Rice alumna Sophia Peng ‘24 has won the 2024 Harold K. Schneider Student Paper Prize in Economic Anthropology from the Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) for her paper “Community-Making as Investment: A History of Houston’s Chinese Community Center (CCC).”
The paper is an adaptation of a chapter of Peng’s honors thesis that examined kinship as a methodology for reimagining community for adult English language learners at the Houston’s Community Chinese Center. Dr. Victoria Massie, Sophia Peng’s thesis advisor, said, “Building on a legacy of kinship studies as a methodology for addressing questions of exchange, Peng develops the concept of "community making" by repurposing Benedict Anderson's "imagined communities". She illustrates not only how imagination emerges as a good in terms of being source material for building an immigrant community in Houston in the late 20th century. By considering her ethnographic fieldwork of Houston's Chinese Community Center in tandem with trends surrounding the development of Chinatowns in U.S. cities, Peng also links imagination to a Houston-inflected investment strategy whose sprawl sets up a kind of classed monopoly at the community center's foundation that also shape what/whose interests the center can serve today in ways that are irreducible to a problem of identity. I would only emphasize that her analytical creativity is mirrored in the kaleidoscopic approach she takes in the actual structure of her argument."
As a recipient of the award, Peng will receive a cash prize and has been invited to present her paper at the 2025 Annual Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) meeting in Puebla, Mexico from June 5-7, 2025.
Peng is very grateful for the support of her thesis advisor, Dr. Victoria Massie; committee members, Dr. Amarilys Estrella, and Dr. Sidney Lu; and all of the Rice Anthropology faculty and staff who’ve helped her find her start in this field.
Sophia Peng ‘24 wins the 2024 Harold K. Schneider Student Paper Prize
