ABSTRACT
Modernity offers increased autonomy and mobility to individuals given the decline in definitive ways of being constrained by specific ideologies. Millions of people therefore migrate annually in the quest of self-improvement. While potentially liberating of the self, modernity is accompanied by increased uncertainty and the ascendancy of contingency and skepticism. So, while there are increased opportunities for self-making, there is less guidance on how to do so. Accompanying modernity is capitalism and its handmaiden globalization, which both thwart and facilitate self-development. Capitalism offers the ultimately self-limiting seduction of the material and the illusion of final gratification. At the same time, given its restlessness and curiosity, if well managed, Capitalism also offers opportunity for self-development that is ethical and that contributes to the well-being of others. Africana workers in China require a high degree of reflexive capacity in the context of diverse and ethical support networks to manage the challenges of living the good life. Such workers must avoid the temptation of the unthoughtful material life. This requires them to accept the reality of never being fully satisfied from both material and relational perspectives. This calls for the adaptive managing of an irreducible degree of ambivalence.
