REVIEWER MEETS REVIEWED
SEMINAR SERIES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM’S ANTHROPOLOGY LIBRARY AND RESEARCH CENTRE
Communities of Complicity: Everyday Ethics in Rural China
Thursday 18 February at 10.00 am (tea & coffee served from 9.30 am)
Anthropology Library and Research Centre, British Museum
THIS IS A FREE EVENT
The British Museum’s Anthropology Library and Research Centre, in conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’, a discussion between Dr Hans Steinmuller, author of Communities of Complicity: Everyday Ethics in Rural China, and Dr Christos Lynteris, who reviewed the book for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Everyday life in contemporary rural China is characterised 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 study of the village of Zhongba (in Hubei Province, central China) attempts to grasp the ethical reflexivity of everyday life in rural China. Drawing on descriptions of village life, interspersed with targeted theoretical analyses, it 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 harmonise 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.
Bookings/enquiries: Ted Goodliffe ( TGoodliffe@britishmuseum.org)
