Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village

Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village PDF Author: Hok Bun Ku
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742509283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Exploring sensitive issues often hidden to outsiders, this engaging study traces the transformation and economic development of a south China village during the first tumultuous decade of reform. Drawing on a wealth of intimate detail, Ku explores the new sense of risk and mood of insecurity experienced in the post-reform era in Ku Village, a typical hamlet beyond the margins of richer suburban areas or fertile farmland. Villagers' dissatisfaction revolves around three key issues: the rising cost of living, mounting agricultural expenses, and the forcible implementation of birth-control quotas. Faced with these daunting problems, villagers have developed an array of strategies. Their weapons include resisting policies they consider unreasonable by disregarding fees, evading taxes, and ignoring strict family planning regulations; challenging the rationale of official policies and the legitimacy of the local government and its officials; and reestablishing clan associations to supercede local Party authority. Using lively everyday narratives and compelling personal stories, Ku argues that rural people are not in fact powerless and passive; instead they have their own moral system that informs their everyday family lives, work, and political activities. Their code embodies concepts of fairness and justice, a concrete definition of the relationship between the state and its citizens, an understanding of the boundaries and responsibilities of each party, and a clear notion of what constitutes good and bad government and officials. On the basis of these principles, they may challenge existing policies and deny the authority of officials and the government, thereby legitimizing their acts of self-defense. Through his richly realized ethnography, Ku shows the reader a world of memorable, fully realized individuals striving to control their fate in an often arbitrary world.

Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village

Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village PDF Author: Hok Bun Ku
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742509283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring sensitive issues often hidden to outsiders, this engaging study traces the transformation and economic development of a south China village during the first tumultuous decade of reform. Drawing on a wealth of intimate detail, Ku explores the new sense of risk and mood of insecurity experienced in the post-reform era in Ku Village, a typical hamlet beyond the margins of richer suburban areas or fertile farmland. Villagers' dissatisfaction revolves around three key issues: the rising cost of living, mounting agricultural expenses, and the forcible implementation of birth-control quotas. Faced with these daunting problems, villagers have developed an array of strategies. Their weapons include resisting policies they consider unreasonable by disregarding fees, evading taxes, and ignoring strict family planning regulations; challenging the rationale of official policies and the legitimacy of the local government and its officials; and reestablishing clan associations to supercede local Party authority. Using lively everyday narratives and compelling personal stories, Ku argues that rural people are not in fact powerless and passive; instead they have their own moral system that informs their everyday family lives, work, and political activities. Their code embodies concepts of fairness and justice, a concrete definition of the relationship between the state and its citizens, an understanding of the boundaries and responsibilities of each party, and a clear notion of what constitutes good and bad government and officials. On the basis of these principles, they may challenge existing policies and deny the authority of officials and the government, thereby legitimizing their acts of self-defense. Through his richly realized ethnography, Ku shows the reader a world of memorable, fully realized individuals striving to control their fate in an often arbitrary world.

Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village

Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village PDF Author: Hok Bun Ku
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461639360
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Exploring sensitive issues often hidden to outsiders, this engaging study traces the transformation and economic development of a south China village during the first tumultuous decade of reform. Drawing on a wealth of intimate detail, Ku explores the new sense of risk and mood of insecurity experienced in the post-reform era in Ku Village, a typical hamlet beyond the margins of richer suburban areas or fertile farmland. Villagers' dissatisfaction revolves around three key issues: the rising cost of living, mounting agricultural expenses, and the forcible implementation of birth-control quotas. Faced with these daunting problems, villagers have developed an array of strategies. Their weapons include resisting policies they consider unreasonable by disregarding fees, evading taxes, and ignoring strict family planning regulations; challenging the rationale of official policies and the legitimacy of the local government and its officials; and reestablishing clan associations to supercede local Party authority. Using lively everyday narratives and compelling personal stories, Ku argues that rural people are not in fact powerless and passive; instead they have their own moral system that informs their everyday family lives, work, and political activities. Their code embodies concepts of fairness and justice, a concrete definition of the relationship between the state and its citizens, an understanding of the boundaries and responsibilities of each party, and a clear notion of what constitutes good and bad government and officials. On the basis of these principles, they may challenge existing policies and deny the authority of officials and the government, thereby legitimizing their acts of self-defense. Through his richly realized ethnography, Ku shows the reader a world of memorable, fully realized individuals striving to control their fate in an often arbitrary world.

Communities of Complicity

Communities of Complicity PDF Author: Hans Steinmüller
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857458914
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Everyday life in contemporary rural China is characterized by an increased sense of moral challenge and uncertainty. Ordinary people often find themselves caught between the moral frameworks of capitalism, Maoism and the Chinese tradition. This ethnographic study of the village of Zhongba (in Hubei Province, central China) is an attempt to grasp the ethical reflexivity of everyday life in rural China. Drawing on descriptions of village life, interspersed with targeted theoretical analyses, the author examines how ordinary people construct their own senses of their lives and their futures in everyday activities: building houses, working, celebrating marriages and funerals, gambling and dealing with local government. The villagers confront moral uncertainty; they creatively harmonize public discourse and local practice; and sometimes they resolve incoherence and unease through the use of irony. In so doing, they perform everyday ethics and re-create transient moral communities at a time of massive social dislocation.

