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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: abkipnis@cuhk.edu.hk
TOM CLIFF
Affiliation:
The Australian National University Email: tom.cliff@anu.edu.au
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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.