ABSTRACT
In the three decades since the end of Maoism, the Chinese countryside has undergone extraordinary social transformations. Travelling through the provinces of central China, one cannot fail to note the ubiquitous construction of new houses, generally of bricks and concrete. In all but the most remote villages, modern consumer goods have arrived, such as electrical appliances, washing machines, radio-cassette players, TV sets, motor bikes and mobile phones. 1 Among the younger generation, literacy is close to universal, and mass media (TV in particular) reaches most farm households. Both work and consumption are increasingly integrated into market economies, not least because of large-scale labour migration (Murphy 2002; Steinmüller 2013: Chapter 3). The family and the household continue to be the basic units of production and consumption, as well as of ritual exchange, but all these social spheres are now also deeply intertwined with the logic of markets for commodities. Rural industrialisation, administrative restructuring and the prioritisation of economic development have fundamentally changed rural politics. People confront all this in everyday life, which is characterised now by contingency and heightened moral ambiguities. 2
