12월 5일에 진행된 샹바오의 책 <경계를 넘는 공동체(Transcending Boundaries)> (샹바오 저, 박우 역, 글항아리, 2024) 북토크 토론문입니다. 해당 행사는 영어로 진행되어, 토론문도 영어로 작성되었습니다.
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Thank you for giving us the wonderful talk, as always, Biao. It is a great pleasure to see you again! I hope everything is going well for you in Halle. I’d also like to thank Dr. Park Woo and Dr. Kim Ran for inviting me to this meaningful event.
First of all, I need to confess that preparing this discussion was not easy. The immediate reason, of course, was the political turmoil in South Korea over the past two days. Like many others, I was surprised and glued to the news outlets, unable to look away. But beyond that, this book itself presents unique challenges for a discussion. It spans nearly 900 pages in its Korean translation and is filled with many detailed accounts about life in Zhejiang Village. As the author notes, “the details are another form of theory.” Reading this book, therefore, provides a very different experience compared to reading other social science works. As Dr. Xiang points out in the conclusion, reading this book goes beyond gaining a comprehensive understanding of Zhejiang Village and its history. It rather allows readers to “experience and even feel” the intimate everyday lives of the villagers.
Indeed, those who have read the book will likely agree: this book achieves precisely this. Thanks to the author’s adept writings and the translator’s efforts, readers feel as if they are actually living in Zhejiang Village, vividly experiencing the lives of its residents. This immersive experience alone makes the book immensely valuable. To borrow Michel Foucault(1981)’s terminology, it might be described as another form of “experience-book.” Conducting an academic discussion of such a work is not impossible, but it is certainly not an easy task.
Nonetheless, as a discussant, I’d like to offer a few comments and questions. Since I expect other discussants are likely to better address the book’s implications for contemporary Chinese Studies or Migration Studies, I will focus on its significance within anthropological discourse.
In my view, Transcending Boundaries represents a culmination of the so-called “network turn” in the social imaginary of the 1980s and 1990s. As is well-known, the long-standing binary of “subject vs. structure” in the social sciences began to dissolve during this period, as scholars analyzed society through the lens of networks. Key examples include Mark Granovetter’s work in economic sociology, Manuel Castells’ studies on the information society, and Bruno Latour’s “Actor-Network-Theory” in the anthropology of science. Particularly in economic anthropology, network analysis has provided a methodological alternative to the dualism of neoclassical economics, which begins with the individual, and structural functionalism or Marxism, which emphasizes the totality of economic structures.
I think that Dr. Xiang’s Transcending Boundaries engages with these intellectual currents and takes them a step further. Xiang criticizes traditional network analyses in economic sociology and anthropology for continuing to frame networks as relationships between individuals. Instead, he argues that individuals are merely the “faces” of these networks. To quote him directly: “The essence of the relationship between you and me lies in the relationship between your network and mine” (p. 751 in Korean translation). Dr. Xiang thus shifts the analytical focus from interpersonal networks to the “networks of networks” (關係叢) and the properties of their relationships. This approach moves beyond a thin conception of networks and appears to propose a thicker, denser conceptualization of social networks and connections.
These propositions are compelling and well-supported by the book’s analysis, which is likely why this book has already been recognized as a ‘contemporary classic.’ However, I’d like to raise several comments and questions, drawing on anthropologist Marilyn Strathern(1996)’s suggestion that while tracing networks is important, it can sometimes be more productive to attend where and why those networks break down.
1. One recurring critique of this book, which Xiang himself acknowledges, is the relative lack of women’s and workers’ perspectives. The dense, intricate networks described in this book represent a social composition largely built by male entrepreneurs, particularly the successful ones who emerged as influential figures. Chapter 3 reveals the existence of short-term workers, primarily women from Hebei, Anhui, and Hubei provinces, who were employed by entrepreneurs from Wenzhou. Even when Zhejiang Village’s population exceeded 100,000, nearly half of them were short-term laborers. Moreover, the experiences of women, who were primarily responsible for household economies and garment production, are largely absent from the book’s narrative. If we were to trace the networks based on their experiences, I believe the depiction of the networks in Zhejiang Village would look quite different—perhaps more fragmented, asymmetrical, and disconnected. I wonder how you think about this perspective.
2. Throughout the book, Dr. Xiang presents the state not as a monolithic entity but as loose and overlapping networks in their own right. For example, during the massive demolition of Zhejiang Village, the book highlights the discrepancies between the central government, Beijing’s municipal government, and their various departments. Zhejiang Village residents actively exploited these gaps and incorporated government officials into their own networks as survival strategies. This approach, I believe, offers a meaningful alternative to overly state-centric narratives and draws attention to the dynamic relationship between the state and society. However, I wonder: can we generalize this conceptualization of the state as porous networks, or is it specific to the temporal and spatial contexts of reform-era China? This question ties into broader inquiries about how we can understand the state through the lens of networks and how we can conceptualize the “stateness” that cannot be reduced to networks.
3. In the second preface, Dr. Xiang provides a very intriguing analysis of “formalization.” The author describes how, beginning in the late 1990s, the dense networks of ‘the informal economy’ were replaced by ‘formal’ connections to the state administration. This analysis resonates with experiences in South Korea during the same period. In South Korea, formalization dismantled existing informal networks, strengthened the administrative power of the state over civil society, and ultimately blurred the categorical distinction between the state and civil society. In doing so, however, formalization has also created new implicit networks and connections ‘within’ the state, often under the guise of “governance.” While the preface seems to primarily emphasize the limitations and harms of formalization, I wonder: can formalization also be interpreted as an innovative appropriation of the public sphere by Zhejiang Village residents, enabling them to reconfigure the public domain, rather than merely succumbing to its constraints? I would like to hear your thoughts more about formalization.