Xiao He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork with rural-to-urban migrant entrepreneurs in Shanghai since 2010. This presentation examines how they distinguish between “dead money” and “live money” in their daily social organization of labour and work. With this distinction, they create the possibility of actualizing entrepreneurial aspiration. We often attribute the embrace of entrepreneurial aspiration to the pathological effects of neoliberal capitalism and state power—but is this enough?

Xiao He is a postdoctoral researcher in Development Institute at Fudan University, Shanghai. In 2017 he completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology at Utrecht University/Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. His dissertation is titled Entrepreneurial Aspiration: Money and Social Life among Rural Migrants in Shanghai. His research areas are economical anthropology, migration, money and entrepreneurship.  

Introduction and moderation of the Q&A by Leksa Lee, Clinical Assistant Professor of Global China Studies and Anthropology, NYU Shanghai.

This event is cosponsored by the Center for Global Asia and the Global China Studies Program, NYU Shanghai.