复旦大学：《中国文化与商业实践 Marketing placement in China》参考资料_The crisscrossed agency of a toast：Personhood, individuation and de-individuation in Luzhou, China

TAJA Or AISropliog The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2014)25, 357-372 doi:10.1111/aja.12073 The crisscrossed agency of a toast: Personhood individuation and de-individuation in luzhou, China Brian harmon This article addresses debates over individuation in China through consideration of guanxi-rela tional feasting in Luzhou, Sichuan. I draw on Ortner's theorisation of subjectivity and agency to probe the often taken-for-granted question of cultural personhood which informs social action. Although the social imaginary in Luzhou is increasingly colonised by symbolic individualism, I propose that dominant local notions of personhood and agency, operating within feast practice, continue to define this process. By attending to three aspects of Yans individualisation thesis I demonstrate how local models of person and agency are indispensible to a fuller understand- ing of social life. Considering the important role ritual speech habits (largely trained in de-indi- viduating feasting)continue to play in socialising actors to economic institutions and power relationships more generally, individuation in China today remains a largely nominal and asp rational, if symbolically potent and potentially transformative, project Keywords: Individuation, agency, urban China, cultural personhood, ritual feasting During a late-night feast in a humble eatery in Luzhou, Sichuan, bank driver Yang playfully bullied bank computer systems operator Luo and me. Although Yang was lower in status, he subjugated us with his superior drinking capacity and aggressive style. Yang declared his friendship for us at one moment, and belittled us(with terms like 'landlord)the next. At one point Yang saw me not eating, and claimed that if did not eat he would not eat either. Yang argued with Luo for five minutes over how much the latter would have to drink to properly match Yangs own drink. Shaking hands at the end of the night, he grinned and nearly crushed my hand Yang had invited us; he was the host. Therefore, he vigilantly monitored our signs of solidarity. He used shame-inducing moral force to synchronise the group ritual play, demanding that we follow his example in sacrificing our own comfort for the sake of our emotional bond. He interpreted holding back in any way as directly harm ing him. He felt that I observed him and Luo in too detached a manner, and asked, What, are you waiting for a beautiful woman? 'Seeing me take notes, he told me to put down my pen. His joke about my waiting for a woman associated my too-reserved demeanour with the calculated behaviour covering secret intentions typical of status conscious urbanites. Individual freedom, the theme of so much marketing and youth @2014 Australian Anthropological Socety

The crisscrossed agency of a toast: Personhood, individuation and de-individuation in Luzhou, China Brian Harmon Shandong University This article addresses debates over individuation in China through consideration of guanxi-rela￾tional feasting in Luzhou, Sichuan. I draw on Ortner’s theorisation of subjectivity and agency to probe the often taken-for-granted question of cultural personhood which informs social action. Although the social imaginary in Luzhou is increasingly colonised by symbolic individualism, I propose that dominant local notions of personhood and agency, operating within feast practice, continue to define this process. By attending to three aspects of Yan’s ‘individualisation thesis’, I demonstrate how local models of person and agency are indispensible to a fuller understand￾ing of social life. Considering the important role ritual speech habits (largely trained in de-indi￾viduating feasting) continue to play in socialising actors to economic institutions and power relationships more generally, individuation in China today remains a largely nominal and aspi￾rational, if symbolically potent and potentially transformative, project. Keywords: Individuation, agency, urban China, cultural personhood, ritual feasting During a late-night feast in a humble eatery in Luzhou, Sichuan, bank driver Yang playfully bullied bank computer systems operator Luo and me.1 Although Yang was lower in status, he subjugated us with his superior drinking capacity and aggressive style. Yang declared his friendship for us at one moment, and belittled us (with terms like ‘landlord’) the next. At one point Yang saw me not eating, and claimed that if I did not eat he would not eat either. Yang argued with Luo for five minutes over how much the latter would have to drink to properly match Yang’s own drink. Shaking hands at the end of the night, he grinned and nearly crushed my hand. Yang had invited us; he was the host. Therefore, he vigilantly monitored our signs of solidarity. He used shame-inducing moral force to synchronise the group ritual play, demanding that we follow his example in sacrificing our own comfort for the sake of our emotional bond. He interpreted holding back in any way as directly harm￾ing him. He felt that I observed him and Luo in too detached a manner, and asked, ‘What, are you waiting for a beautiful woman?’ Seeing me take notes, he told me to put down my pen. His joke about my waiting for a woman associated my too-reserved demeanour with the calculated behaviour covering secret intentions typical of status￾conscious urbanites. Individual freedom, the theme of so much marketing and youth The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2014) 25, 357–372 doi:10.1111/taja.12073 © 2014 Australian Anthropological Society 357

