| Engendering Wealth examines the rise of elite networks composed of nouveau riche entrepreneurs and government officials in contemporary China. These powerful new groups have exerted increasing dominance over many aspects of Chinese commerce and politics during the reform era, the period of China's economic liberalization that began in the late 1970's. The dissertation considers these networks, which are composed mostly of men, as gendered social formations governed by moral economies of brotherhood, loyalty, and patronage. Based on ethnographic data gathered during nearly three years of fieldwork in the city of Chengdu, it analyzes the ways in which relationships are formed between elite men through shared experiences of leisure---banqueting, drinking, singing karaoke, and cavorting with female hostesses---and the importance of these relationships in organizing their business ventures and orienting their personal values. This "masculinization" of the sphere of private business and deal-making in China has also generated challenges for female entrepreneurs, who are often accused of using their sexuality to get ahead, and given rise to a new class of young women who live off the patronage of China's new rich businessmen and corrupt state officials. These young women are central to mediating relationships and mirroring status among elite men and are integral to the emergence of a growing, semi-legitimate "beauty economy" in urban China.;Ethnographic examples are drawn from work as the host of a provincial Chinese television show, experiences with an underground criminal brotherhood in Chengdu, published confessional interviews with corrupt officials, personal narratives of women who participate in the beauty economy, interviews with male and female entrepreneurs, and countless evenings accompanying businessmen as they entertained clients and government officials. Engendering Wealth argues that elite networks in China transcend any neat boundaries between state and society, and they mobilize official and unofficial resources as well as legitimate and illegitimate forms of authority. This dissertation suggests that visions of a retreating totalitarian state, a growing civil society, and an ever-expanding, "neoliberal" market economy are inadequate for accounting for the complexity of power relations and new forms of inequality in contemporary China. |
