pen-l's discussion on China ought to be informed also by what one doesn't see in the statistics such as informal or unorganized workers.
Anthony H-ASIA June 7 2010 CFP AAS/ICAS 2011 ************************** From: Paul Festa <[email protected]> CALL FOR CONFERENCE PAPERS: Joint Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), March 31-April 3, 2011, Honolulu, Hawaii. Proposed Panel Title and Description: Neither Black Cat nor White Cat: The Informal Economy in Contemporary China Following mainstream political and economic indicators, China specialists have called attention to China’s “jackrabbit growth,” vast foreign exchange reserves, and aggressive pursuit of “Superpower” strategies and “Soft Power” tactics. At the same time, they point out the confounding data such as sharply low per-capita income and high income disparity. This uneven development is in part a product of China’s bifurcated economy: The central government controls nearly all mega-corporations in the “strategic” industries, while a free-wheeling, export-driven market economy motors a private sector. And if the fundamental form of Chinese capitalism is different, so too, we can surmise, must be a good deal of the values, ethics, meanings, and desires that fuel everyday economic activities. Indeed, there are many “economic practices” that not only fall outside the purview of conventional indicators, but that also compel us to rethink what we mean by “economics” when we speak of the “rise” of China. This panel aims to enhance our understanding of the workings of those everyday aspects of local economic life in China that tend to remain off, or around the edges of, the radar screen of the formal economy and are therefore largely unaccounted for in formal statistics and indicators. We will consider what scholars have alternatively called the “informal economy,” “ritual economy,” “occult economy,” “hybrid economy,” “redistributive economy,” “illicit economy,” and “gift or exchange economy.” Some examples might include pyramid schemes, lottery rackets, underground casinos, counterfeiting rings, black or gray market commodity production, human or other smuggling operations, religious or quasi-religious cults, rotating credit associations or other lending practices, unlicensed hostess or other entertainment clubs, the sex trade, to name a few. By shedding light on these economic shadow zones, we hope to expand our understanding of the social and cultural ramifications of the everyday pursuit of wealth in China today. Questions we hope to explore include: What might the ritual, redistributive, and exchange dimensions of informal economic activities suggest about the meanings of money and the pursuit of wealth? In the underground economy, how are monetary, social, political, and symbolic capital mutually translatable and transferred, circulated and exchanged? What kinds of communities are formed and sustained through informal economies? In what ways do informal (including illicit or illegal) economies piggyback upon, supplement, sustain, or subvert the formal or official sector, and how are the meanings, values, and ethics of each mutually (re)defined in the process? What histories and/or futures are imagined through participation in underground economies, and how do such imaginings shape the unfolding present? We are looking for papers related to the proposed panel theme in any social science field, including anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, and geography. Please submit paper abstracts (250 words) by July 1, 2010, to Paul Festa at [email protected]. ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <[email protected]> For holidays or short absences send post to: <[email protected]> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/<http://h-net.msu.edu/%7Easia/> -- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Anthony P. D'Costa Professor of Indian Studies and Research Director Asia Research Centre Copenhagen Business School Porcelænshaven 22, 3 DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Ph: +45 3815 2572 Fax: +45 3815 2500 http://uk.cbs.dk/arc www.cbs.dk/india http://www.thisismodernindia.com/this_is_modern_india_about_us.html xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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