The Emergence of a New Urban China

Insiders' Perspectives

Edited by Zai Liang, Steven Messner, Cheng Chen, Youqin Huang

Publication date:

16 February 2012

Length of book:

228 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739170113

This book provides first-hand, insiders’ perspectives on urban issues in China, aiming to provide a theoretically informed and empirically rich discussion of the new social landscape of urban China in the 21st century. The research reported encompasses both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, with the latter based on extensive and in-depth fieldwork. The authors, most of them being native Chinese, had distinctive advantages in gaining access to study subjects, and had intimate knowledge of the locations and people they studied. The book’s primary geographical focus is on southern China, especially Guangdong province. This region is in the forefront of China’s transition to a market economy, and therefore constitutes an ideal social laboratory to study the key urban issues that have emerged in the last two decades. Combining ethnographic research along with survey-based quantitative analysis, this volume will appeal to students of urban issues in contemporary China, and it will generate important and fresh empirical and theoretical insights for the broader scholarly communities of area studies, urban studies, and urban sociology. It will also serve as a useful text for graduate courses and advanced undergraduate courses on China and urban sociology.

Section I. Migrant Workers and Community Reaction
1. Job Mobility of Rural Migrants in China’s Urban Labor Market: the Case of Pearl River Delta Region, Zhen Li and Zai Liang
2. Economic Deprivation, Social Networks and Unprotected Rights— A Study on Peasant Workers’ Collective Action in the Pearl River Delta, Xiaojuan Chen and Cheng Chen
3. Institutionnel Segmentation and Psychosocial Repellence: Urban Residents’ Attitude toward Migrants, Jiashun Wang and Steven F. Messner
Section II. New Patterns of Urbanization
4. On Not Wanting to Become Urban— Ethnographic Perspectives from a Pearl River Delta Urban Community Transited from Rural Village, Cuiling Li and Josephine Smart
5. The Development of Rural Village in Chinese City - A Case study of Zhu Village in Guangzhou, Fuping Chen and Eric Fong
6. Changing Economy and Urbanization in a Chinese Ethnic Minority Village: The Case of Bai Peasants in Xizhou, Yunnan Province, Xiongduan Yang and Alan Smart
Section III. Impacts of Globalization, Technology, and Markets on Urban China
7. The Reconstruction of Social Support System for African Merchants in Guangzhou, China, Tao Xu and Zai Liang
8. Mobile Phone Culture among the Information Have-less: A Case Study of Laid-off Workers in Shenyang City, China, Guangxu Ji and Youqin Huang
9. Housing Property Rights Disputes in Urban Chinese Families: An Institutional and Sociological Perspective, Jing Li and Youqin Huang

Nine essays in this unique volume—each essay a joint endeavor of a doctoral student inside China and a senior scholar in North America—not 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.