Affective Encounters (LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology)

Against the background of China's rapidly growing, and sometimes highly controversial, activities in Africa, this book is the first of its kind to systematically document Sino-African interactions at the everyday level. Based on months of ethnographic fieldwork at two contrasting sites in Zambia--a Chinese state-sponsored educational farm and a private Chinese family farm--Di Wu focuses on the daily interactions of Chinese migrants with their Zambian hosts. Di Wu uses daily communicative events, e.g. meals and banquets, and social encounters across a range of settings, to trace the essential role that emotion affect plays in forming and reproducing relations and groups among Chinese migrants. On the one hand, these migrants say they feel anxious when dealing with local people and that this unease is what hinders their interactions with Zambians. Against arguments about Chinese sociality that overwhelmingly focus on its instrumentality, Wu argues that emotion affect is constitutive of the process of (re)producing Chinese social ties and social groups. The author also suggests that, in order to fully appreciate the current Sino-African interaction, stories of affective encounters in everyday situations, and also of failed attempts to generate affect, should not be overlooked. Deeply researched and with rich detail, this will be of interest to students of anthropology, international development studies, and sino-Africa relations.