How do Chinas mobile individuals create a sense of home in a rapidly changing world?
Unhomely life, different from houselessness, refers to a fluctuating condition between losing home feelings and the search for home — a prevalent condition in post-Mao China. The faster that Chinese society modernizes, the less individuals feel at home, and the more they yearn for a sense of home. This is the central paradox that Xiaobo Su explores: how mobile individuals—lifestyle migrants and retreat tourists from China’s big cities, displaced natives and rural migrants in peripheral China—handle the loss of home and try to experience a homely way of life.
In Unhomely Life, Xiaobo Su examines the subjective experiences of mobile individuals to better understand why they experience the loss of home feelings and how they search for home. Integrating extensive empirical data and a robust theoretical framework, the author presents a journey-based critical analysis of “home” under constant making, un-making, and re-making in post-Mao China. Su argues that the making of home is not a solely economic or rational calculation for maximum return, but rather a synthesis of resistance and compromise under the disappointing conditions of modernity.
Offering rich insights into the continuity and disruption of China’s great transformation, Unhomely Life:
- Develops an original theory of unhomely life that incorporates contemporary research and traditional Chinese ideas of home
- Explores the process of homemaking and its implications for understanding the costs of high-speed economic growth in China
- Analyzes mobile individuals across different genders, ages, ethnicities, social classes, and economic backgrounds to address the balance between meaning and money in everyday life
Containing in-depth and sophisticated empirical data collected from 2002 to 2020, Unhomely Life: Modernity, Mobilities, and the Making of Home in China is an invaluable resource for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, lecturers, and academic researchers in cultural studies, migration, tourism, China studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, and social and cultural geography.
Table of Content
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Notes on Fieldwork xiv
1. Introduction: From Xiangtu China to Unhomely China 1
Modernity as a Deal 10
Two Dimensions of Uneven Mobilities 15
Lijiang Old Town: The Case 19
Structure of the Book 27
Notes 29
2. A Sense of Home in China: Then and Now 31
Home: An Ensemble of Representations and Experiences 32
A Sense of Home in Traditional Chinese Culture 40
Home as a Destination for Return 41
Home as a Balanced Way of Living 46
Modernization and Loss of Home Feelings in Post- Mao China 50
Unhomely Life: An Analytic Framework 59
Notes 65
3. Lifestyle Migration and the (Un)making of an Ideal Home 68
Representing Lijiang as an Ideal Home 70
Making Home in its Material and Lived Aspects 75
Unmaking Home: The Spatial Politics of Belonging and Alienation 83
External Pressure for Home Unmaking 83
Internal Struggle between Here and There 86
Divergence between Busyness and Slowness 89
Conclusion: The Ambivalence of an Ideal Home 92
Notes 95
4. The Act of Retreat: Tourism, Loafing, and the Consumption of Home 96
Solitude and a Natural Way of Living 98
Loafing through Socialization 105
Regarding Lijiang Old Town as a Home 109
Being Unhomely in a Mobile World 113
Conclusion 117
Notes 119
5. Displacing Native Residents: Money, Meaning, and the Remaking of Home 120
A Sense of Home in the Town 122
A True Love for Courtyard Houses 123
A Close- knit Community in the Town 125
From Familiar to Strange: In- situ Displacement 129
Age Difference: Departure or Stay 134
Making and Remaking Home in Daily Life: Four Stories 140
Story 1: Making a Home for Tourists 141
Story 2: Promoting Naxi Culture for Profit 143
Story 3: The Life Cycle of a New Lijiang Local 145
Story 4: Being at Home Forever 149
Conclusion 153
Note 155
6. Hometown Babies: Immobility and Lijiang Locals’ Struggles for Home 156
Speed and Slowness: The Supply of Homely Service to the Old Town 158
Guesthouse A’Jie and the Commodification of Domestic Work 158
Delivery A’Ge and Time Discipline 161
Freelance Workers for Tourists 164
Free Time, Away from Lijiang Old Town 166
Pain and Joy: Embracing Hometown in Lijiang 169
The Shadow of Patriarchal Society 169
In Celebration of Hometown Babies 172
Stay and Departure: The Longing for Settlement 176
Conclusion 182
Notes 185
7. Homemaking in a Relentless World 186
The Politics of Homemaking in Lijiang 188
Remembering Home in China: By Whom and for What? 195
Being Unhomely in Modern Times 200
Notes 205
References 206
Index 221
About the author
Xiaobo Su is a Professor of Urban and Regional Development in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon. He is the co-author of The Politics of Heritage Tourism in China: A View from Lijiang and serves on the editorial boards of Geopolitics and Tourism Tribute. His research investigates China’s transformation from a planned economy to a market economy, focused on urban and regional development, tourism, migration, urban entrepreneurialism, and border politics.
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