Time, Self, and the Other in a Rural Chinese Township

This thesis examines the human relation to time from the perspective of value. On the basis of 15 months of fieldwork in rural Sichuan (China), I demonstrate that the question of making time’s passage meaningful is inseparable from processes of self and other’s mutual constitution (recognition) in practice. It is in the pursuit of recognition, i.e. the social realisation of value, that time in this rural setting gains its most salient qualities. I propose three ethnographically grounded models of the self’s quest for recognition: concrete, abstract, and genealogical. In the first model, the self seeks experiences of <i>synchrony</i> and immediacy with the other – feasting, gambling, singing, gossiping, etc. – key ingredients of what locals refer to as ‘the Sichuan life of enjoyment’. Synchrony is one way of resolving existential ‘thrownness’: self and other ascertain their equivalence before time through full sensory engagement in activity, thereby compressing eternity into a moment. I ground this model on a detailed examination of pleasurable living, proudly described by interlocutors as characteristically Sichuanese, focusing on food and alcohol sharing in Chapter 1 and on play in Chapter 6. The second model of the quest for value realisation abstracts self and other through identification with quantifiable criteria – wealth, property, educational attainment, etc. – which allows, instead, for an experience of <i>dissonance</i>. By virtue of their abstracted position, self and other occupy a non-negotiable relation to each other, and engage in a cumulative quest for realisation of their worth, conceived as a measurable, comparable quantity. This model is prefaced with a discussion of ‘face’ (Chapter 2), understood as the dynamic formation of self’s image both as a zero-sum, non-climactic quality and as a cumulative quantity. Chapter 3 singles out the latter aspect as a condition for narratives of teleological progress (unilinearity). I return to the interplay between abstract (<i>dissonant</i>) and concrete (<i>synchronic</i>) recognition in Chapter 6. In the third model, the value of self’s activity is established by reference to progeny and ancestors (genealogical others). Intergenerational, funeral, and post-funeral practices (Chapters 4 and 5) indicate a socially enacted, future-oriented <i>continuity</i> of ‘being towards life’, in which the self exists for and through the other. Like model 2, it is also progressive and purposive: each succeeding generation is expected to do and live better than the preceding ones. Chapter 7 analyses the major existential consequences of prioritising abstract and genealogical recognition over the incomparable, selfless, and traceless gifts of care and love in nurture and conjugal relations. Some of the intended contributions of this work are as follows: First, to the anthropological theory of time by reframing it as a subject-centred study that should address processes of active constitution of self and the other though practice and rhythm, outside of which there is simply no human experience of time to talk about. Second, it provides arguably the first book-length ethnographic treatment exclusively dedicated to temporality in the Chinese context. Third, it gives ethnographic flesh to long-standing issues in social thought: the antinomies between moment and purposiveness, utility and uselessness, transience and eternity, waste and acquisition, work and play, while proposing rhythm as the ground for reconciliation between them. Last but not least, it sheds light on a locally prominent model of pleasurable living that has so far passed largely unnoticed in western social science discourse on China.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Naydenov, Angel

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Bulag, Uradyn

• recognition
• rhythm
• selfhood
• Sichuan, China
• time
• value

Licence

• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.96567

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/349565