Product Description
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. 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 have changed the face of China.
Popular China is one of those rare academic books that you can read on trains, on the beach or by your office desk. All the chapters offer interesting, well-researched and well-written material whether it’s about basketball fandom, gay experience, factory work, the epidemic of corruption or the laws regulating women’s inheritance. The researchers combine an on-the-ground, intimate knowledge of their topic with the ability to place all of it in the broader context of Chinese history and culture. The editors, too, did a great job creating the framework in which these diverse issues and topics cohere into a meaningful whole.
While China is a moving target for researchers, due to its fast-paced social changes, and the data collected for this book must be at least 6 or 7 years old, it remains a valuable guide for all of those who seek a better understanding of a country that many see as a superpower in the making.
Rating: 5 / 5