discourse in Luzhou, was present--but only as a tabooed behaviour to be overcome by ethical ritual coercion. Ethnographically, I argue that the 'ritual complex' of feast ing events, habitus, models of selfhood, and institutional functions, limits and frames Luzhou's individuating tendencies. Analytically, I propose that the concept of agency an help clarify practices of personhood and individuation in culturally specific ways INTRODUCTION: INDIVIDUALISM AND AGENCY The extent and nature of China's social change has in recent years received significant attention in the social sciences, with some scholars arguing that individualising pro cesses are fundamentally changing the nature of social life( Davis 2000; Yan 2009; Yan 2010), and with others emphasising the dominance of new forms of social relationality and control(Kipnis 2012; Ong and Zhang 2008). My position in this paper is that social personhood, a moral construct which frames and legitimises social agency, is often overshadowed ethnographically by the larger processes described (individuation guanxi networking, etc. ) making social life seem mechanistic and thin. A recent eth- nography describes how do[ing] away with protocol in entertaining is meant to cre ate sentimental attachments between participants(Osburg 2013: 56-7). Early toasts over dinner tend to reflect hierarchy. Juniors usually initiate toasting with seniors by deferentially holding their glass lower.. by the end of the evening, toasting is likely to be freer flowing. The author-accurately--analyses such ritual action as essentially instrumental 'modes of exchange within informal networks. But by not sufficiently attending to their personhood, or the ritual logic informing it, the author inadver- tently treats actors as de facto individuals, effectively rendering the feast in procedural terms but leaving mysterious the affective, moral, and discursive logics which give the Social persons may be built in relation to multiple models of agency. I take mean the culturally-defined sources and ends of human action. Individualism,one model of agency which emerged only with modernity(see Taylor 2004), posits the self as the source and goal of action. Before modernity persons could act on their own ini tiative, but not as individuals, culturally defined: their persons were culturally and nor- atively framed as inhabited by sources of agency--gods, kings, lineage forefathers, tribal totems--that lay beyond the single body. In Luzhou, the influential ritual model of agency, which shapes social life in families and networks, normatively posits social person A's action as animated by the agency of social person b(whose action in turn is animated by person A). My conceptualisation here attempts to further Mayfair Yangs theorisation of the relational subject and the cultural logic of its 'manufac tured' indebtedness(Yang 1994: 85) In short, acts by social persons in Luzhou, in the context of ritual, are not cultur ally constructed as originating in the self, but rather in another. The self ideally becomes a medium. Driver Yang, theatrically refusing to eat when he saw me not eat ing, was invoking just this agentively intersubjective personhood. While he was using this ritual stance to score a point against me in the feast's competitive context, he was 358 e 2014 Australian Anthropological Society

discourse in Luzhou, was present—but only as a tabooed behaviour to be overcome by ethical ritual coercion. Ethnographically, I argue that the ‘ritual complex’ of feast￾ing events, habitus, models of selfhood, and institutional functions, limits and frames Luzhou’s individuating tendencies. Analytically, I propose that the concept of agency can help clarify practices of personhood and individuation in culturally specific ways. INTRODUCTION: INDIVIDUALISM AND AGENCY The extent and nature of China’s social change has in recent years received significant attention in the social sciences, with some scholars arguing that individualising pro￾cesses are fundamentally changing the nature of social life (Davis 2000; Yan 2009; Yan 2010), and with others emphasising the dominance of new forms of social relationality and control (Kipnis 2012; Ong and Zhang 2008). My position in this paper is that social personhood, a moral construct which frames and legitimises social agency, is often overshadowed ethnographically by the larger processes described (individuation, guanxi networking, etc.), making social life seem mechanistic and thin. A recent eth￾nography describes how ‘do[ing] away with protocol’ in entertaining is meant to cre￾ate sentimental attachments between participants (Osburg 2013: 56–7). ‘Early toasts over dinner tend to reflect hierarchy. Juniors usually initiate toasting with seniors by deferentially holding their glass lower … by the end of the evening, toasting is likely to be freer flowing’. The author—accurately—analyses such ritual action as essentially instrumental ‘modes of exchange’ within informal networks. But by not sufficiently attending to their personhood, or the ritual logic informing it, the author inadver￾tently treats actors as de facto individuals, effectively rendering the feast in procedural terms but leaving mysterious the affective, moral, and discursive logics which give the actions meaning. Social persons may be built in relation to multiple models of agency.2 I take agency