LAUSR

ABSTRACT Amateur performances of pop classics take place daily in various public spots in Wuhan, China. Audience members reward singers with cash tips; these practices are bound up in personal relationships established as the two parties socialise at and away from the events. Building on Goffmanian notions of frame shifting, I explore how performance, everyday, and ethical realms of experience intersect during these occasions. Boundaries between performance and everyday frames are indistinct in a physical sense and in how participants relate to each other. This in turn feeds into the integration of the performances in participants’ ethical lives. Rather than a shifting between these three frames, I see mutual permeability as the basis for the sociality here.