Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T10:01:33.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chinese Economies in Ethnographic Perspective: Two case studies of intersecting socioeconomic diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2020

ANDREW B. KIPNIS Open the ORCID record for ANDREW B. KIPNIS [Opens in a new window]  and
TOM CLIFF
ANDREW B. KIPNIS
Affiliation:
Chinese University of Hong Kong Email: [email protected]
TOM CLIFF
Affiliation:
The Australian National University Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article presents economic interactions in two Chinese socioeconomic realms: urban funerals and village-level welfare funds. Ethnographically examining these realms reveals that each of them comprises a diversity of economic processes and moralities. Our first point is thus that ‘the economy’ is a multiple rather than a singular entity. But just as important are the means by which actors move from one form of economy to another, bridging different sets of moral rules. Diverse economic processes and the methods of moving among them exist everywhere, but in China they also reflect the legal ambiguity under which much economic activity takes place. In addition to detailing the differing forms of economy and the ways of moving among them, we show how the intersection between these processes helps to reproduce a certain social order, at least under the socioeconomic conditions at the time of our research.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 6 , November 2020 , pp. 1987 - 2021
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Andrew B. Kipnis is grateful for research funding from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council General Research Fund Project Number 14604318. Tom Cliff is grateful for research funding support from the Australian Research Council, under the Laureate (FL120100155), Discovery (DP140101289), and DECRA (DE180100622) programmes.

References

1 Gibson-Graham, J. K., The End of Capitalism (as we Knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2006; 2nd ednGoogle Scholar.

2 Yang, M. M., ‘Putting Global Capitalism in its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure’. Current Anthropology, vol. 41, no. 4, 2000, pp. 477–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Yang, M. M., ‘The Gift Economy and State Power in China’. Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 31, no. 1, 1989, pp. 25–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yang, M. M., Gifts, Favours, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1994Google Scholar.

4 Akin, D. and Robbins, J. (eds), Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia, University of Pittsburg Press, Pittsburg, 1999Google Scholar; Maurer, B., ‘The Anthropology of Money’. Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 35, no. 1, 2006, pp. 15–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shipton, P., Bitter Money: Cultural Economy and Some African Meanings of Forbidden Commodities, American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, 1989Google Scholar; Zelizer, V. A., The Social Meaning of Money, Basic Books, New York, 1994Google Scholar; Zelizer, V. A., ‘How People Talk About Money’. American Behavioral Science, vol. 41, no. 10, 1998, pp. 1373–1383CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 They are called face funds because they enhance the reputation or ‘face’ of those who donate to them thereby supporting local charitable activities.

6 Institutions are defined as ‘the rules that govern social behaviour’; they may be formal (laws and regulations) or informal (social mores), but they must be enforceable (non-compliance will meet with a penalty). See Lownpes, V., ‘Varieties of New Institutionalism: A Critical Appraisal’. Public Administration, vol. 74, no. 2, 1996, pp. 181–197CrossRefGoogle Scholar; North, D., Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Parry, J. and Bloch, M., ‘Introduction: Money and the Morality of Exchange’, in Money and the Morality of Exchange, Parry, J. and Bloch, M. (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Bloch, M. and Parry, J., ‘Introduction: Death and the Regeneration of Life’, in Death and the Regeneration of Life, Bloch, M. and Parry, J. (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982, p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ibid., p. 1.

9 Cai, Y., Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Sangren, P. Steven, Filial Obsessions: Chinese Patriliny and its Discontents (Culture, Mind and Society), Palgrave Macmillan, Switzerland, 2017CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Schuster, C. E., ‘Repaying the Debts of the Dead: Kinship, Microfinance, and Mortuary Practice on the Paraguayan Frontier’. Social Analysis, vol. 60, no. 2, 2016, pp. 65–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 While not the case in all Chinese cities, custom in Nanjing required the burial to take place before noon.

13 V. Piao, ‘China, Facing Land Shortages, Encourages Saving Space 6 Feet Under’, The New York Times, 26 February 2016; Kiki Zhao, ‘China's New Wedding Vows: To Have, Hold and Not Violate National Interests’, The New York Times, 18 February 2016.

14 Kipnis, A., Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self, and Subculture in a North China Village, Duke University Press, Durham, 1997Google Scholar; Yang, Y., The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 1996Google Scholar; Yang, Gifts, Favours, and Banquets.

15 For more on inheritance issues in urban China, see Davis, D. S., ‘Who Gets the House? Renegotiating Property Rights in Post-Socialist Urban China’. Modern China, vol. 36, no. 5 (2010), pp. 463–492CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, D. S. and Lu, H., ‘Property in Transition: Conflicts over Ownership in Post-Socialist Shanghai’. European Journal of Sociology, vol. 44, no. 1 (2003), pp. 77–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Cohen, M., House United, House Divided: The Chinese Family in Taiwan, Columbia University Press, New York, 1976Google Scholar.

17 Sangren, Filial Obsessions.

18 See Hurst, W. and O'Brien, K. J., ‘China's Contentious Pensioners’. The China Quarterly, vol. 170, 2002, pp. 345–360CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Whyte, M. K., ‘Death in the People's Republic of China’, in Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, Watson, J. L. and Rawski, E. S. (eds), University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif., 1988Google Scholar.

20 In Nanjing, businesses that formally hire employees are required to provide three forms of insurance: health insurance, old-age pension, and unemployment insurance.

21 The family spent roughly 15,000 yuan on the funeral in total, including money spent at the crematorium/funeral home and for a banquet. That total did not include money spent on the graveyard plot, which could cost anywhere from 30,000–200,000 yuan, depending on the cemetery and size of plot. If one includes the cost of cemetery plots, it appears that spending on funerals is more in relation to monthly income than is reported by Whyte for the Republican era, though he points out that spending varied greatly depending on the class of the deceased's family and the age and status of the deceased. See Whyte, ‘Death in the People's Republic of China’, p. 294.

