China Constructs: 
               Architecture, Labor, and Value on a Chinese Construction Site 
                              
                           by 
                            
                         Will Thomson 
                              
                  A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment 
                    of the requirements for the degree of 
                       Doctor of Philosophy 
                            
                      Department of Anthropology  
                       New York University  
                        September, 2015 
             
          
          
                                   _____________________ 
                                         Angela Zito         
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                      Acknowledgements	
  
            It is fitting that academic books and dissertations begin with acknowledgments 
         and end with bibliographies. This project of researching and writing made me keenly 
         aware how everything we try to say is bookended by deep intellectual and personal debts 
         of various kinds. I am grateful for the support, advice, and friendship of many 
         extraordinary people in the university setting and in the field. For the better part of the 
         past decade, my world centered around Xi’an and Washington Square, two places with 
         which I feel a great deal of affinity and destiny, to paraphrase the Chinese term yuanfen. 
         Formally, the word connotes a preordained connection with people or places. Guanxi is 
         the Chinese concept of relations more familiar to English speakers, introduced through 
         countless manuals on networking for doing business in China. However, yuanfen better 
         captures a sensibility of the significant stakes of all our relationships. In its daily use, 
         evoking yuanfen transforms circumstantial coincidences into cosmological connections, 
         by recognizing our dependence on improbable alignment of connections that produce any 
         moment. I want to express my gratitude to those who through circumstance and fate I 
         have been lucky to meet and whose support helped bring the improbable to fruition. 
            My advisers in graduate school each made deep impressions on my scholarship 
         and my life. My chair, Angela Zito, supported me as a second line of defense throughout 
         graduate school, always steering me towards better and more important work, and 
         through example, she demonstrated how to commit  to ideas and how to live them in 
         practice. Sally Merry provided a model of the best of engaged anthropology, an 
         intellectual style that is at once pragmatic, understated, and radical, by confidently 
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         interrupting elite conversations and privileged discourses with anthropological insights. 
         Emily Martin’s support kept me going on numerous occasions. Her consistent 
         encouragement gave me confidence to experiment and a broad space to think. In the early 
         stages of my project planning, I gained a huge amount from studying under Setha Low 
         and Andrew Ross. Both also gave their time and consideration by joining my defense and 
         offering important advice. Victoria Hattam read several early chapters, worked with me 
         to expand my scope and perspective, and she pushed me to articulate some of the key 
         themes in this project. 
            The Anthropology Department of NYU was a rewarding social and intellectual 
         space to learn. In particular, I am grateful to Bruce Grant, Tom Abercrombie, Fred 
         Myers, and Susan Carol Rogers. Additionally, this project benefitted directly from 
         coursework with Renato Rosaldo, Harvey Molotch, and Don Kulick. I am glad to have 
         overlapped with so many amazing students in my time at NYU. Thanks to: Chantal 
         White, Yasmin Moll, Vanessa Agard-Jones, Barbara Andersen, Wenrui Chen, Damien 
         Stankiewicz, Rebecca Howes-Mischel, Robert Chang, Alison Cool, Dwai Banerjee, 
         Hyejin Nah, Natasha Raheja, Amy Lasater, Eugenia Kisin, and Rachel Lears. Thanks to 
         Pilar Rao, Ayako Takamori, and Lydia Boyd for taking me under their wings when I 
         came to the department. As my madrina, Sandra Rozental always has my back in New 
         York and Mexico City. Anna Wilking and Louis Römer helped by reading, commenting, 
         and commiserating. Graham Jones is magic. My longtime friend Elizabeth Reich helped 
         me make sense of academia. Ram Natarajan has been a great colleague and friend in New 
         York and Boston. 
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