Acknowledgments  ix

Notes on Orthography and Names  xiii

Introduction  1

Part I. Edgy Dispositions  23

1. To Be Emplaced: Fuzhounese Migration and the Geography of Desire  31

2. Stepping Out: Contesting the Moral Career from Peasant to Overseas Chinese  59

Part II. Exits and Entrances  101

3. Snakeheads and Paper Trails: The Making of Exits  107

4. Bad Subjects: Human Smuggling, Legality, and the Problem of Entrance  141

Part III. Debts and Diversions  165

5. For Use in Heaven or Hell: The Circulation of the U.S. Dollar among Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors  171

6. Partings and Returns: Gender, Kinship, and the Mediation of Renqing  217

Conclusion: When Fortune Flows  257

Notes  269

Bibliography  295

Index  321

Co-winner, 2011 Sharon Stephens Book Prize, presented by the American Ethnological Society

Winner, 2012 Clifford Geertz Prize, presented by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion

Honorable Mention, 2011 Gregory Bateson Prize, presented by the Society for Cultural Anthropology

“Julie Chu's ambitious ethnography provides a captivating description of contemporary Chinese people's desire for mobility. . . . Cosmologies of Credit is daunting in scope and provides numerous insights for scholars interested in contemporary Chinese migration practice. . . . It is a major contribution to the fields both of migration and of China studies, and demonstrates the continued relevance of anthropological approaches to China's place in a globalized era.”—Jamie Coates, The China Journal

“. . . [A] remarkably rich, sensitive ethnographic account. . . . Chu convincingly challenges conventional conceptions of place and displacement in the social analysis of migration and diaspora.” —Jing Shao, Asian Anthropology

“This is a fine example of how a modern ethnography can be written in a way
that informs about people’s lives without attempting to describe everything in a research site. It is also an example of how to write a transnational ethnography that transcends geographical boundaries. Unlike most anthropological works on China or on Chinese overseas which treat each as rather separate, this work links the study of China with the study of Chinese overseas very well.”—Tan Chee­Beng, Journal of Asian Studies

“The contradiction between the desired modern persona and the classically superstitious practices that are deployed to attain it has been noted by other researchers, but its ethnographic elaboration is one of the most interesting aspects of Chu’s book. Cosmologies of Credit enriches our understanding of the meshing between private and state desires of modernity that are so characteristic of today’s China.”—Nyíri Pál, The China Quarterly

“Cosmologies of Credit invites a new perspective on the religious dimension of Chinese migration and greatly contributes to our understanding of the diversity and complexity of the Chinese diaspora.” —Nanlai Cao, Journal of Chinese Religions

Co-winner, 2011 Sharon Stephens Book Prize, presented by the American Ethnological Society

Winner, 2012 Clifford Geertz Prize, presented by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion

Honorable Mention, 2011 Gregory Bateson Prize, presented by the Society for Cultural Anthropology

“Julie Chu's ambitious ethnography provides a captivating description of contemporary Chinese people's desire for mobility. . . . Cosmologies of Credit is daunting in scope and provides numerous insights for scholars interested in contemporary Chinese migration practice. . . . It is a major contribution to the fields both of migration and of China studies, and demonstrates the continued relevance of anthropological approaches to China's place in a globalized era.”—Jamie Coates, The China Journal

“. . . [A] remarkably rich, sensitive ethnographic account. . . . Chu convincingly challenges conventional conceptions of place and displacement in the social analysis of migration and diaspora.” —Jing Shao, Asian Anthropology

“This is a fine example of how a modern ethnography can be written in a way
that informs about people’s lives without attempting to describe everything in a research site. It is also an example of how to write a transnational ethnography that transcends geographical boundaries. Unlike most anthropological works on China or on Chinese overseas which treat each as rather separate, this work links the study of China with the study of Chinese overseas very well.”—Tan Chee­Beng, Journal of Asian Studies

“The contradiction between the desired modern persona and the classically superstitious practices that are deployed to attain it has been noted by other researchers, but its ethnographic elaboration is one of the most interesting aspects of Chu’s book. Cosmologies of Credit enriches our understanding of the meshing between private and state desires of modernity that are so characteristic of today’s China.”—Nyíri Pál, The China Quarterly

“Cosmologies of Credit invites a new perspective on the religious dimension of Chinese migration and greatly contributes to our understanding of the diversity and complexity of the Chinese diaspora.” —Nanlai Cao, Journal of Chinese Religions

“Cosmologies of Credit is a rich ethnography of migration that describes departures rather than arrivals, debts to gods that loom as large as debts to humans, and the lived experience of mobility without movement. Julie Y. Chu provides wonderfully subtle renderings of passionate and painful longings not to be left behind. One of the most astute and beautifully written ethnographies about China, Cosmologies of Credit is a pleasure to read.”—Lisa Rofel, author of Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture

“In this vivid account of Fuzhounese villagers’ strenuous efforts to realize their own cosmopolitan mobility as undocumented, smuggled persons, Julie Y. Chu connects architecture, spirit money, the politics of destination, and the cosmology of value. As she convincingly argues, mobility is the modern feature of modernity, and the real is always in motion.”—Tani Barlow, Rice University

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