Suchergebnisse

"Yan-an, China was the main organizing site of Chinese communism from 1935 to 1949. As the final destination of the Long March and center of the 'red bases,' it acquired mythical status during the Maoist period as the symbol and epitome of the Communist Party's triumph. Yet in the post-Mao period, Yan-an's significance diminished, along with its role as an emblem of revolutionary heroism. In this study, Ka-ming Wu presents an ethnographic account of contemporary Yan-an. She looks at Yan-an today to see what happened to that society and culture in the post-socialism era. Wu examines new dynamics between state and society in light of how rural residents in northwest China make sense of rapid social changes. Under Mao, Yan'an's rural culture was stripped of its spiritual contents and reorganized around socialist, anti-imperial rhetoric to glorify communists' socioeconomic reforms. Since the 1980s, rural Ya'an has been reimagined as a hinterland of ancient cultural traditions. Wu documents how revivals of rural practices are reworked within the socialist legacy, including folk paper-cutting, a local form of musical storytelling, and spiritual cults of local deities. Even though Mao had repressed these practices, surprisingly their current revival has brought out the sacredness or urgency of the revolution's legacy. Instead of assuming that ascendent market forces have replaced state socialism, the dominant line about post-Mao China today, Wu probes the various cultural practices in contemporary Yan'an that evade total commercialization. She contends that this public realm contains powerful religious and ritual practices that produce new forms of meaning out of turbulent rural conditions and new dynamics of state-society relations in the post-socialist era"--

AbstractIn a single serving of boba tea, the non-human actors of the tall plastic cups, plastic dome lids, and the giant plastic straws dominate, but receive little attention. This article uses recent theories and discussions of new materialism to bring together cultural analysis of the boba tea consumption phenomenon that could be relevant for reflecting on a sustainable future. The article contributes to social research of waste by focusing on the mediating functions of plastic before it becomes waste. My central argument is that plastic is not merely a physical and impartial container in the contemporary food and beverage industry. It plays an indispensable role in the visualization, mass mediation, and consumption of the boba tea beverage. While current waste research often focuses on the "afterlife" of plastic waste as it relates to underclass waste workers, recycling economy and global waste trade, this article highlights the performative function of plastic as it changes the way we imagine time, gender, and waste. I show it is the plastic cup that enables boba tea to be so visually and gastronomically satisfying in an age when the photogenicity and "Instagrammability" of food and beverage have become more relevant to taste and distinctions.

This essay examines the recent evolution of state-sponsored storytelling in rural China. During a month-long period in 2004, I followed Master Xu, a storyteller trained as a propagandist during the Mao era, as he gave performances in eight villages in rural Yan'an. I found that, at the level of the rural community, Master Xu was neither disseminating propaganda for the state nor giving extensive storytelling performances. Rather, his propaganda itinerary was being transformed into opportunities for a variety of religious services. Master Xu was asked by the villagers to perform clandestine healing sessions and to fit his performance into a range of religious rites. This essay demonstrates the radical re-interpretation of a previously politicized cultural tradition, and shows how forms of spiritual revival respond to problems and translocal conditions prevalent in Yan'an rural communities today. (China J/GIGA)

The essay examines the meanings of waste in the community formation of waste pickers in today's Chinese megacities. We show that waste pickers in China echo to a certain extent the precarious and stigmatised labour conditions among those in the global south. But we have found that in China, financial reasons alone were not what pushed migrants to enter the trade. In fact, we have found that waste pickers in Beijing enter the waste business also to experiment with urban citizenship, freedom from the factory regime, entrepreneurship, and household making on the fringe of the nation's capital. Their strategies of working with waste offer a prism for understanding the wider dimension of social and cultural life in the waste community in a major city of China – what we refer to as "living with waste." "Living with waste" in this paper is intended as a framework to encompass the everyday effort to work with, experience, and live with waste matter on a daily basis. How do waste pickers talk about their job? Is it just about stigmatisation and suffering? Can it be about business and mobility? How do they feel about raising kids in a waste-collecting courtyard? If dirt is "matter of out of place" (Douglas 1966), how do they deal with impurity and contamination on a daily basis? What kind of efforts do they make to normalise or create boundaries in the undesirable working and living environment? Living with waste, then, is deeply bound with efforts not only to make a livelihood, but also to constantly negotiate one's position with and draw boundaries from waste within the family and the community, in order to make the job bearable, and even meaningful. (China Perspect/GIGA)