals to make economic provision for the kingdoms after death and personal shoppers for death are increasingly popular. I am particularly interesting in issues of consumption, focusing on the ways relationships between the living and the dead alter as societies deal with an influx of things, considering, for instance, the iconography of Mercedes Benz in Chinese funeral rites. At its heart, my research considers the consequences of dramatic social change, particularly the creation of greater economic inequality in the urban context.

My next research will consider the anthropology of the intimate life, and changing ideas of love, conjugality and childhood within the Chinese family.