to mean the culturally-defined sources and ends of human action. Individualism, one model of agency which emerged only with modernity (see Taylor 2004), posits the self as the source and goal of action. Before modernity persons could act on their own ini￾tiative, but not as individuals, culturally defined: their persons were culturally and nor￾matively framed as inhabited by sources of agency—gods, kings, lineage forefathers, tribal totems—that lay beyond the single body. In Luzhou, the influential ritual model of agency, which shapes social life in families and networks, normatively posits social person A’s action as animated by the agency of social person B (whose action in turn is animated by person A). My conceptualisation here attempts to further Mayfair Yang’s theorisation of the ‘relational subject’ and the cultural logic of its ‘manufac￾tured’ indebtedness (Yang 1994: 85). In short, acts by social persons in Luzhou, in the context of ritual, are not cultur￾ally constructed as originating in the self, but rather in another. The self ideally becomes a medium. Driver Yang, theatrically refusing to eat when he saw me not eat￾ing, was invoking just this agentively ‘intersubjective’ personhood. While he was using this ritual stance to score a point against me in the feast’s competitive context, he was 358 © 2014 Australian Anthropological Society B. D. Harmon and B. Harmon

not doing so as an individual but as a person inhabited-and so inhibited from eating -by me. we scholars may brush past such constructions as polite fictions hiding a deeper structural reality-which is not to say the instrumental aims served by ritually produced networks are not crucial. But to brush past in this way risks losing sight of personhood and agency as locally understood and reinforcing our default view of social life as(merely) exchange between separate selves, or groups. Drinking a toast involves not only a person making a gesture of respect in the hope of gaining some return from another person. This person is also acting ethically by dislocating agency om his or her body/self and relocating it into the person targeted by the ritual act (who should, ideally, get the message and give up his or her own agency) Responding in part to Yan's thesis that Chinese society is essentially individua- lised, Andrew Kipnis(2012), researching education in China and drawing on Durk- heim, Marx, Foucault, and others(Ong and Zhang 2008), emphasises the dialectical to control and socialise subjects. While Yans Private Life under Socialism(2003)was motivated by discomfort with instrumentalist, exchange-oriented perspectives then prevalent, I believe Yans recent thesis under-analyses the interaction of various forms of social personhood and agency in Chinese society. A businessman wining and dining an official may be seen as an individual seeking gain, or more accurately as a person constructed out of multiple agencies: first, in an immediate ritual con- text, by the official, and second, in the long term, by the household of which he is a Individuation in Luzhou is central yet ungrounded, symbolically hegemonic yet politically marginal. I interpret individuation there(and potentially in other Chinese citiesas a gradual colonisation of the social imaginary from two directions. Politi cally peripheral sectors of the population imagine doing what they want without being judged, expressing unique selves and being acknowledged for it. These longings, gen- erated out of tensions in the local political economy, which ritually suppresses'selfish agency, take off from and overlap with mass-mediated visions and discourses of indi- vidual freedom spread by corporate advertisers and echoed in state media. I regard this'symbolic individuation as hegemonic because these institutions have helped cre ate and sustain an association between modernity and the individual subject widely ccepted by national elites, a process which can be regarded as part of contemporary China's nation-building(Kipnis 2012: 11-13) An iconic moment in luzhou's individuation in 2005 was the televised lance, extensively imitated locally, of the song 'If you want to sing, just sing,, by Su- pergirl contestant Zhang Han Yun. The slight young woman emerged alone into the spotlight and sang to an audience in the darkness beyond. The songs lyrics depict a subject's self-love and self-expression which eventually draw approval: 'love gives me strength/dreams are a miraculous nourishment/pushing me to open myself/sing if you want to, sing out brightly/even if no one is applauding/at least I have the courage to nire myself (ziwo xinshang).. /someday I'll be able to see those waving sticks of @2014 Australian Anthropological Socety 359