22 Some people also want to avoid relationships with funerary workers and entrepreneurs, as the industry is stigmatized in China. Some entrepreneurs said they avoided shaking hands with their clients and many workers told me they could only marry another person working in the industry. However, quickly clearing debts is a general phenomenon in Chinese informal economies, so it should not be attributed solely to the stigma attached to the funerary industry.

23 See Kipnis, A. B., ‘Mediated Agency and Funeral Insurance in China’. Polar: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, vol. 41, no. 2, November 2018, pp. 319–325CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Dickson, B., Wealth into Power: The Communist Party's Embrace of China's Private Sector, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tsai, K., Capitalism without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2007Google Scholar.

25 We translate jijinhui as ‘fund’ rather than ‘foundation’ to avoid the more formal and large-scale connotations of the latter.

26 Huagang is a pseudonym for a nominally rural but rapidly industrializing township in Shandong province. Cliff conducted in-depth, structured interviews with over 30 different private entrepreneurs who are closely involved in non-state welfare funds in their respective villages. Many of these people were interviewed more than once over a three-year plus research period (2014–2017), totalling almost 40 interviews. Cliff also conducted interviews and engaged in informal conversations with NGO volunteers, local government officials at the township and county level, ordinary villagers, and community leaders.

27 Yang, ‘Putting Global Capitalism in its Place’.

28 Brandt, L. and Rawski, T. G. (eds), China's Great Economic Transformation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oi, J. C., ‘The Collective Foundation for Rapid Rural Industrialisation’, in Cooperative and Collective in China's Rural Development: Between State and Private Interests, Vermeer, E. B., Pieke, F. N. and Chong, W. L. (eds), M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, N.Y., 1998Google Scholar; X. Pei, ‘Township-Village Enterprises, Local Governments, and Rural Communities: The Chinese Village as a Firm during Economic Transition’, in Cooperative and Collective in China's Rural Development, Vermeer, Pieke and Chong (eds); Unger, Jonathan, The Transformation of Rural China, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, N.Y., 2002Google Scholar.

29 Tsai, K. S., Back-Alley Banking: Private Entrepreneurs in China, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 2002Google Scholar.

30 Sangren, P. Steven, ‘Traditional Chinese Corporations: Beyond Kinship’. The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 43, no. 3, 1984, pp. 391–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 See also the critiques of Yang: Cooper, G., ‘Critique of Mayfair Yang's “Putting Global Capitalism in its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure”’. Current Anthropology, vol. 41, no. 4, 2000Google Scholar; S. Feuchtwang, op. cit; L. Rofel, op. cit.; P. Steven Sangren, op. cit.

32 For details, please see T. Cliff, ‘Face Funds: Political Manoeuvres around Non-State Welfare in Rural China’. China Review, June 2017, pp. 151–178.

33 National People's Congress, ‘Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo Laonian Ren Quanyi Baozhang Fa, 2012 Xiuding (Law of the People's Republic of China on Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly, 2012 Revision)’, PKU Law, http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Gid=191980, [accessed 7 January 2020].

34 Ministry of Civil Affairs, ‘Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo Cishan Fa (The Charity Law of the People's Republic of China)’, China Development Brief, http://chinadevelopmentbrief.cn/articles/the-charity-law-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china/.

35 Deng, G., ‘The Hidden Rules Governing China's Unregistered NGOs: Management and Consequences’. China Review, vol. 10, no. 1, 2010, pp. 183–206Google Scholar; Wu, F. and Chan, K., ‘Graduated Control and Beyond: The Evolving Government-Ngo Relations’. China Perspectives, no. 3, 2012, pp. 9–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Spires, Anthony, ‘Contingent Symbiosis and Civil Society in an Authoritarian State: Understanding the Survival of China's Grassroots NGOs’. American Journal of Sociology, vol. 117, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 See, for example, Tsai, Capitalism without Democracy.

38 For more on this saying and the types of gendered social relations it can refer to, see Judd, E. R., Gender and Power in Rural North China, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 1994Google Scholar; Kipnis, A., ‘Zouping Christianity as Gendered Critique? An Ethnography of Political Potentials’. Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 27, no. 1, 2002, pp. 80–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rofel, Lisa, ‘Liberation Nostalgia and a Yearning for Modernity’, in Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State, Gilmartin, C. K. et al. (eds), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1994Google Scholar; Wolf, M., Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 1985Google Scholar.

39 Ji, R., ‘Ritual Capital: A Proposed Concept from Case Studies of School Selection in China’. Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 45, 2017, pp. 316–339Google Scholar; Kipnis, ‘Zouping Christianity as Gendered Critique?’; Osburg, J., Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality among China's New Rich, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stafford, Charles, ‘Deception, Corruption and the Chinese Ritual Economy’, in Consuming China: Approaches to Cultural Change in Contemporary China, Latham, K., Thompson, S. and Klein, J. (eds), Routledge, London, 2006Google Scholar; Yang, ‘The Gift Economy and State Power in China’.

40 Sangren, ‘Critique of Mayfair Yang's “Putting Global Capitalism in its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure”’.

41 Williamson, J. B., Fang, L. and Calvoc, E., ‘Rural Pension Reform in China: A Critical Analysis’. Journal of Aging Studies, vol. 41, 2017, pp. 67–74CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

42 These regulations demonstrate a genuine commitment to serving the village population or, at the very least, a pragmatic recognition of the respective needs of savings depositors and entrepreneurial borrowers.