Communities of Complicity : : Everyday Ethics in Rural China / / Hans Steinmüller.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Steinmüller, Hans,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2013]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Dislocations ; 10
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (290 p.)

Everyday life in contemporary rural China is characterized by an increased sense of moral challenge and uncertainty. Ordinary people often find themselves caught between the moral frameworks of capitalism, Maoism and the Chinese tradition. This ethnographic study of the village of Zhongba (in Hubei Province, central China) is an attempt to grasp the ethical reflexivity of everyday life in rural China. Drawing on descriptions of village life, interspersed with targeted theoretical analyses, the author examines how ordinary people construct their own senses of their lives and their futures in everyday activities: building houses, working, celebrating marriages and funerals, gambling and dealing with local government. The villagers confront moral uncertainty; they creatively harmonize public discourse and local practice; and sometimes they resolve incoherence and unease through the use of irony. In so doing, they perform everyday ethics and re-create transient moral communities at a time of massive social dislocation.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on the Text -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 A Remote Place from Three Angles -- Chapter 2 Gabled Roofs and Concrete Ceilings -- Chapter 3 Work Through the Food Basket -- Chapter 4 Channelling Along a Centring Path -- Chapter 5 The Embarrassment of Li -- Chapter 6 Gambling and the Moving Boundaries of Social Heat -- Chapter 7 Face Projects in Rural Construction -- Conclusion Everyday Ethics, Cultural Intimacy, and Irony -- Appendix A Newspaper Report -- Appendix B Expenses for the Construction of a House -- Appendix C List of Money-Gifts and Tasks -- Appendix D Subsidies Given to Three Households -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index