not doing so as an individual but as a person inhabited—and so inhibited from eating —by me. We scholars may brush past such constructions as polite fictions hiding a deeper structural reality—which is not to say the instrumental aims served by ritually￾produced networks are not crucial. But to brush past in this way risks losing sight of personhood and agency as locally understood and reinforcing our default view of social life as (merely) exchange between separate selves, or groups. Drinking a toast involves not only a person making a gesture of respect in the hope of gaining some return from another person. This person is also acting ethically by dislocating agency from his or her body/self and relocating it into the person targeted by the ritual act (who should, ideally, get the message and give up his or her own agency). Responding in part to Yan’s thesis that Chinese society is essentially individua￾lised, Andrew Kipnis (2012), researching education in China and drawing on Durk￾heim, Marx, Foucault, and others (Ong and Zhang 2008), emphasises the dialectical way in which individuating trends meet new forms of de-individuation which arise to control and socialise subjects. While Yan’s Private Life under Socialism (2003) was motivated by discomfort with instrumentalist, exchange-oriented perspectives then prevalent, I believe Yan’s recent thesis under-analyses the interaction of various forms of social personhood and agency in Chinese society. A businessman wining and dining an official may be seen as an individual seeking gain, or more accurately as a person constructed out of multiple agencies: first, in an immediate ritual con￾text, by the official, and second, in the long term, by the household of which he is a part. Individuation in Luzhou is central yet ungrounded, symbolically hegemonic yet politically marginal. I interpret individuation there (and potentially in other Chinese cities) as a gradual colonisation of the social imaginary from two directions.3 Politi￾cally peripheral sectors of the population imagine doing what they want without being judged, expressing unique selves and being acknowledged for it. These longings, gen￾erated out of tensions in the local political economy, which ritually suppresses ‘selfish’ agency, take off from and overlap with mass-mediated visions and discourses of indi￾vidual freedom spread by corporate advertisers and echoed in state media. I regard this ‘symbolic individuation’ as hegemonic because these institutions have helped cre￾ate and sustain an association between modernity and the individual subject widely accepted by national elites, a process which can be regarded as part of contemporary China’s nation-building (Kipnis 2012: 11–13). An iconic moment in Luzhou’s individuation in 2005 was the televised perfor￾mance, extensively imitated locally, of the song ‘If you want to sing, just sing’, by Su￾pergirl contestant Zhang Han Yun. The slight young woman emerged alone into the spotlight and sang to an audience in the darkness beyond. The song’s lyrics depict a subject’s self-love and self-expression which eventually draw approval: ‘love gives me strength/dreams are a miraculous nourishment/pushing me to open myself/sing if you want to, sing out brightly/even if no one is applauding/at least I have the courage to admire myself (ziwo xinshang) … /someday I’ll be able to see those waving sticks of light’. © 2014 Australian Anthropological Society 359 Feasting and individuation in China

Analysing this performance using Ortner's concepts, I refine the definition of indi- vidualism further, to a vision of agency in which the self sets and pursues its own goals without interference from powerful others. In Zhangs performance, the individual project 'of self-admiration and expression is ultimately vindicated by the acknowledg- ment of an alternate, emergent power,, the audience. The ideological nature of this vision of individualism lies in the way power is depicted as the prize, rather than the competitive means, of individuality. She stands alone in the spotlight, but the thou- sands of rivals Zhang had to defeat to stand there are invisible; the millions of others who dream of being in her place are barely glimpsed by the camera. In Luzhou, how- ever,an agency of individual projects is widely understood not as circumventing or disavowing power relations but as solely contingent on successfully mastering them. In short, the ability to freely carry out projects' is widely regarded as a privilege of power competitively obtained, another reason I consider this individuality a 'dream Heeding Kipnis'(2012: 13)contention that individuation is a problematic rather han an absolute social fact,, I use elements of Yan's argument as occasion to explore the benefits of an analytic emphasis on social subjectivity and agency in addressing the question of individualism in Chinas cities. Feasting is, in the urban context, the cen tral socialising arena of political and economic power. While individual persons use feasting to amass power to themselves, feastings internal ethic, if you will, is of a group project in which separate agencies are artfully routed through others. I use the term ' intersubjective to refer to feastings model of agency. Roughly put, the individ ual in Luzhou is a powerful dream, in part because of the great structural difficulty of achieving it. The intersubjective agency exemplified in feasting continues to define cit ies political economies, mediating economic production, welfare distribution, domes tic provisioning, and public identities The broad stylistic-symbolic shift toward individualism (in consumer culture, rights activism, etc. )refracts differently through the political-economic prism, seg menting Luzhou's urban population roughly into three. Middle-aged and older urban residents, including both ordinary residents socialised into pre-1992 norms of govern mentality and residents currently positioned in the state-led political economy, con tinue to display self-denying intersubjective ritual disposition. Established members of this group have achieved a substantive, individual agency of power,, but as ritual con stitutes their main node of socialisation into the power structure, their projects,,to use Ortner's terminology, are carried out in an intersubjective idiom. On the contrary, younger urban residents and many middle-aged women, as well as rural migrant wage workers and vendors, display great interest in gexing(unique different) markers of individualised disposition. Implicit in this interest is a de emphasis of coercive hierarchical relations(enacted in feasting) and their cultural hab itus as impediments to individual expression. Small business people among them are forced to engage in guanxi network-building, while wage workers embrace--of neces sity--their'disposable', temporary employment status. Their inclination to individual agency is conditioned by their weak position in the relations of production. Small business operators, however, are forced to re-embedin guanxi relations to secur e 2014 Australian Anthropological Society

