A Localized Culture of Welfare
Entitlements, Stratification, and Identity in a Chinese Lineage Village
By (author) Kwok-shing Chan
Publication date:
25 October 2012Length of book:
236 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739166871
Hong Kong has undergone rapid and substantial social, economic, political and demographic changes since the 1970s. This book examines critically the real impact of these changes on a single surname village in rural Hong Kong. It draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted during the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
This ethnographic study demonstrates that kinship, particularly agnatic kinship, has remained a valuable resource for Pang villagers, enabling them to acquire key welfare entitlements, and to secure a good measure of economic and social well-being. Kinship affiliation has provided and still provides (admittedly differential) access to political patronage and legal entitlements, financial assistance and the substantial benefits of corporate property-holding, physical protection and political leadership, employment, care-giving and support networks, housing needs, old age security, a ritually-imagined community, with a sense of spiritual well-being. Agnatic kinship has been organized as a corporate institution and as a quasi-religious community through which substantial support, protection, and privileged access is provided for villagers. At the same time, reliance on this elaborate “localized culture of welfare” has maintained or reinforced the contours of stratification and inequality among Pang villagers, even as lineage identity has remained largely intact in the face of changing external circumstances.
This ethnographic study demonstrates that kinship, particularly agnatic kinship, has remained a valuable resource for Pang villagers, enabling them to acquire key welfare entitlements, and to secure a good measure of economic and social well-being. Kinship affiliation has provided and still provides (admittedly differential) access to political patronage and legal entitlements, financial assistance and the substantial benefits of corporate property-holding, physical protection and political leadership, employment, care-giving and support networks, housing needs, old age security, a ritually-imagined community, with a sense of spiritual well-being. Agnatic kinship has been organized as a corporate institution and as a quasi-religious community through which substantial support, protection, and privileged access is provided for villagers. At the same time, reliance on this elaborate “localized culture of welfare” has maintained or reinforced the contours of stratification and inequality among Pang villagers, even as lineage identity has remained largely intact in the face of changing external circumstances.
Through a detailed qualitative analysis of localized welfare practices, Chan examines the continued significance of lineage membership to the economic security and welfare of Hong Kong’s lineage villages. ... A Localized Culture of Welfare presents a rich ethnography with a series of stories of the lived experiences and everyday practices of welfare provision by various Pang families and their individual members. Chan’s case study offers an example of the ways in which rural and ethnic minority communities in both Hong Kong and China may respond to the gradual retrenchment of the state from welfare provision. This book will be of interest to anthropology students with a focus on Hong Kong and China’s changing sociocultural practices of lineage support, as well as to those examining localized practices of welfare provision.