ABSTRACT
Investments and donations made by Overseas Chinese are regarded as having played a major role in China’s recent economic boom, and also in the visibly improved infrastructure in many qiaoxiang (emigrant communities) in the past several decades. This chapter focuses on cooperation among members of a lineage subgroup in a qiaoxiang village in Guangdong Province. Drawing on a case study of conflicts over land ownership in this qiaoxiang, the chapter suggests that neither kinship ties nor shared cultural values nor economic interests per se are enough to convince people to cooperate. It also focuses on the concern for reputation that is at play in cooperation processes involving huaqiao and their home town folks – and also cooperation among locals in a range of projects. Reputation is treated as morality and (symbolic) power that can travel across time and space. The mutuality of reputation, both as morality and power, works as an intimate part of the ‘mutuality of being’.