Analysing this performance using Ortner’s concepts, I refine the definition of indi￾vidualism further, to a vision of agency in which the self sets and pursues its own goals without interference from powerful others. In Zhang’s performance, the individual’s ‘project’ of self-admiration and expression is ultimately vindicated by the acknowledg￾ment of an alternate, emergent ‘power’, the audience.4 The ideological nature of this vision of individualism lies in the way power is depicted as the prize, rather than the competitive means, of individuality. She stands alone in the spotlight, but the thou￾sands of rivals Zhang had to defeat to stand there are invisible; the millions of others who dream of being in her place are barely glimpsed by the camera. In Luzhou, how￾ever, an agency of individual projects is widely understood not as circumventing or disavowing power relations but as solely contingent on successfully mastering them. In short, the ability to freely carry out ‘projects’ is widely regarded as a privilege of power competitively obtained, another reason I consider this individuality a ‘dream’. Heeding Kipnis’ (2012: 13) contention that ‘individuation is a problematic rather than an absolute social fact’, I use elements of Yan’s argument as occasion to explore the benefits of an analytic emphasis on social subjectivity and agency in addressing the question of individualism in China’s cities. Feasting is, in the urban context, the cen￾tral socialising arena of political and economic power. While individual persons use feasting to amass power to themselves, feasting’s internal ethic, if you will, is of a ‘group project’ in which separate agencies are artfully routed through others. I use the term ‘intersubjective’ to refer to feasting’s model of agency. Roughly put, the ‘individ￾ual’ in Luzhou is a powerful dream, in part because of the great structural difficulty of achieving it. The intersubjective agency exemplified in feasting continues to define cit￾ies’ political economies, mediating economic production, welfare distribution, domes￾tic provisioning, and public identities. The broad stylistic-symbolic shift toward individualism (in consumer culture, rights activism, etc.) refracts differently through the political-economic prism, seg￾menting Luzhou’s urban population roughly into three. Middle-aged and older urban residents, including both ordinary residents socialised into pre-1992 norms of govern￾mentality and residents currently positioned in the state-led political economy, con￾tinue to display self-denying intersubjective ritual disposition. Established members of this group have achieved a substantive, individual ‘agency of power’, but as ritual con￾stitutes their main node of socialisation into the power structure, their ‘projects’, to use Ortner’s terminology, are carried out in an intersubjective idiom. On the contrary, younger urban residents and many middle-aged women, as well as rural migrant wage workers and vendors, display great interest in ‘gexing’ (unique, different) markers of individualised disposition.5 Implicit in this interest is a de￾emphasis of coercive hierarchical relations (enacted in feasting) and their cultural hab￾itus as impediments to individual expression. Small business people among them are forced to engage in guanxi network-building, while wage workers embrace—of neces￾sity—their ‘disposable’, temporary employment status. Their inclination to individual agency is conditioned by their weak position in the relations of production. Small business operators, however, are forced to ‘re-embed’ in guanxi relations to secure 360 © 2014 Australian Anthropological Society B. D. Harmon and B. Harmon

their businesses, leaving only wage workers relatively distant from binding, hierarchi cal relations and intersubjective agency, and hence able to make some performative claim(mostly through consumption habits)to individual agency The growing gap between the individualising national and international imaginary and the anti-individualistic local power structure haunts many city dwellers. Younger people with aspirations to this structure must negotiate the contradiction between their generational interest in personal expression and their institutional imperative to cultivate the intersubjective skills without which success is not possible. In Luzhou, cultural imaginary and style have begun to shift without either a change in economic structure itself or a shift in this structure's gatekeeping intersubjective habitus, leav ing a segmented political economy whose flashpoint-and means of advancement- remaIns ritual feasting. I propose a modification to Yans formulation of disembedment and re-embed- ment: social mobility is indispensable to the recognition of claims