Breaking with the Family Form: Historical Categories, Social Reproduction, and Everyday Life in Late 1950s Rural China

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 869-894
Author(s):  
Alexander F. Day
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Rural China ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Real ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Real Material ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract This article explores the way PRC historians use analytical categories by looking at the emergence of a divide between production and the social reproduction of labor (all the work that goes into producing and raising laborers) that transformed and structured rural everyday life during the Mao period. Everyday life is historical, produced in different ways under different material conditions, structured and shaped by social forms in motion. Thus, it is not an analytical frame through which historians can view the real content of the Mao period underneath the thin veneer of Maoist high politics and its categories. This article therefore argues that everyday life, far from a sphere resisting the impositions and dictates of the state, is fully implicated in the political-economic structuring of society. This is a call to not simply replace an earlier social science focus on the political economy of the PRC with a bottom-up or empirical view of everyday life, recognizing that everyday life is already a structured terrain. Rather than bringing in social science analytical categories from the outside or searching for an empirical real view from below, we need to investigate the emergence of categories and social forms from the real material limits and tendencies of a rapidly changing PRC society.

Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change By Susan H. Whiting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 348p. $59.95.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-253
Author(s):  
Benedict Stavis
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Rural China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rural Industry ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Social Science Theory ◽  
Science Theory ◽  
Sophisticated Analysis

While this book does not quite cover the broad range promised by its title, it does offer a sophisticated analysis of the privatization of rural industry in China, thick in social science theory and rich with empirical data.

scholarly journals Hygiene, Sociality, and Culture in Contemporary Rural China. The Uncanny New Village

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Lai
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Rural China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rural Welfare ◽  
The Mean ◽  
China Today ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Mean Time

By taking the lived body as local, unstable, diverse, and open to urban and global incorporations, this book highlights contemporary Chinese and global reductions of diverse conditions into generalized objects, especially in the Chinese state's well-intended social welfare effort of "building socialist new villages" which in the mean time shows clearly how judgments come to be disguised as facts (Cf. Pigg 1992). The political economic roots and social determinants of "dirty villages," the strategies of inhabiting "villages with empty centers," and the local and national projects of cultural production all reveal much about class and power in China today. Unlike other close ethnographies of small places in China, this reading of local culture is considered in the context of the national and global practices that maintain a deeply divisive rural-urban divide in everyday hygienic practices. This book argues that substantive ethnographic attention to the specificities of village life in the contemporary Henan context can destabilize China's chronic rural-urban divide and contribute to an effective rural welfare intervention to improve the hygienic conditions of village life at present.

scholarly journals For feminist geographies of austerity

2022 ◽  
pp. 030913252110651
Author(s):  
Sarah Marie Hall
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Marginalised Groups ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Voice And Silence

Austerity policies and austere socio-economic conditions in the UK have had acute consequences for everyday life and, interconnectedly, the political and structural regimes that impact upon the lives of women and marginalised groups. Feminist geographies have arguably been enlivened and reinvigorated by critical engagements with austerity, bringing to light everyday experiences, structural inequalities and multi-scalar socio-economic relations. With this paper I propose five areas of intervention for further research in this field: social reproduction, everyday epistemologies, intersectionality, voice and silence, and embodied fieldwork. To conclude, I argue for continuing feminist critique and analyses given the legacies and futures of austerity.

scholarly journals Hygiene, Sociality, and Culture in Contemporary Rural China. The Uncanny New Village

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Lai
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Rural China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rural Welfare ◽  
The Mean ◽  
China Today ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Mean Time

By taking the lived body as local, unstable, diverse, and open to urban and global incorporations, this book highlights contemporary Chinese and global reductions of diverse conditions into generalized objects, especially in the Chinese state's well-intended social welfare effort of "building socialist new villages" which in the mean time shows clearly how judgments come to be disguised as facts (Cf. Pigg 1992). The political economic roots and social determinants of "dirty villages," the strategies of inhabiting "villages with empty centers," and the local and national projects of cultural production all reveal much about class and power in China today. Unlike other close ethnographies of small places in China, this reading of local culture is considered in the context of the national and global practices that maintain a deeply divisive rural-urban divide in everyday hygienic practices. This book argues that substantive ethnographic attention to the specificities of village life in the contemporary Henan context can destabilize China's chronic rural-urban divide and contribute to an effective rural welfare intervention to improve the hygienic conditions of village life at present.

The Value of Food in Rural China

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Oxfeld
Keyword(s):  
Rural China ◽  
Guangdong Province ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dietary Regime ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Anthropology Of Food ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Organizing Principles

This chapter introduces the setting of the study and the major themes of the study. The setting of the book is a Hakka village, pseudonymously named Moonshadow Pond in northeast Guangdong Province. The chapter provides relevant historical background to the changing role of food in rural China over the last one hundred years, explaining briefly the political economic upheavals which have ultimately lead to a transformed dietary regime. The chapter also introduces the specific context of Moonshadow Pond, and describes its food universe. It surveys the main currents in the anthropology of food that have helped frame this study, and introduces the key organizing principles through which this study investigates the role of food in the community: labor, memory, exchange, morality, and sociality.

