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Paper short abstract:

Social e-commerce demonstrates how economic values and inalienable values might be deployed simultaneously to form a new mode of sociality. The values employed ini legitimising WeChat business among Han Chinese and Hui Muslims are diverse, responding to gender and religious differences.

Paper long abstract:

Social e-commerce or WeChat business, is practiced by tens of millions in contemporary China. Over 90% are females with social and economic disadvantages. This mode of business initially starts from their relational networks lof kinship and friendship, and expands through the expectation of making friends with a wider customer base. It forms a 'sisters' companionship', securing other kinds of instrumental utility such as potential financial and social support. Meanwhile, Hui Muslim traders extend pre-existing offline family business through WeChat to demonstrate their adoption of digital technology, and to counter the social stigma of being 'less-advanced' and 'backwards' that is found in public discourse. WeChat business practiced by Han females and Hui Muslim traders potentially reprises the classic anthropological debate concerning the contradictory nature of economic values and human intimacies. My evidence suggests that social e-commerce forms new a sociality equally incorporating both inalienable and economic values . There are additional ways in which WeChat business has been used as a dynamic intervention within what might be regarded as conflicting value systems. For example,. Among female Han practitioners, an imagination and performing of the 'modern independent female' has been incorporating into pre-existed values associated with being a normative daughter, wife and mother. At the same time a considerable number of Muslim females are indifferent to such claims. Instead Muslim traders believe that doing WeChat business, as a sign of adapting China's digital trend, can be regarded as religiously meritorious.