to individual agency. Due to the state's continued domination of the economy, however, and the state's personalistic institutional culture, the need to submit to ritual discipline is an inescapable part of urban social mobility. Therefore, many aspirants to individualit find themselves participating, willy-nilly, in de-individuating ritual feasting. The fol- lowing sections address three of Yans features mentioned above, with special atten tion to feastings role in each field: potential individuals' need to ' re-embed', the uncivil individual, and social mobility's priority in individualisation. But first, I briefly define feasting and its ritual cultural habitus. WHAT IS FEASTING? I regard feasting as both a social event where relationships are made and kept up, and as a socialising model and habitus for negotiating power relationships that builds on and amplifies other socialising processes(most notably, familial linguistic socialis tion)and which ramifies very broadly across society Put most simply, feasting is the practice of inviting others to eat and drink. Eti- quette and morality are merged in feasts; proper ritual procedures(etiquette, or li) express and create moral sentiments of generosity and harmony which themselves serve as a basis for relationships. Skilled feasters read the context and find just the right words to engage other participants, 'getting the atmosphere going(daidong ifen)and enlivening participants emotional engagement. Each action by the host such as making the invitation, seating the guest, etc -and counter-action by the guest, express in some measure an agonistic element that is relatively muted in formal, hierarchical feasts and emphasised in informal, egalitarian feasts. Playful struggle points up the radical criss-crossing of agency central to feasting Dramatic acts of self-sacrifice for others, especially offering to drink strong spirits, function as moral examples meant to shame one's partner into matching ones action Effective performance of such acts enhances a persons social power. This person ritu- ally taps into an agency not originating in the individual self, however, but in others @2014 Australian Anthropological Socety 61

their businesses, leaving only wage workers relatively distant from binding, hierarchi￾cal relations and intersubjective agency, and hence able to make some performative claim (mostly through consumption habits) to individual agency. The growing gap between the individualising national and international imaginary and the anti-individualistic local power structure haunts many city dwellers. Younger people with aspirations to this structure must negotiate the contradiction between their generational interest in personal expression and their institutional imperative to cultivate the intersubjective skills without which success is not possible. In Luzhou, cultural imaginary and style have begun to shift without either a change in economic structure itself or a shift in this structure’s ‘gatekeeping’ intersubjective habitus, leav￾ing a segmented political economy whose flashpoint—and means of advancement— remains ritual feasting. I propose a modification to Yan’s formulation of disembedment and re-embed￾ment: social mobility is indispensable to the recognition of claims to individual agency. Due to the state’s continued domination of the economy, however, and the state’s personalistic institutional culture, the need to submit to ritual discipline is an inescapable part of urban social mobility. Therefore, many aspirants to individuality find themselves participating, willy-nilly, in de-individuating ritual feasting. The fol￾lowing sections address three of Yan’s features mentioned above, with special atten￾tion to feasting’s role in each field: potential individuals’ need to ‘re-embed’, the uncivil individual, and social mobility’s priority in individualisation. But first, I will briefly define feasting and its ritual cultural habitus. WHAT IS FEASTING? I regard feasting as both a social event where relationships are made and kept up, and as a socialising model and habitus for negotiating power relationships that builds on and amplifies other socialising processes (most notably, familial linguistic socialisa￾tion) and which ramifies very broadly across society. Put most simply, feasting is the practice of inviting others to eat and drink. Eti￾quette and morality are merged in feasts; proper ritual procedures (etiquette, or li) express and create moral sentiments of generosity and harmony which themselves serve as a basis for relationships. Skilled feasters read the context and find just the right words to engage other participants, ‘getting the atmosphere going’ (daidong qifen) and enlivening participants’ emotional engagement. Each action by the host— such as making the invitation, seating the guest, etc.—and counter-action by the guest, express in some measure an agonistic element that is relatively muted in formal, hierarchical feasts and emphasised in informal, egalitarian feasts. Playful struggle points up the radical criss-crossing of agency central to feasting. Dramatic acts of self-sacrifice for others, especially offering to drink strong spirits, function as moral examples meant to shame one’s partner into matching one’s action. Effective performance of such acts enhances a person’s social power. This person ritu￾ally ‘taps into’ an agency not originating in the individual self, however, but in others. © 2014 Australian Anthropological Society 361 Feasting and individuation in China