In Shanghai Wheat Workers "a Cultural Anthropology Perspective And Insights

Based on ethnographic field research conducted at four McDonald's outlets in Shanghai's Jingan a Huangpu Districts (2008-2010), this paper explores Mcjob as a meaning-laden term by way of closely examining the innovative strategies for coping with and manipulating work environment. From the McMates'/the crew's perspective, the restaurant does not just stand for menial, low aspirational, unskilled, dead-end jobs; on the contrary it offers the local staff opportunities to form new network ties and build cosmopolitan identities. It is our firm conviction that the central endeavor of embedded anthropology is to see material forces and processes in culturally located contexts of meaning and purpose. Only careful and on-spot ethnography is the viable path toward a deeper understanding of not just "what really happens" but "what really matters" to those who inhabit segregated social and moral worlds in Shanghai's fastfood outlets.