Chinese Capitalisms

Chinese Capitalisms PDF Author: Kwok-bun Chan
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047442512
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The annual is a venue of publication for sociological studies of Chinese societies and the Chinese all over the world. The main focus is on social transformations in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the mainland, Singapore and Chinese overseas.

Drink Water, But Remember the Source

Drink Water, But Remember the Source PDF Author: Ellen Oxfeld
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520260953
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
"Drink Water, But Remember the Source is a lively and readable ethnography that will reshape our understanding of moral discourse in the Chinese countryside. Oxfeld greatly improves upon the usual claims that China is losing all forms of communal morality by illustrating the multiplicity of views refracted through concrete events."—Robert P. Weller, Boston University

Ordinary Ethics in China

Ordinary Ethics in China PDF Author: Charles Stafford
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0857858114
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Drawing on a wide range of anthropological case studies, this book focuses on ordinary ethics in contemporary China. The book examines the kinds of moral and ethical issues that emerge (sometimes almost unnoticed) in the flow of everyday life in Chinese communities. How are schoolchildren judged to be good or bad by their teachers and their peers - and how should a 'bad' student be dealt with? What exactly do children owe their parents, and how should this debt be repaid? Is it morally acceptable to be jealous if one's neighbours suddenly become rich? Should the wrongs of the past be forgotten, e.g. in the interests of communal harmony, or should they be dealt with now? In the case of China, such questions have obviously been shaped by the historical contexts against which they have been posed, and by the weight of various Chinese traditions. But this book approaches them on a human scale. More specifically, it approaches them from an anthropological perspective, based on participation in the flow of everyday life during ethnographic fieldwork in Chinese communities.

Deep China

Deep China PDF Author: Arthur Kleinman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520269454
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
"Deep China investigates the emotional and moral lives of the Chinese people as they adjust to the challenges of modernity. Sharing a medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry perspective, the contributors--Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei, and Guo Jinhua--explore the remaking of the moral person during China's profound social and economic transformation, unraveling the shifting practices and struggles of contemporary life."--Page 4 of cover.

Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society

Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society PDF Author: Kevin Latham
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351718754
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 603

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Culture and Society is an interdisciplinary resource that offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary Chinese social and cultural issues in the twenty-first century. Bringing together experts in their respective fields, this cutting-edge survey of the significant phenomena and directions in China today covers a range of issues including the following: State, privatisation and civil society Family and education Urban and rural life Gender, and sexuality and reproduction Popular culture and the media Religion and ethnicity Forming an accessible and fascinating insight into Chinese culture and society, this handbook will be invaluable to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, area studies, history, politics and cultural and media studies.

Gender and Community Under British Colonialism

Gender and Community Under British Colonialism PDF Author: Siu Keung Cheung
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135861722
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Gender and Community Under British Colonialism is a study of continuity and change in village communities in the New Territories of Hong Kong, China.

Everyday Masculinities in 21st-Century China

Everyday Masculinities in 21st-Century China PDF Author: Magdalena Wong
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888528424
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Everyday Masculinities in 21st-Century China: The Making of Able-Responsible Men argues that a moral dimension in Chinese masculinity is of growing significance in fast-changing China. ‘Able-responsible men’—those who can create wealth and shoulder responsibilities—have replaced the ‘moneyed elite’ of the earlier reform-and-opening-up era as the dominant male ideal. With vivid and highly readable case studies, Wong presents a compelling account of the forces that coerce men to live up to the able-responsible standard. She demonstrates the impact this pressure has on the lives of not only boys and men, but also on women, and shows how it invites both complicit and resistant reactions. The book lays bare the socio-political context that nurtures the cultural expressions of hegemonic masculinity under the rule of Xi Jinping. The president himself has emerged in public consciousness as the embodiment of the ideal able-responsible man. Based on anthropological fieldwork in Nanchong, Sichuan, the book provides new perspectives on many topical issues that China faces. These include urbanization, labour migration, the one-child policy, love and marriage, gender and intergenerational dynamics, hierarchical male relationships, and the rise of mass displays of nationalism. ‘In this richly informative book, Dr Wong gives us an intimate picture of masculinities in a contemporary Chinese city. She explores the role of wealth in definitions of masculinity, the moral dimension in gender imagery, the changing desires of women, and the role of the state—including a striking account of the gender strategies of President Xi. More than a local study, this book provides valuable ideas for understanding gender, men, and masculinities in the contemporary world.’ —Raewyn Connell, University of Sydney ‘Magdalena Wong asks wonderful, original questions. Her study might be one of the most pioneering investigations into Chinese family relations I have read. The strength of her book lies in its insight into kinship and cultural continuities and changes. The rich, nuanced case studies can make her book become an important addition to our ongoing studies on Chinese family.’ —William Jankowiak, University of Nevada, Las Vegas