Economies of favor and informality in diversity

Cheris Shun-ching Chan
When I conducted ethnographic research on hospital care in China during 2011–14, I examined how an informal economy of favor exchanges between Chinese physicians and patients emerged, was sustained, and changed over time. The favor patients offered to physicians was a cash gift called hongbao (red envelopes containing money) in exchange for extra care from the physicians. Offering informal payments to physicians in exchange for quality medical care was common in post-socialist, transitional economies. Public health studies of the problem are primarily based on economic hypotheses of a shortage economy and an imperfect market (Ensor and Savelyeva 1998; Bloom et al. 2001; Lewis 2007). My findings in China, however, challenge these economic hypotheses.

Marius Wamsiedel
“If you don’t move the table, you don’t get anything,” an elderly Roma tells me bitterly during an interview about access to health care services. The local idiom doesn’t make much sense to me, but from the context of our talk I could tell that it was a veiled reference to the need to make informal payments in order to receive adequate care. Many other participants echo this view, bemoaning the venality and callousness of some doctors or, more rarely, praising a “good-hearted” practitioner who has refused the money offered.

Rano Turaeva
Central Asia has been undergoing economic, political and social transformation in recent decades after gaining independence from the Soviet Union. The challenges have included economic collapse and decaying Soviet infrastructure, as well as political turbulence and global insecurities. As a result, political, economic and social insecurities have increased, as struggles for power and resource grabbing have created what scholars then characterized as bespredel (Turaeva 2014) and a time of chaos (Nazpary 2002). The region is not only an important geopolitical space, but also culturally diverse.

Yanjie Bian and Lingfeng He
Social eating – or eating a meal with significant others – is universally important for social networking in society. This article reviews a research program on social eating as a network builder and resource mobilizer for favor exchanges, and presents new survey evidence on patterns of participation in social eating and favor exchanges in China today.

Katherine Rupp
Examination of Japanese gift practices leads to a deeper exploration of networks and social relationships in Japanese society, and, at the same time, to a more detailed understanding of processes of borrowing and transformation in the history of Asian cultural interchange. The study of Japanese gift-giving necessarily also engages with an established empirical and theoretical tradition in anthropology, a tradition that often appears unable to escape from certain assumptions generated by the peculiar place of gifts in European and American popular ideologies of social life.

Abel Polese
One of the first things you’ll hear when arriving in Japan, as a scholar of informality, is that while Japanese society may look very formal, with everything strictly controlled and formalized, in fact it is not. Eventually, although the informal practices you’re used to observing abroad do not exist here, and may be strictly regulated, precisely where a foreigner would not expect to find informality is where informality will rule. In many respects, it may be said that Japan is like a “negative” of informality: whatever is formal in your country will be informal here, and vice versa.

Dan Lainer-Vos
In 1949, months after the conclusion of the Israeli war of independence, Arthur Hertzberg, a devoted young Zionist who later became a renowned historian, decided to witness with his own eyes the wonders that were taking place in Israel. He traveled across the ocean, but to his surprise, his hosts assailed him with a barrage of demanding questions instead of offering a warm welcome.

Nicolette Makovicky and David Henig
People do things with words. Metaphors, jokes, utterances, idioms and vernaculars are basic elements of how people communicate, create their communities and organisations, and act on and make sense of the world they inhabit (Austin 1962; Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Consider, for example, these ways of talking about drinking and eating: in Kenya, someone might ask you to buy them a cup of tea; in Morocco they might ask for a coffee; and in Lebanon you might be surprised to be asked to bring sweets when dealing with an official. In Turkey, you might be asked for ‘cash for soup’, a dish traditionally eaten at the end of a night of heavy drinking.

Fabien Éloire and Jean Finez · 2021
Sociology des Prix
Paris: La Découverte
Reviewer: Tom Chabosseau

Benjamin M.
Friedman · 2021
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Reviewer: Maren Freudenberg

Megan Tobias Neely · 2022
Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street
Oakland: University of California Press
Reviewer: Andrea Lagna

Timothy J. Sinclair · 2021
To the Brink of Destruction
Ithaca: Cornell University Press
Reviewer: Natalia Besedovsky