Suchergebnisse

While many have studied China's recent rise as an economic power, China itself does not exist solely in the economic realm. Ordinary Chinese still place intense value on moral obligations and the nature of the social ties that connect them to others. This study explores the moral sphere as a key to understanding how rural Chinese experience and talk about their lives in this period of rapid economic transformation. Ellen Oxfeld, who spent time in a village in southeast China's Guangdong Province over the course of a decade and a half, examines both continuities and changes in the local culture. Although some have suggested that the reform period in China has been characterized by moral cynicism, Oxfeld finds that villagers appeal to a vibrant array of moral discourses when choosing a path of personal action or evaluating the behavior of others

Less than a half century ago, China experienced a cataclysmic famine, which was particularly devastating in the countryside. As a result, older people in rural areas have experienced in their lifetimes both extreme deprivation and relative abundance of food. Young people, on the other hand, have a different relationship to food. Many young rural Chinese are migrating to rapidly industrializing cities for work, leaving behind backbreaking labor but also a connection to food through agriculture.Bitter and Sweet examines the role of food in one rural Chinese community as it has shaped everyday lives over the course of several tumultuous decades. In her superb ethnographic accounts, Ellen Oxfeld compels us to reexamine some of the dominant frameworks that have permeated recent scholarship on contemporary China and that describe increasing dislocation and individualism and a lack of moral centeredness. By using food as a lens, she shows a more complex picture, where connectedness and sense of place continue to play an important role, even in the context of rapid change

"Less than a half century ago, China experienced a cataclysmic famine, which was particularly devastating in the countryside. For older people in rural areas, food now symbolizes everything from misery and extreme want to relative abundance. Young people, on the other hand, have a different relationship to food. Many young rural Chinese are migrating to rapidly industrializing cities for work, happy to leave behind the backbreaking labor associated with peasant agriculture. Bitter and Sweet examines the role of food in one rural Chinese community, as it has shaped everyday lives over the course of several tumultuous decades. In her superb ethnographic accounts, Ellen Oxfeld compels us to reexamine some of the dominant frameworks that have permeated recent scholarship on contemporary China, work that describes increasing dislocation and individualism and a lack of moral centeredness. By using food as our lens, we see a more complex picture, one in which connectedness and sense of place continue to play an important role, even in the context of rapid change."--Provided by publisher

Chinese feasting encompasses everything from life-cycle celebrations to the indulgences of corrupt officials. Although woven into the commodity economy, banqueting also creates and solidifies social relationships, providing a space where different moral economies converge. This article explores the moral economies that intersect in Chinese banqueting as well as the differing moral registers people use to understand it. Proper form in banqueting is essential to being a cultured person and all banqueting gathers meaning through analogy to the commensal sharing at the heart of the family and ritual economy. Lavish official banqueting may be condemned in popular and state discourse as corrupt; yet officials may claim banqueting is necessary work that creates social connections which help their localities. Banquet inflation among ordinary people is also subject to contradictory moral evaluations. While the recent crackdown on official corruption stigmatises banquet indulgence, it may reinforce ordinary people's desire to utilise banquets as one of their only tools to influence those with relatively more power. (JCCA/GIGA)

This article is based on fieldwork conducted during the 1980s in a community of Hakka Chinese who had found a profitable niche in Kolkata's leather industry. It examines the way Kolkata's ethnic economy, in which different caste, language and religious groups each inhabit different economic niches, furthered the Hakka's continued identification of themselves as 'guest people'. The Hakka distinguished between themselves and a variety of others, not only other Indian groups, but also the Cantonese and Hubeinese Chinese.

Migration and Ethnicity in Chinese History: Hakkas, Pengmin, and Their Neighbors. Tim Wright. ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. 234 pp.

Illusions of home in the story of a Rwandan refugee's return / John Janzen -- Contemplating repatriation to Eritrea / Lucia Ann McSpadden -- Filipina depictions of migrant life for their kin at home / Jane A. Margold -- Viet Kieu on a fast track back? / Lynellyn D. Long -- Chinese villagers and the moral dilemmas of return visits / Ellen Oxfeld -- Changing Filipina identities and ambivalent returns / Nicole Constable -- Returning German Jews and questions of identity / John Borneman -- Repatriation and social class in Nicaragua / James Phillips -- Refugee returns to Sarajevo and their challenge to contemporary narratives of mobility / Anders H. Stefansson -- The making of a good citizen in an Ethiopian returnee settlement / Laura Hammond -- West Indian migrants and their rediscovery of Barbados / George Gmelch