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Polarizing images of authoritarian, socialist or culturalist otherness compromise analyses of the Chinese state. Still, such images produce effects beyond academia when they inform performances of the boundaries between state and non-state. This book shows how performative boundary work leads to contrasting judgements that decide about support and access to resources. In an ecological village in Sichuan, citizen participation in food networks and bureaucracy signaled Western liberalism, Maoism or traditional rural culture for different audiences. Attention to the multiplicity of performed state boundaries helps China studies and political anthropology to understand such diverging classifications – and how they sometimes co-exist without causing tensions.
“Lammer’s ethnographic narrations are detailed and fascinating, and demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt his bonafides as a careful and attentive ethnographer.” • The China Quarterly
“Lammer’s book is an excellent example of an ethnographically grounded theoretical work. It offers a useful and dense overview of the anthropology of the state … it discusses and advances cutting-edge theoretical questions. Another strength of this book is that it counterbalances the Orientalist othering of China.” • Klāvs Sedlenieks, Rīga Stradinš University
“The book is of interest not just to scholars studying China but more generally to social scientists, particularly to social anthropologists to whom it advocates the infusion of the political to the study of kinship. It is well organised, suitable for academics and their libraries, and for courses on the local state in the PRC and the anthropology of state.” • Stephan Feuchtwang, London School of Economics and Political Science
Christof Lammer is a social anthropologist based at the Department of Society, Knowledge and Politics, University of Klagenfurt, and a fellow at Humboldt University of Berlin's Centre for Advanced Studies inherit. He has co-edited special issues on ‘Measuring Kinship’ (2021, Social Analysis) and ‘Infrastructures of Value’ (2024, Ethnos). He is also a co-organizer of the Scientific Network ‘Anthropology and China(s)’ (2021–2025).
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Performative Boundary Work
PART I: STATE BOUNDARIES IN A FOOD NETWORK
Chapter 1. Participation and Anaglyphic Boundary Repertoires
Chapter 2. Eco-certification and Scripts of Community
Chapter 3. Acting as Father-State and Mother-Society
PART II: STATE BOUNDARIES IN DEMOCRATIC BUREAUCRACY
Chapter 4. Democracy and Paternalism Folded in Documents
Chapter 5. Anticipating Bureaucratic Standardization
Chapter 6. Measuring Familism, Marking Corruption
Conclusion: Unblurring the Multiplicity of State Boundaries