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Structures of Hosting in a South-Western Chinese Town

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Structures of Hosting in a South-Western Chinese Town Structures of hosting in a south-western Chinese town Thomas Niall McDonald University College London Department of Anthropology A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2013 1 Declaration I, Thomas Niall McDonald, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis focuses on the materiality of hospitality situations in an industrial county- level town in south-west China, and its rural peripheries. Using ethnographic data, it demonstrates the movement of structures of habituated hospitality practices from ‘guest hall’ rooms in homes to a plethora of new commercial venues that have emerged in the town during the ‘reform and opening’ period. The first half of the thesis illustrates how, in the domestic sphere, these layouts serve to create a locale around which the family is both literally and metaphorically arranged, but also as a key site in which the family attempts to manage and control their interactions with non-family guests. In recent years, the expectations that hosting situations should be ever more exuberant in nature (typified by the creation of large amounts of ‘social heat’) has resulted in such gatherings being considered increasingly unsuitable for the home environment, which is progressively being reconceptualised as a location for ‘relaxation’. The second half of the thesis focuses upon the town’s commercial venues, examining both the material environment and social interactions taking place within, to demonstrate the similarities that exist between these spaces and the home’s guest hall. It will be shown that the widespread commodification and de- domestification of hosting situations has brought about a number of changes in the town, including concerns over a lack of co-presence of family members, and an enhanced facility for the creation of socially efficacious relationships that are free of the ties and purview of kin relations. The thesis concludes by proposing the term structured hosting to inform both existing anthropological notions of the home and hospitality, and to extend Bourdieu’s notion of habitus by demonstrating how it can become inscribed upon new social domains. 3 Table of contents List of figures and tables 6 Acknowledgements 7 Note on the text 9 1. Introduction 10 1.1. Understanding Chinese society: homes as supporting kinship 16 1.1.1. A gendered view on kinship 29 1.2. The anthropology of hospitality 34 1.3. Red Mountain Town: commonality amongst diversity 37 1.3.1. A mining town 40 1.3.2. Rural peripheries 44 1.3.3. Historical contextualisation: Chinese transformations in ownership, inheritance and privacy 45 1.3.4. Heterogeneity and housing: ownership, inheritance and social status 50 1.3.5. Participants: persons and households 62 1.4. Outline 67 PART I: ‘INSIDE’ 73 2. ‘Jia’: home and family 74 2.1. Arranging life around something 77 2.2. Endlessly expanding homes and state regulation 87 2.2.1. Examples of expansion 88 2.2.2. Limits of expansion 94 2.3. Heat and the home: heat as an organising factor in Red Mountain Town society 104 2.3.1. Linear development, cooling and constructing idealised past homes 107 2.3.2. The guest hall, family and relaxation 119 2.4. Half house-societies 126 3. Guest halls and guests 131 3.1. Inviting guests home 136 3.2. The materiality of the guest hall: permanent preparedness, fate, and the nature of social relations 141 3.2.1. Permanent preparedness and ‘yuanfen’ 142 3.2.2. Trapping guests to create heat in the home 149 3.3. Creating social heat at home with guests: expansion, unification and speculation 161 3.3.1. Expansion: heat as creating social relationships and aggrandising hosts 162 3.3.2. Unification: the effect of guests on family cohesion 164 4 3.3.3. Limitation: failed hosting and the danger of coldness or excessive heat 176 3.4. Hosting versus homing: dysfunctionalist approaches to the home 183 PART II: ‘OUTSIDE’ 190 4. Internet cafes and the presence of children 191 4.1. The attractions of internet cafes 194 4.1.1. Collectivity in internet cafes 196 4.1.2. Web hosting: practising hospitality in internet cafes 199 4.2. The dangers of internet cafes 201 4.2.1. Infatuation 202 4.2.2. ‘Too many people’ and social complexity 203 4.2.3. Disease 204 4.2.4. Radiation 204 4.2.5. Upsetting natural bodily phases 207 4.3. Click to return home: home internet connections 208 4.3.1. The Li’s and the problem of placing the PC 210 4.3.2. Mr Huang’s son finds immortality in his bedroom 215 4.3.3. Hosting the children at home 219 5. ‘Xiangshou’ and the salon: enjoying hospitality 224 5.1. The rise of ‘xiangshou’ experiences outside the home 227 5.2. Hair salons as a site of ‘xiangshou’ 233 5.2.1. ‘Doing hair’ versus ‘xiangshou’ 234 5.2.2. Medicinal haircare 237 5.2.3. Gendering haircare 241 5.2.4. Chinese medicine and hosting 249 6. Karaoke migrations: tranquillising homes, relocating pleasures 254 6.1. Obligatory participation: generating social heat in karaoke parlours 255 6.1.1. The role of sound and obligation 257 6.2. Karaoke migrations 262 6.2.1. Singing as a social practice 262 6.2.2. Home karaoke 265 6.2.3. Karaoke parlours 269 6.3. Making yourself at home in the karaoke 271 6.3.1. Karaoke kin 275 6.3.2. Privacy and intimacy 277 7. Conclusion: of hosts and homes 284 7.1. Hospitality and hosting 285 7.2. Homes and homologies of kinship 303 7.3. Structured hosting and heat 320 Glossary of selected Chinese characters 329 Bibliography 336 5 List of figures and tables Figures Figure 1: Map showing distribution of different housing types in Red Mountain Town 51 Figure 2: A block of work-unit homes overlooking a courtyard 52 Figure 3: Rows of commercial housing blocks 55 Figure 4: A narrow road running between village-in-the-city housing 55 Figure 5: One of the few remaining soil houses in the village-in-the-city 59 Figure 6: Floor plan of Deng’s rural village home 79 Figure 7: Floor plan of first floor in Li’s village-in-the-city home 80 Figure 8: Floor plan of Yang’s work-unit home 81 Figure 9: Wall on village-in-the-city home 89 Figure 10: Steel mesh left sticking out of top of column in village-in-the-city home to allow for future expansion 90 Figure 11: Concrete pillars on the roof of Mr Xu’s house leave the possibility for adding an additional floor in the future 91 Figure 12: Adding an extra floor on top of an existing village-in-the-city home prior to new building regulations coming into force 96 Figure 13: Commercial apartments in Red Mountain Town banned expansion of the structure of buildings. 98 Figure 14: External window ledges attached onto early (1970s/1980s) work-unit homes 98 Figure 15: Unsanctioned expansion of an early work-unit block of apartments 100 Figure 16: A ‘cheerful peasant home’ restaurant 117 Figure 17: Over 30 plastic stools stored in the guest hall of a commercial apartment 145 Figure 18: Tiny area of living room in Miss Tang's home prevents arrangement of sofas in a ‘U’-shaped pattern 155 Figure 19: Floor plan of Mr Yu’s guest hall as laid out for the dinner with Director Yuan 156 Figure 20: Guests gathered in the guest hall of a house during a housewarming 170 Figure 21: Guests gathered in the outside compound of a house during a housewarming 170 Figure 22: Bar chart of activities and materials mentioned by informants in relation to ‘xiangshou’ 230 Figure 23: Poster advertising Ginger Art Physiotherapy treatment on salon wall 238 Figure 24: Floor plan of Masterpiece Cuts hair salon 246 Figure 25: Floor plan of a typical private room in a karaoke parlour 273 Tables Table 1: 16 participating households: names, housing types, family composition and connections with other families 66 6 Acknowledgements My heartfelt thanks must first go to the people of Red Mountain Town, who so generously received me into their lives, and acted as the most incredible hosts I could ever have wished for. I owe them an enormous debt. I am hugely grateful to Daniel Miller who has by far surpassed the role of supervisor, sharing with me his seemingly limitless experience, insight, critique, passion, friendship and humour along the way. Thanks must be extended to Martin Holbraad and Rebecca Empson who acted as successive second supervisors: the former continues to fire my imagination with the challenges inherent in anthropology; whilst to the latter I am deeply thankful, especially for urging me to grapple with the notion of heat, and for being a truly inspirational ethnographer. I am very thankful to my viva examiners, Charles Stafford and Inge Daniels, who really engaged with this thesis, providing a number of very helpful suggestions on further improvements to the text, and directions to take my research in the future. I am appreciative to all the academic staff at the UCL Department of Anthropology for providing a wonderful place to call home over the years. In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to Adam Drazin, Allen Abramson, Chris Pinney, Chris Tilley, Ludovic Coupaye, Michael Rowlands, Stefana Broadbent, Susanne Küchler and Victor Buchli for their constructive comments and support regarding my work. I am also indebted to the department’s administrative staff for their ongoing assistance.
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