Why is a government administration concerned that providing public housing might encourage arson? Why do elderly choose to move away from their children so as to not receive their support? In this book, contributors explore case studies of social support from South Africa, Portugal, Greece, Russia, India, South Korea, Vietnam, and China. Conceptualizing support as encounters between state institutions and citizens, between aid workers and their clients, and between family members, the essays draw attention to the ways in which the nature and possible consequences of support are variably understood and negotiated. For the first time Ethnographies of Social Support draws attention to the non-purposive background presence of support that comes with living in a shared world.

Despite growing affluence, a large number of urban Chinese have problems making ends meet. Based on ethnographic research among several different types of communities in Guangzhou, China, Soup, Love and a Helping Hand examines different modes and ideologies of help/support, as well as the related issues of reciprocity, relatedness (kinship), and changing state-society relations in contemporary China. With an emphasis on the subjective experience, Fleischer's research carefully explores people's ideas about moral obligations, social expectations, and visions of urban Chinese society.

Why do elderly choose to move away from their children so as to not receive their support? Using a number of case studies, contributors explore social support as a tool of mutuality, or maintaining relatedness and sharing feelings, rather than preventing or patching up problems. This book helps correct the dominant framework of deliberate action.

In the last decade of the twentieth century, one of the most fundamental changes in urban China has been the expansion and privatization of housing, with per capita housing space increasing by more than 50 percent. As a result, ordinary citizens in urban China have started to cultivate personal space and have a new incentive to make more money, and wealth is being stratified. Suburban Beijing documents this process, analyzing its underlying forces and its ramifications for redefining the Chinese social landscape. Friederike Fleischer depicts the way Chinese residents in Wangjing, a Beijing suburb, have been affected by the recent transformation in their housing, showing how the suburb developed from its antecedents as a Maoist industrial production zone to its present status as China's first middle-class residential area. The new suburban middle class live side by side with retired workers and with rural-to-urban migrants. Fleischer describes how all three groups share the same neighborhood, highlighting both the similarities and the growing differences between these groups of suburban residents in a rapidly evolving China.