The Emergence of a Ne Urban China Insiders' Perspectives [Hardcover]

Nine essays in this unique volumeeach essay a joint endeavor of a doctoral student inside China and a senior scholar in North Americanot only update a variety of key urban issues, but also showcase the scholarship and positions of a generation of young Chinese sociologists who are living through the complicated postsocialist, urban transformation. Social surveys and interviews, most of which were conducted by these young scholars in Guangdong province from 2005 to 2010, make the essays rich in both quantitative dimensions and graphic details of human agency. Causes, consequences, and discursive strategies of the contest and negotiation between old and new urban dwellers over cultural identity, legal status, and economic entitlement are exceptionally well-captured and probed in many of the essays. The contributors impartially treat various interest groups, such as native urban residents, migrant workers, ethnic minorities, laid-off workers, and African merchants. An accessible guide for urban issues in China, this book would be good complementary material for advanced undergraduate or graduate seminars. And everybody interested in contemporary China will find it illuminating. Summing Up: Highly recommended.This collaboration between Albany and Guangzhou, and between senior scholars and a new generation of researchers, takes the reader directly into the realities of a new urban China. This is a world where people make strategic choices about their future, navigate a rapidly changing labor and housing market, and use high-tech tools in traditional villages. The studies in this volume were originated by doctoral students who are living this new China, and they have a freshness and originality that one rarely sees in academic work.With all essays that pair the grounded insights from young scholars inside China with the analytical experience of scholars in the United States, this edited book offers a refreshing collective probe into the new and complex reality of an urblS.