This volume explores irony and cynicism as part of the social life of local communities in China, and specifically in relation to the contemporary Chinese state. It collects ethnographies of irony and cynicism in social action, written by a group of anthropologists. They use the lenses of irony and cynicism - broadly defined to include resignation, resistance, humour, ambiguity and dialogue - to look anew at the social, political and moral contradictions faced by Chinese people. They focus on both the interpretation of intentions in everyday social discourse, and the broader theoretical consequences of such interpretations for an understanding of the Chinese state.

Hans Steinmüller is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics, UK. He is the author of Communities of Complicity: Everyday Ethics in Rural China (2013).

Susanne Brandtstädter is a China anthropologist and Chair of the Anthropology of Globalization at the University of Cologne, Germany. She is the author of Falsificaciones, Derechos y Protestas (2015) and co-editor of Rights, Cultures, Subjects and Citizens (Routledge 2013).

Introduction: Irony, Cynicism, and the Chinese State 1. Moral Persons and Implicit Irony in Today's China 2. The Farmer, the Foreman and the Tinker: Irony and the Displacement of Meaning in Xiakou Village 3. Morality and Cynicism in a "Grey" World 4. Chinese Migrant Workers' Cynicism and the Politics of "Decent" Wage 5. The Ironies of "Political Agriculture": Bureaucratic Rationality and Moral Networks in Rural China 6. An Interactionist Perspective on Irony in the Street-level Bureaucracies of Beijing 7. The Rebel as Trickster and the Ironies of Resisting in Rural China 8. Freedom in Irony and Dreams: Inhabiting the Realms of Ancestors and Opportunities in Southwest China 9. Differentiating Cynicisms: Irony, Cynicism and New Media in Contemporary China 10. Afterword: Ironic Reflections in a Cynical Age