Anxious Homes

Name: Anxious Homes
Price: 69.99 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock
ISBN: 9781501786815

Inflexible Demand and China's Housing Market

Mengqi Wang

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Paperback

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English

Cornell University Press
15 May 2026

Asian history; Urban communities; Social & cultural anthropology

Anxious Homes is a study of the power that shapes the forms of the homes Chinese citizens strive for and the possible paths they may take to realize their home ownership dreams. Mengqi Wang discusses how the Chinese real estate industry functions in the everyday, welding aspirational middle-class families, especially migrant families, to the property-owning class and the urban growth machine. Urban housing was a socialist benefit in China until the market reforms and privatization in the 1990s. Today, most Chinese citizens consider homeownership a necessity rather than an economic privilege. Wang analyzes the making of homeownership ideologies through ""inflexible demand"" (gangxu) – a concept that real estate brokers, developers, homebuyers, and the government in China use to craft homeownership as indispensable for fulfilling dreams of urban citizenship. The ethnography shows that gangxu helps to articulate diverse attempts to accumulate value through housing at China's urbanizing city periphery, while giving shape to a housing-based, postsocialist right to the city. Anxious Homes argues that homeownership does not necessarily engender independence but suggests further inclusion of citizens within the dominant regime of accumulation.

By: Mengqi Wang
Imprint: Cornell University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781501786815
ISBN 10: 1501786814
Pages: 180
Publication Date: 15 May 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Mengqi Wang is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University. Her research interests include economic anthropology, urban anthropology, political economy, gender studies, and science and technology studies.