Casual Assemblies: Afterlives of Maoist Performance Culture in Beijing’s Public Parks

Dr. Lisa Richaud is currently Research Fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, and will join KU Leuven as Assistant Professor in Anthropology. Her latest articles can be found in Ethos and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, where she edited a special section on the politics of negative affects in post-Reform China. She is also a former fellow of the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

"Lisa Richaud’s brilliant new book explores how retirees who lived through the Maoist period use urban public parks in China as an energized space in which to gather and sing old socialist anthems in a new spirit of casual and non-committal fun. Rooted in extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Richaud’s conceptually inventive and meticulously researched study reshapes our understanding of what it means to be and act political in contemporary China."Margaret Hillenbrand, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Visual Culture, University of Oxford"Casual Assemblies is an insightful, sophisticated work. Through a careful analysis of sustained fieldwork among the parks of Beijing, Richaud takes parkgoers’ claims about “having fun” seriously, challenging the common assumption that leisure activities in China are inherently political."Paul Kendall, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Cultural Studies, University of Westminster"Casual Assemblies offers a new understanding of performance of Maoist repertoires in Beijing parks as cultural forms detached from politics through their reappropriation on a ludic, casual mode. Imaginative and rigorous, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in public sociality after Mao or in the connections between fun and politics, in China and beyond."Isabelle Thireau, Professor of Sociology at EHESS and Senior Researcher at CNRS"Casual Assemblies is a thoughtful study of what it means for older urban Chinese residents to have fun through collective, public performances of Maoist and Socialist-era songs. The analysis eschews simplistic binaries and focuses instead on the complexities of wan'r (or having fun). Richaud illuminates how, for the generation of urban Chinese who lived through Maoist campaigns from the 1950s to the 1970s, the "surface" of public life and the personal joy of singing previously political songs becomes a meaningful shared space through which these individuals not only forge community but also make space for reflecting upon the vast changes they have experienced. " Jenny Chio, author of 'A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China'

• Introduction 1. Ambiguity of Display, Amplified Presence 2. Playfulness or Politics 3. Remaking Everyday Theatricality 4. Meaning Unmaking 5. Re-Animated Past 6. Reparative Togetherness Conclusion