Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780742510784)

Using ingenious research methods, the contributors to this book explore the search for meaning among ordinary people in China today. The subjects of these vivid essays span the social spectrum from hip young entrepreneurs to sweatshop workers and homeless beggars. The issues are equally diverse, ranging from domestic violence to homosexuality to political corruption. The culture of popular China emerges as a mixture of exhilarating new aspirations--as seen in the basketball fans who dream of "flying" like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant; rueful cynicism--as bitingly conveyed in the many satirical jingles that circulate by word of mouth; and painful ambivalence. The people depicted here have built their popular culture out of ideas and symbolic practices drawn from old cultural traditions, from concepts about modernity debated during the early twentieth-century republican era, from the legacies of Maoist socialism, and from contemporary global culture. Throughout, the book shows how economic and social changes caused by globalization, in combination with the continuing Party dictatorship, have presented ordinary Chinese with a new array of moral and cultural challenges that they have met in ways that have changed the face of China.

Contributions by: Julia F. Andrews, Anita Chan, Deborah S. Davis, Leila Fern疣dez-Stembridge, Robert Geyer, Amy Hanser, Richard Levy, Perry Link, Richard P. Madsen, Andrew Morris, Paul G. Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen, Liping Wang, Li Zhang, Yuezhi Zhao, and Kate Zhou.
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Author: Paul G. Pickowicz
ISBN-10: 0742510786
ISBN-13: 9780742510784
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Language: English
Published: 12/18/2001
Pages: 336
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.18lbs
Size: 9.20h x 5.90w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2002 pg. 531