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What makes people work? The straightforward answer is in order to live. Such a pragmatic and materialist response seems transparent in the context of Western social and economic theory. This chapter suggests that the question of what makes people work is a central feature of the way that human existence is understood within different cultural and historical repertoires and, following Graeber, that a satisfactory understanding of the nature of work requires a broader understanding of value. The question perhaps has particular salience in Western thought which reveals a deep ambivalence in the value accorded to work. From many perspectives work has a negative value. The work ethic is central to the anthropological enterprise in a particular way, derived from nineteenth-century fieldwork of natural history. The uniformity with which people responded in this way indicates that these are the quintessential activities of the married couple that forms the basis of the household: the man ploughs and the woman feeds.

In this paper, I want to discuss what it means to be ‘alone’ in particular ethnographic and historical contexts by considering the status of unmarried women.

This study combines anthropology with migration studies to examine the increase of familial investment in daughters education as part of a wider transformation of the social and moral landscape of China. The focus is on urban single-child families who take on the substantial financial burden of sending their child abroad to study. The research involved 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in China, as well as interviews in Europe and two survey studies. Chinese families have traditionally invested in sons education and future, as the patrilineal and patriarchal kinship principles have vested sons with the main responsibility of taking care of the ageing parents. The gendered family roles have been visible in the demographics of the Chinese migration flows. While men have taken the active role of migrating abroad to work and to study, women have played the supporting roles, being the left-behind wives or following male family members abroad. This pattern has changed as overseas study has become a major part of Chinese migration. Between 1978 and 2013 a staggering 2.6 million Chinese students went abroad to study. During this time, the proportion of women increased fivefold, and they now constitute half of the student migrant population. Be it a son or a daughter, most urban parents now do everything they can to support the education of their only child. Yet gender simultaneously operates on multiple scales. While a generation of young women have been educated in an environment that fosters individual achievement and competition, they must eventually find their place in the marriage and job markets that are highly gendered. Women are directed to certain, less demanding, career paths, and excessive success can stand in a way of marriage. The current student migrants also belong to the first generation who must make the transition from being the centre of the family to being the sacrificing parent. In this role, both women and men are expected to put the child's well-being and the future before their personal interests. The difference is that a father s contribution is more in line with his upbringing as the only child, than the mother s. It is the mothers who are expected to use time and energy to nurture and to educate the child, while a father s main contribution is through his personal career success. These dynamics create a paradoxical situation where women as daughters are supported to succeed but women as wives and mothers are not. Both female and male student migrants draw from their cosmopolitan experiences and symbolic resources, and their access to wider marriage and job markets, when negotiating this difficult position. Through their individual journeys of migration, they are at the forefront of the current transformation of the Chinese symbolic markets. Tutkimus yhdistää antropologian ja siirtolaisuustutkimuksen näkökulmia tarkastellen kiinalaisten opiskeluperäistä siirtolaisuutta sekä kulttuurisia ja rakenteellisia tekijöitä naisten osuuden nopean kasvun taustalla. Tutkimus perustuu 17 kuukauden kenttätyöhön Kiinassa, haastatteluihin Euroopassa ja kahteen kyselytutkimukseen. Noudattaen patrilineaalisen sukulaisuusjärjestelmän periaatteita, kiinalaiset perheet ovat perinteisesti investoineet poikien koulutukseen, sillä pojilla on ollut päävastuu huolehtia ikääntyneistä vanhemmista. Kiinalaisten muuttovirtojen demografia on ollut linjassa näiden perheensisäisten sukupuoliroolien kanssa. Miehet ovat muuttaneet ulkomaille työn tai opintojen perässä, naisten huolehtiessa perheestä Kiinassa tai seuratessa miespuolista perheenjäsentä ulkomaille. Tähän on tullut muutos opiskeluperäisen siirtolaisuuden myötä, jonka osuus reformiajan muuttovirroista on kasvanut nopeasti. Vuosien 1978 ja 2013 välillä Kiinasta lähti 2,6 miljoonaa opiskelijaa ulkomaille. Naisten osuus on tänä aikana viisinkertaistunut ja noin puolet opiskelijasiirtolaisista on nyt naisia. Opiskelu ulkomailla on perheille usein valtava taloudellinen taakka, mutta yksilapsiset kaupunkilaisperheet haluavat taata lapselleen sukupuolesta riippumatta parhaat mahdolliset lähtökohdat menestykseen yhteiskunnassa, jota leimaavat kasvun ja mahdollisuuksien lisäksi kasvavat tuloerot. Sukupuoli kuitenkin toimii samanaikaisesti useilla tasoilla. Naisten menestystä rajoittavat sukupuolittuneet työmarkkinat joilla naisia ohjataan vähemmän vaativille urapoluille sekä pelko siitä, että he liiallisen menestyksen myötä vaarantavat mahdollisuutensa avioitua. Tämän hetken opiskelijasiirtolaiset kuuluvat myös ensimmäiseen ainoiden lasten sukupolveen, jolla on siten edessään siirtymä perheen keskipisteestä uhrautuvaksi vanhemmaksi. Tämä merkitsee eri asioita miehille ja naisille. Niin pojat kuin tyttäretkin on kasvatettu ympäristössä joka painottaa yksilön menestystä ja itsensä kehittämistä, mutta kun hyvän isän rooli määritetään henkilökohtaisen menestyksen kautta, on "liika" individualistinen kunnianhimo ja menestys ristiriidassa hyvän äitiyden kanssa. Tästä perheroolien asetelmasta seuraa paradoxi jossa naisten menestystä tyttärinä tuetaan, mutta heidän roolinsa vaimoina ja äiteinä toimivat sitä vastaan. Sekä nais- että miespuoliset opiskelijasiirtolaiset ovat avainroolissa Kiinan moraalisen ja kulttuurisen maiseman muutoksessa, ja he hyödyntävät kansainvälistä kokemustaan ja resurssejaan neuvotellessaan oman elämänsä konflikteja.

Anthropologists, starting with Hertz, have claimed death as their object of study. They have been able to do so by transforming death from a purely biological into a pre-eminently social phenomenon. In a sense, it is somewhat misleading to say that the spirit of the dead enters the dream of the living, since these dreams are more like encounters between fellow spirits. During sleep, the fanahy of living people temporarily detaches itself from the body and wanders until waking time. Dreams about one’s dead relatives must be promptly recounted to members of one’s immediate family and to the senior person who has the authority to call upon the particular individual who appeared in the dream. Many dreams become known only after they have caused illness or death. This is typically the case of children’s dreams. Adults are adamant that their children do not understand anything about what happens to people after death.