eBook - ePub
A Localized Culture of Welfare
Entitlements, Stratification, and Identity in a Chinese Lineage Village
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
A Localized Culture of Welfare
Entitlements, Stratification, and Identity in a Chinese Lineage Village
About this book
Hong Kong has undergone rapid and substantial social, economic, political and demographic changes since the 1970s. This book examines critically the real impact of these changes on a single surname village in rural Hong Kong. It draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted during the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
This ethnographic study demonstrates that kinship, particularly agnatic kinship, has remained a valuable resource for Pang villagers, enabling them to acquire key welfare entitlements, and to secure a good measure of economic and social well-being. Kinship affiliation has provided and still provides (admittedly differential) access to political patronage and legal entitlements, financial assistance and the substantial benefits of corporate property-holding, physical protection and political leadership, employment, care-giving and support networks, housing needs, old age security, a ritually-imagined community, with a sense of spiritual well-being. Agnatic kinship has been organized as a corporate institution and as a quasi-religious community through which substantial support, protection, and privileged access is provided for villagers. At the same time, reliance on this elaborate "localized culture of welfare" has maintained or reinforced the contours of stratification and inequality among Pang villagers, even as lineage identity has remained largely intact in the face of changing external circumstances.
This ethnographic study demonstrates that kinship, particularly agnatic kinship, has remained a valuable resource for Pang villagers, enabling them to acquire key welfare entitlements, and to secure a good measure of economic and social well-being. Kinship affiliation has provided and still provides (admittedly differential) access to political patronage and legal entitlements, financial assistance and the substantial benefits of corporate property-holding, physical protection and political leadership, employment, care-giving and support networks, housing needs, old age security, a ritually-imagined community, with a sense of spiritual well-being. Agnatic kinship has been organized as a corporate institution and as a quasi-religious community through which substantial support, protection, and privileged access is provided for villagers. At the same time, reliance on this elaborate "localized culture of welfare" has maintained or reinforced the contours of stratification and inequality among Pang villagers, even as lineage identity has remained largely intact in the face of changing external circumstances.
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access A Localized Culture of Welfare by Kwok-shing Chan in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Chinese History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Maps, Tables, and Diagrams
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Romanization
- Introduction: Welfare and Security, an Anthropological Perspective
- 1 The Pang Lineage village
- 2 Living Under Threat? Reactions to Hong Kong’s Return to China
- 3 Corporate Resources and Financial Security
- 4 Communal Safety and Protection
- 5 Employment and Care Provisions
- 6 Entitlement and Value: Housing
- 7 Old Age Welfare and Security
- 8 Spiritual Wellbeing and Protection
- Conclusion
- Methodological Appendix
- Glossary
- Bibliography