Abstract

Despite growing affluence, a large number of urban Chinese have problems making ends meet. Based on ethnographic research among several different types of communities in Guangzhou, China, Soup, Love and a Helping Hand examines different modes and ideologies of help/support, as well as the related issues of reciprocity, relatedness (kinship), and changing state-society relations in contemporary China. With an emphasis on the subjective experience, Fleischer’s research carefully explores people’s ideas about moral obligations, social expectations, and visions of urban Chinese society.

Friederike Fleischer is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. She was previously a post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. She is the author of Surburban Beijing (2010), and co-editor of Ethnographies of Support (2013).

“This excellent monograph will be of great use to both scholars of contemporary China as well as to students at both graduate and undergraduate levels.” · Ellen Oxfeld, Middlebury College