Polarizing images of authoritarian, socialist or culturalist otherness compromise analyses of the Chinese state. Still, such images produce effects beyond academia when they inform performances of the boundaries between state and non-state. This book shows how performative boundary work leads to contrasting judgements that decide about support and access to resources. In an ecological village in Sichuan, citizen participation in food networks and bureaucracy signaled Western liberalism, Maoism or traditional rural culture for different audiences. Attention to the multiplicity of performed state boundaries helps China studies and political anthropology to understand such diverging classifications - and how they sometimes co-exist without causing tensions.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Performative Boundary Work

PART I: State Boundaries in a Food Network

Chapter 1. Participation and Anaglyphic Boundary Repertoires
Chapter 2. Eco-Certification and Scripts of Community
Chapter 3. Acting as Father-State and Mother-Society

PART II: State Boundaries in Democratic Bureaucracy

Chapter 4. Democracy and Paternalism Folded in Documents
Chapter 5. Anticipating Bureaucratic Standardization
Chapter 6. Measuring Familism, Marking Corruption

Conclusion: Unblurring the Multiplicity of State Boundaries

References
Index

Christof Lammer is a social anthropologist and Postdoctoral Assistant in the Department of Society, Knowledge and Politics, University of Klagenfurt. He has co-edited special issues on 'Measuring Kinship' (2021, Social Analysis) and 'Infrastructures of Value' (2023, Ethnos). He is also a co-organizer of the Scientific Network 'Anthropology and China(s)' (2021-2025).