Overview

This groundbreaking study examines the cultural manifestations of envy in China during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, a period of unprecedented economic and social change. China’s rapid accumulation of wealth – particularly its uneven distribution, which created overnight millionaires alongside those left behind – provides anthropologists with a unique opportunity to test theories of envy as a fundamental human emotion. Unlike traditional societies, where established cultural mechanisms such as witchcraft, sorcery or the ‘evil eye’ help to manage envy, China offers a unique case study. Based on extensive fieldwork in northern Chinese villages between 2006 and 2008, the author explores how sudden mining wealth has triggered various envy-related discourses and practices and reveals how these wealth disparities have reshaped social dynamics and moral landscapes. The study examines cultural expressions of envy, public discourses of malicious envy, the everyday contexts that shape envy and its social impact, the moral codes that govern the envied and their defensive strategies, and how families understand the ethics of success and failure. Through this lens, she illuminates a local moral world amidst one of humanity's most profound social transformations. This book will be an essential reference for anthropologists, sociologists, scholars and students of contemporary Chinese society, ethnography and the anthropology of emotions.

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9781041065685

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“In Windfall Wealth and Envy Zhang Hui elucidates not only the emotional but also the ethical and political consequences of sudden economic change. Envy of new wealth may be a universal emotion, but this rich ethnography demonstrates that political economy, in China always transforming, cannot be understood apart from local forms of morality and the social relations and cultural expressions through which collective values are lived. This is a study of the emotions in context that avoids universalist psychologies while opening to the reader a world of feelings, judgments, and strategies.” Judith Farquhar, Max Palevsky Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago “‘Windfall Wealth and Envy’ offers a vivid and nuanced analysis of people’s perceptions of wealth. Originated from direct observations and in-depth fieldwork rather than abstract social stratification statistics, the book brings to light the intricate realities and rich complexity of economic inequality in contemporary China.” Professor Jing Jun, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University, China

Author Information

Zhang Hui is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Renmin University of China. She gained her PhD at the London School of Economics, UK and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Rome (Sapienza) and University of Warsaw for cross-cultural studies. Her research interests include anthropology of emotion, economic anthropology and urbanisation.

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