Introduction

Dr. SUN Rui is a sociocultural anthropologist whose work examines the intersections of time, value, and economic life in contemporary China. She is currently developing her dissertation into a monograph, tentatively titled Ephemeral Economies: Time, Value-making, and Acceleration in Dounan Flower Market, China, which explores the ephemeral economies of fresh-cut flowers and their implications for accelerationist ideologies. As she moves toward her next research projects, Sun Rui engages with questions of decision-making and self-justification in everyday biopolitics, as well as the romanticization of smallholder farming.

Research interests

Anthropology of China; economic and political anthropology; sensory studies; value theory; temporal urgency and acceleration; mainland China and recently, Hong Kong.

Awards

2023/2024   Ernst-Mach Grant—Worldwide, Austria

            (hosted by Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna)

2021/2022   Visiting Fellow, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Boston, United States

            (hosted by the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University)

Selected publications

2024     “You Need to Listen to the Market!”: Making Decisions Through Senses in China’s Largest Cut-Flower Market. The American Behavioral Scientist.

2022    Yunnan Flowers: Storying Cross-Species Love Beyond Metaphors.    European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 58.

2025 “Making Beauty as Craft of Care.” Anthropology News 1/31/2025.

2023   Review of What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make. By Michael J. Hathaway. New Jersey: Princeton University Press (2022). Agricultural History 97(4): 696-698.

2019   Review of Emptiness and Fullness: Ethnographies of Lack and Desire in Contemporary China. Edited by Susanne Bregnbæk and Mikkel Bunkenborg. New York: Berghahn Books (2017). Asian Anthropology 18(2): 129-131.