Privatizing China

Socialism from Afar

Li Zhang, Aihwa Ong

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Hardback

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English

Cornell University Press
28 February 2008

Privatisation

Everyday life in China is increasingly shaped by a novel mix of neoliberal and socialist elements, of individual choices and state objectives. This combination of self-determination and socialism from afar has incited profound changes in the ways individuals think and act in different spheres of society. Covering a vast range of daily life-from homeowner organizations and the users of Internet cafes to self-directed professionals and informed consumers-the essays in Privatizing China create a compelling picture of the burgeoning awareness of self-governing within the postsocialist context.

The introduction by Aihwa Ong and Li Zhang presents assemblage as a concept for studying China as a unique postsocialist society created through interactions with global forms. The authors conduct their ethnographic fieldwork in a spectrum of domains-family, community, real estate, business, taxation, politics, labor, health, professions, religion, and consumption-that are infiltrated by new techniques of the self and yet also regulated by broader socialist norms. Privatizing China gives readers a grounded, fine-grained intimacy with the variety and complexity of everyday conduct in China's turbulent transformation.

Edited by: Li Zhang, Aihwa Ong
Imprint: Cornell University Press
Country of Publication: United States [Currently unable to ship to USA: see Shipping Info]
Edition: 2nd edition
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 155mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 907g
ISBN: 9780801445965
ISBN 10: 0801445965
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 28 February 2008
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: Privatizing China: Powers of the Self, Socialism from Afar by Aihwa Ong and Li Zhang PART I. POWERS OF PROPERTY Emerging Class Practices 1. Private Homes, Distinct Lifestyles: Performing a New Middle Class by Li Zhang 2. Property Rights and Homeowner Activism in New Neighborhoods by Benjamin L. Read Accumulating Land and Money 3. Socialist Land Masters: The Territorial Politics of Accumulation by You-tien Hsing 4. Tax Tensions: Struggles over Income and Revenue by Bei Li and Steven M. Sheffrin Negotiating Neoliberal Values 5. ""Reorganized Moralism"": The Politics of Transnational Labor Codes by Pun Ngai 6. Neoliberalism and Hmong/Miao Transnational Media Ventures by Louisa Schein PART II.POWERS OF THE SELF Taking Care of One's Health 7. Consuming Medicine and Biotechnology in China by Nancy N. Chen 8. Should I Quit?: Tobacco, Fraught Identity, and the Risks of Governmentality by Matthew Kohrman 9.Wild Consumption: Relocating Responsibilities in the Time of SARS by Mei Zhan Managing the Professional Self 10. Post-Mao Professionalism: Self-enterprise and Patriotism by Lisa M. Hoffman 11. Self-fashioning Shanghainese: Dancing across Spheres of Value by Aihwa Ong Search for the Self in New Publics 12. Living Buddhas, Netizens, and the Price of Religious Freedom by Dan Smyer Yu 13. Privatizing Control: Internet Cafes in China by Zhou Yongming Afterword: Thinking Outside the Leninist Corporate Box by Ralph A. Litzinger Notes Contributors Index

Li Zhang is Department Chair and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China's Floating Population and In Search of Paradise: Middle Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis, and is the coeditor (with Aihwa Ong) of Privatizing China, Socialism from Afar. Aihwa Ong is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews for Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar

Privatizing China is an important book that deserves a close reading by all scholars interested in postsocialist societies and/or twenty-first-century socialisms. Contributors explore China's headlong plunge into the privatization of housing, urban land, labor, consumption practices, health care, and new media. This is anthropology at its very best. James L. Watson, Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society and Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University