The social limits of state capacity: the kang , social heat, and coal-to-electricity transition in rural North China

This article conceptualizes social heat to explain why China’s coal-to-electricity policies achieved statistical success while failing to change everyday heating practices in rural Shanxi Province. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Xuhao village (2021–2025), I show that the kang, a fire-heated earthen platform, operates as a domestic infrastructure integrating cooking, care, social gathering, and seasonal rhythm. Heating constitutes a total social fact: intervening in any one dimension reverberates through the others. Coal-to-electricity policies delivered piecemeal equipment that satisfied bureaucratic metrics while being unable to finance, or substitute for, the domestic whole. The state’s reach was formidable but misaligned, with resources flowing toward equipment counts rather than towards the domestic heating. Villagers responded with hybrid strategies preserving social heat while selectively incorporating new technologies. The article shows that effective environmental governance depends not only on the depth of state penetration but on whether policy articulates with how communities organise their life.