ABSTRACT
Cities are dynamic, exciting, soothing and, at times, fearful places, as evident in the array of stories, real and imagined, about ‘golden’ opportunities for social advancement or personal decline. They are also all-too-real arenas of human suffering and life satisfaction. Georg Simmel (1950), a leading twentiethcentury sociologist, thought urban life promoted a blasé outlook that resulted in indifference towards the fate of others. For Simmel, the city was a corrupting site that dampened an individual’s ability to become empathically engaged in another’s plight. In effect, urbanism, especially when linked to a capitalistic market economy, did not enhance, but numbed, people’s capacity for empathy and thus restricted opportunites for human connection. In contrast, Viviana Zelizer notes that Simmel failed to account for ‘the rich social hues as people improvised different ways to personalize and differentiate monies’ (Zelizer 1979: 9) for strikingly different uses such as charitable gifts and civic improvements. For Zelizer, the city is not only the site of alienation, but also the site of richness, possibilities and future achievements. In this scenario, urban life, especially when linked to a market economy, does not dull an individual’s ethical sensibilities as much as nurture it. From this perspective, urban mental life is not based in anomie, but rather results in the expansion of a people’s moral horizon and, with it, their web of social connections or connectiveness. Early twentieth-century Chinese literati, like their western counterparts,
also entertained conflicting images of the city. One view, often referred to as the ‘Beijing perspective’, did not consider the city worthy of study at all. This perspective glorified rural life as an idyllic setting where people reflect simplicity and a purity of heart. Much like Simmel’s perception of the twentiethcentury European city, the city was regarded as a bleak settlement and the source of social alienation and personal disillusionment. In contrast, the ‘Shanghai perspective’ regarded the city as the embodiment of novelty, exuberance, reform, stylistic experimentation, and thus ongoing modernity (Zhang 1999). Initially the communist party endorsed the Beijing perspective, and with it the idealization of the farmer. It was not until the 1990s that
the party-state would embrace the Shanghai perspective, and with it the idealization of the individual as a private decision-maker (Logan 2002). The conflicting views discussed above are recurrent themes in western and
Chinese history, making the subject of urban relatedness or connection a rich topic for ethnographic investigation. As people respond to large macroforces that have already had an impact on many western societies, the way social relationships, especially kinship, are being reconceptualized is as dramatic as it is significant for understanding contemporary urban life. Exploring urban kinship, as an expansive set of social relations, forms another means of assessing social change in the larger society. An individual’s sense of relatedness or kinship often includes a wide variety of connections that can include village associations, neighborhood fellowships, ethnic and religious bonds, classmate affiliations, student-teacher bonds, and-long standing or newly formed friendships. Thus it is imperative, Janet Carsten (2000; 2004) argues, that kinship studies focus on these alternative forms, albeit often deeply felt, of social connectiveness that structure sentiment and organize obligation in a community. Building on Carsten’s insights, Gonçalo Santos (2006) and Susanne
Brandtstädter (2007), in separate papers, offer insightful commentaries on the benefits of approaching the study of Chinese kinship as something more than a formal system of relationships. For them, kinship is a form of relatedness or connectiveness most saliently revealed through its transactions or social flows that always extend beyond a community’s formal genealogy. Not all social flows or connections, however, are equal. In order for a connection to be transformed into a more salient form of relatedness, individuals have to recognize sharing a common identity that always involves some form of ethical entanglement. In this way, the construction of relatedness or expanded kinship takes place within a shared moral system. In most, if not all, societies, the natal family (parents, siblings, usually
grandparent/s), along with occasional uncles and aunts, constitutes an individual’s core social unit and thus serves as his or her primary source of social flow. From this core unit, other types of social relationships are often highlighted or rendered mute. For example, patrilineal descent systems focus on the father’s side, while matrilineal descent models emphasize the reverse – those relationships established through the mother. With maturity, individuals begin to participate in a wider social nexus that can become an additional source of relatedness. In China, if not everywhere, the expansion of an individual’s social network seldom results in the devaluation of the natal family. As other contributors to this book demonstrate, Chinese notions of relat-
edness or kinship extend beyond the formal structure highlighted in earlier research (see overviews by Cohen 2005; Szonyi 2002). Because most of the contributors have worked in rural China, their chapters understandably focus on the complexities of village connectiveness or kin relatedness. Less explored in this literature is the meaning, practice and quality of relatedness found in contemporary urban China.
