Rumours as moral action: Contesting the local state through housing in China

Abstract

In China’s Shanxi Province, responses to an earthquake rumour translated mundane concerns over safe, adequate, and affordable housing into mass action during a perceived emergency. Ongoing housing rumours challenged the wider political-economic sphere that promised order and harmony through regulations, yet frequently led to inequality and even chaos in practice. In order to understand the morality underlying the circulation of these rumours, the article explores the Chinese realm of minjian as a domain of mutual solidarity safeguarding kin, acquaintances, and even strangers. It compares this realm of minjian to E.P. Thompson’s notion of ‘the crowd’, as sites of mass action due to diminishing access to a means of livelihood under conditions of marketization. The article thereby reflects on the transformation of Chinese homes from domestic spaces of safety and security to vehicles for capital accumulation subjected to risky speculation and dangerous corruption.

High-rise social failures

“…Scholars of urban China have examined the socio-spatial transformations aff ecting housing in the post reform era (Bruckermann 2018;Tomba 2004Tomba , 2014Zhang 2010). In China, this reorganization of sociality has been exacerbated by the shift from state-guaranteed workplace housing (danwei) to commercial estates changing perceptions of interpersonal relationships (Yang 1994), social trust, and solidarity (Bruckermann 2018).…”

European social anthropology in 2018: an increasingly recursive public

“…In a fascinating special issue, Alexander, Bruun and Koch examine the ‘Moral economies of the home’ (2018). Drawing on case studies of Danish cooperatives (Bruun ), Brazil's ‘landless’ (Flynn ), British neighbour disputes (Koch ), Kazakh housing protests (Alexander ), Serbian apartment blocks (Johnson ) and rumours about the safety of housing in China (Bruckermann ), contributors examine how people around the world articulate communities and collectivities through housing. Susser () argues in an afterword that the increasing financialisation of housing is driving political organising on the right and the left that emphasises intense emotional connections to place‐anchored collectivities.…”