ON THE BUSINESS OF SOCIALITY: A FIGURATIONAL EXPLORATION OF THE ETIQUETTE INDUSTRY IN POST-REFORM CHINA

This research analyzes the rise of the etiquette industry and its auxiliaries in post-reform China. Methodologically, it adopts an Eliasian figurational approach and combines archival research with six months of ethnographic fieldwork. Each of the four analytical chapters analyzes a sub- phenomenon, to explore how etiquette was transformed into commodities with market value amid two streams of figurational changes that began since the early 20th century and in the post- reform era, respectively. The first two chapters are situated in the figurational developments along China’s modernization process that has been recharting the relationship between the individual, society, and the state. The state-led “civilizing” initiatives for embodying civility to produce modern citizens are discussed in Chapter One by comparing the official doctrines from the New Life Movement (1934-1949) and public propaganda posters found in Chinese cities and towns during my fieldwork. Chapter Two furthers this line of investigation by following an etiquette business headquartered in Shanghai to explore profit opportunities in the top-down “civilizing” process, through strategically creating what I termed as culture scissors. The next two chapters analyze how etiquette-related businesses strive to carve out opportunities in the social stratification process in the post-reform era, by centering on two new professional roles. The first of these chapters (Chapter Three) presents a portrait of the new professional type of modern butler for China’s High Net Worth Households. Its characteristic performativeness is interpreted figurationally by relating to the new economic elites’ pursuit of social status. The second (Chapter Four) examines the particular functional role of etiquette professionals as advertised experts for self-betterment in the mainland. The features of functional integration and cultural differentiation observed in this sub-field are analyzed by identifying and comparing their projected images of the ideal self, situated within the background of China’s path to individualization. Overall, this research showcases how figurational changes and the resultant tension with the one-party system were turned into a source of valuation by the etiquette industry and its auxiliaries in post-reform China through profiting from established sociocultural hierarchies founded upon the tensile equilibrium of power balances, risking reinforcing these hierarchical inequalities.