A Responsibility to Revolt? Climate Ethics in the Real World

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Dan Boscov-Ellen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Emissions Reduction ◽  
Economic Dynamics ◽  
The Real ◽  
Climate Ethics ◽  
Structural Character ◽  
Structural Drivers ◽  
Political Economic

Mainstream ethical debates concerning responsibility for climate change tend to overemphasise emissions and consumption while ignoring or downplaying the structural drivers of climate change and vulnerability. Failure to examine the political-economic dynamics that have produced climate change and made certain people more susceptible to its harms results in inapposite accounts of responsibility. Recognition of the structural character of the problem suggests duties beyond emissions reduction and redistribution - including, potentially, a responsibility to fundamentally restructure our political and economic institutions.

scholarly journals What was Multiculturalism?

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vijay Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Explanatory Model ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Grand Narrative ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Real Material ◽  
Material Conditions

This paper re-thinks the current imperative to theorize the (white) nation-state as a ‘multination,’ one in which the grand narrative of a nation’s founding communities (and the presumption of assimilation upon which the grand narrative was always based) gives way to a multiply centred narrative attuned to questions of unequal power relations, racism, exploitation and so on. Multiculturalism as a theory has arisen out of this shift and presents itself not as an explanatory model of a given situation but as a problematic in need of continuous theorization. The paper argues that multiculturalism remains a thing of the past, a way in which the project of the Enlightenment and matters of justice may be rethought (but not radically altered) so as to accommodate the ‘alien’ within. And it is for this reason – because of its pastness – that it requires constant critique and re-evaluation, the need to specify the real, material conditions of racism and their relation to capital at every point.

The Apparatus of Social Reproduction

Affilia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-163
Author(s):  
William A. Lane ◽  
Kristie L. Seelman
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social Categorization ◽  
Transgender Women ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Effective Interventions ◽  
Political Economic

The apparatus of social reproduction describes the process by which knowledge production contributes to oppressive conditions. This article explains and defines this process through the application of a critical theoretical lens informed the Foucauldian concept of apparatus or dispositif and social reproduction as developed by feminist activists and intellectuals. This process has a notable influence on the political economic conditions of transgender women, conditions that include disproportionate reliance on the use of criminalized economies such as sex work. Social workers inadvertently influence this process through an overreliance on broad categorizations for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer populations, which impede our ability to adequately assess such complex oppressive social relationships. Increasing the profession’s familiarity and competence with critical theory is necessary to reduce our participation in such processes and identify effective interventions for this population. Presenting a review of social work literature and a discussion of the proposed lens, the following seeks to illuminate the apparatus of social reproduction and explain how broad social categorization of transgender women is problematic. The authors recommend the adoption of the proposed lens as a tool social workers can use to better assess their research and practice and better understand the complexities of power and exploitation.

scholarly journals If Indonesia is Too Hard to Understand, Let�s Start with Bali

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme MacRae
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Media ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Way

Stereotypical representations, especially those by the media, are for most outsideobservers, the means and an obstacle to understanding Indonesia. One way aroundsuch stereotypes is to look at the way Indonesians themselves understand Indonesia. This essay reports and re?ects on Balinese understandings of Indonesia in the wake of the political, economic and terrorist upheavals of the early years of the twenty-first century. It concludes with an epilogue and update, arguing that the real issues for understanding Indonesia are now environmental.

scholarly journals Growing Appetites and Hungry Subjects: Addicts, the Undead, and the Long Arc of Theory in Western Social Science

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-133
Author(s):  
A. Jamie Saris
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Need Satisfaction ◽  
Western Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophical Idea ◽  
Technological Complexity ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract This paper explores the Western philosophical idea of “appetites” through the lens of “addiction.” I begin with a brief ethnographic description of a woman whose subjectivity seems to emerge only in the play of her unmanageable desire for various pharmaceuticals. In other words, she is a self-described “addict.” I then look at the relationships between addicts and the undead, especially vampires and zombies, who are seemingly enslaved to their appetites. This leads me to an analysis of the centrality of what I am calling “recursive need satisfaction” in much of Western (especially Anglophone and Francophone) Social Theory that, I argue, relies on a particular understanding of “appetite” in establishing the political-economic subjectivity that lies at the heart of market-oriented state. This same understanding also pushes this formation in a specific historical direction of increasing growth and organisational and technological complexity. As a globalised Western society in the last few decades has become ever more anxious of its place in the world, its impact on various interdependent systems, and the validity of the grand récits that served as its charter, such growth and complexity have emerged as objects of anxiety, even apocalyptic fear, and the terms “addict” and “addiction” have seemed ever more useful for modelling these concerns. I end with some reflections on how we use both zombies and addicts to think through some of the same issues of unchecked and damaging consumption.

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