Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar

Li Zhang and Aihwa Ong, Editors / Contributors: Nancy N. Chen, Lisa M. Hoffman, You-tien Hsing, Matthew Kohrman, Bei Li, Ralph A. Litzinger, Pun Ngai, Aihwa Ong, Benjamin L. Read, Louisa Schein, Steven M. Scheffrin, Dan Smyer Yu, Mei Zhan, Li Zhang, Zhou Yongming

ISBN 10: 0801473780 / ISBN 13: 9780801473784

Published by Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2008

About this Item

282 pp., viii. Stated: "First published 2008 by Cornell University Press"; this copy: "First printing, Cornell paperbacks, 2008". Contents: Introduction by Editors, "Privatizing China: Powers of the Self, Socialism from Afar"; Part I: Powers of Property: Emerging Class Practices; Accumulating Land and Money; Negotiating Neoliberal Values; Part II: Powers of the Self: Taking Care of One's Health; Managing the Professional Self; Search for the Self in New Publics. Notes, pp. 237-270; Contributors, pp. 271-273; Index, pp. 275-282. Shiny wraps with blue, green, yellow-green, and white of a tall building, seen in perspective from ground up. Small bump (1/8" on diagonal) to lower right front cover corner with diminishing echo through about p. 43 (NO textimpacted); Some ostensible fading to the cover (looks nearly like it is the design), with ostensible outline of a book placed on cover or adjacent to the cover on shelf, so is faded on outline of the smaller, tilted book: describes much worse than it is, but there you have it, else Fine: Tight binding (NO cracks); NO remainder marks; NO previous owner names. Clean text. Solid copy.

Seller Inventory # 002146

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar
• Publisher: Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801473780
• ISBN 13: 9780801473784
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Li Zhang is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Strangers in the City. Aihwa Ong is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of several books, including Neoliberalism as Exception, Buddha Is Hiding, and Flexible Citizenship.