I'm interested in how people pursue and make sense of social mobility. How do people assign worth? What is worth pursuing? These are not matters of individual preference but are shaped by social processes.
To that end, I study how students at China's most prestigious universities, the winners of a quintessential meritocratic tournament, give meanings to entering the professional elite. I also have a project on Asian Americans in creative industries.
In their seminal work The Asian American Achievement Paradox, Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou debunk the myth of Asian American achievement, showing that a narrow success frame is not the result of an intrinsic “Asian culture” but of hyper-selective immigration and class-specific ethnic resources. Today, Asian Americans have a presence in creative industries, working outside the success frame of “medicine, law, science, or engineering.” This line of research seeks to recognize both the challenges that Asian creative workers face and the contributions they make to creativity, beauty, and art.
In my earlier work, I sought to understand the possibilities and cultural background of activism in authoritarian China.
Dai, Jingyun and Anthony J. Spires. 2018. "Advocacy in an Authoritarian State: How Grassroots Environmental NGOs Influence Local Governments in China." The China Journal 79: 62–83.
Reprinted in Greening East Asia: The Rise of the Eco-Developmental State. Edited by Ashley Esarey, Mary Alice Haddad, Joanna Lewis, and Stevan Harrell. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020.