Affective Encounters Everyday Life among Chinese Migrants in Zambia

Against the background of China's rapidly growing, and sometimes highly controversial, activities in Africa, this book is among the first of its kind to systematically document Sino-African interactions at the everyday level. Based on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork at two contrasting sites in Lusaka, Zambia—a Chinese state-sponsored educational farm and a private Chinese family farm—Di Wu focuses on daily interactions among Chinese migrants and their Zambian hosts. Daily communicative events, e.g. banquets, market negotiations, work-place disputes, and various social encounters across a range of settings are used to trace the essential role that emotion/affect plays in forming and reproducing social relations and group identities among Chinese migrants. Wu suggests that affective encounters in everyday situations—as well as failed attempts to generate affect—should not be overlooked in order to fully appreciate Sino-African interactions. Deeply researched and with rich ethnographic detail, this book will be relevant to scholars of anthropology, international development, and others interested in Sino-African relations.

1. Introduction 2. The tone of encounters:Strangers, anxiety and everyday exclusivism 2. Interactional affection: Suspicion and sustainability of voluntary cooperation 3. Emotional labour: Leadership, dependency and everyday work relations 4 Ethical qualia: Role ethics and the moral transformation of young Chinese migrants 5.Speaking with affect: Speech capital, situationa; affect and daily(mis)communication Conclusion Bibliography Index

Di Wu is a Departmental Lecturer in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford, UK. He gained his PhD at the London School of Economics, UK and previously worked at SOAS, UK and Sun Yat-sen University, China.