With a Presidential Young Investigator award from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Mayfair Yang of the University of California-Santa Barbara, will continue her studies of informal exchanges in mainland Chinese society. Through her analysis of gift exchange and the exchange of favors, she is revealing the actual workings of Chinese society, as distinct from the normative rules published and supported by the state bureaucracy. Dr. Yang will conduct ethnographic research in a small town in China and conduct participant observation on the variety of non- state organizations, both economic and non-economic, spawned by the economic reforms of the 1980's. She will analyze their organization, leadership structure, membership and activities, relation with the state, and the role of women. This research is important because these informal exchanges are the "grease" that allows the sticky bureaucratic machinery of communist societies to function in the actual world, as distinct from the paper world of state planners. In-depth ethnographic studies such as Dr. Yang's will help us understand the actual way such societies function, and so will help us deal successfully with them.
