Consumer Revolution in Urban China
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20th century chinese culture
20th century chinese society
Category=JBFS
Category=JBSD
Category=JHM
china
chinese consumption
chinese culture
chinese economy
chinese society
commercial transactions
commercialism
commodified society
communism
communist leadership
consumer practices
consumer revolution
consumption
economic reforms
economics
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
foreign trade
interpersonal consequences
marketplace
material comfort
participant observation
political changes
private entrepreneurship
rapid commercialization
sociability
Product details
- ISBN 9780520216402
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jan 2000
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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After decades of egalitarian, restricted consumption, residents of China's cities are surrounded by a level of material comfort and commercial hype unimaginable just ten years ago. In this first in-depth treatment of the consumer revolution in China, fourteen leading scholars of Chinese culture and society explore the interpersonal consequences of rapid commercialization. In the early 1980s, Beijing's communist leadership advocated decollectivization, foreign trade, and private entrepreneurship to jump-start a stagnant economy, while explicitly rejecting any notion that economic reforms would promote political change. However, by the early 1990s the reforms in the marketplace not only produced double-digit growth but also enabled ordinary citizens to nurture dreams and social networks that challenged official discourse and conventions through millions of daily commercial transactions. Using participant observation, contributors to this book describe and analyze a wide range of these changing consumer practices: luxury housing, white wedding gowns, greeting cards, McDonald's, discos, premium cigarettes, bowling, and more.
Deborah S. Davis, Professor of Sociology at Yale University, is the author of Long Lives: Chinese Elderly and the Communist Revolution (1991) and coeditor of Chinese Society on the Eve of Tiananmen (1990), Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era (California, 1993), and Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China (1995).
