Windfall Wealth and Envy in Contemporary China

This groundbreaking study examines the cultural manifestations of envy in China during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, a period of unprecedented economic and social change.

China’s rapid accumulation of wealth – particularly its uneven distribution, which created overnight millionaires alongside those left behind – provides anthropologists with a unique opportunity to test theories of envy as a fundamental human emotion. Unlike traditional societies, where established cultural mechanisms such as witchcraft, sorcery or the ‘evil eye’ help to manage envy, China offers a unique case study. Based on extensive fieldwork in northern Chinese villages between 2006 and 2008, the author explores how sudden mining wealth has triggered various envy-related discourses and practices and reveals how these wealth disparities have reshaped social dynamics and moral landscapes. The study examines cultural expressions of envy, public discourses of malicious envy, the everyday contexts that shape envy and its social impact, the moral codes that govern the envied and their defensive strategies, and how families understand the ethics of success and failure. Through this lens, she illuminates a local moral world amidst one of humanity's most profound social transformations.

This book will be an essential reference for anthropologists, sociologists, scholars and students of contemporary Chinese society, ethnography and the anthropology of emotions.