Neoliberalism and Culture in China and Hong Kong

Neoliberalism and Culture in China and Hong Kong PDF

Author: Hai Ren

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-10-04

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1136923659

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This book examines the period leading up to the Hong Kong handover in 1997 - the 'countdown of time', and by using iconic cultural symbols such as the countdown clock, the Hong Kong Museum exhibitions and cultural heritage sites, argues that China has undergone a transition to neoliberal state, in part through its reunification with Hong Kong. The problem of synchronization with the world, a Chinese phrase that epitomizes China's engagement with modern capitalism since the first Opium War, was characterized throughout the 20th century as a 'humiliation', 'weakness', 'tragedy' and 'disaster', with China in the role of the victim of capitalist globalization. During the reunification with Hong Kong, these conventional expressions were replaced by new ones such as 'de-humiliation', 'return', 'self-esteem' and 'revival'. Hai Ren gives an ethnographic and historical analysis of this cultural and political transformation of China's globalization experience by looking closely at public history practices in mainland China and Hong Kong and how the reconfiguration of everyday life and cultural norms led to the development of this neoliberal China. As a book which straddles Chinese and Hong Kong, history, politics, cultural heritage and museum studies more generally, it can be regarded as a work of cultural political economy which will appeal to students and scholars of all of the above.

Lost in Transition

Lost in Transition PDF

Author: Yaowei Zhu

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2013-06-01

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1438446454

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Looks at the fate of Hong Kong’s unique culture since its reversion to China.

The Middle Class in Neoliberal China

The Middle Class in Neoliberal China PDF

Author: Hai Ren

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0415501350

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Since the late 1970s, China's move towards neoliberalism has made it not only one of the world's fastest growing economies, but also one of the most polarised states. This economic, social and political transformation has led to the emergence of a new Chinese middle class, and understanding the development and the role of this new social group is crucial to understanding contemporary Chinese society. Investigating the new politics of the middle class in China, this book addresses three major questions. First, how does the Chinese state deal with problems of national sovereignty and political representation to create the middle class both as a legitimate category of the people and as an ideal norm of citizenship? Second, how does the recognition of the middle class norm take place in the practice of everyday life? Finally, what kind of risks does the politics of the middle class generate not only for middle class subjects but also for the disenfranchised? In answering these questions, this book examines a set of practices, bodies of knowledge, measures, and institutions that aim to manage, govern, control, and orient the behaviours, gestures, and thoughts of Chinese citizens. This investigation contributes not only to the understanding of the Chinese middle class society but also to the scholarly debate over the relationship between governmental apparatuses, subjectification, and life-building. Drawing on ethnographic information, historical archives, and the media, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in the fields of Chinese studies, Chinese politics, ethnic studies and urban studies, as well as those interested in culture, society, class and welfare.

Desiring China

Desiring China PDF

Author: Lisa Rofel

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2007-05-10

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780822339472

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DIVAn ethnography of gender, sexuality, and consumption in post-socialist China./div

Found in Transition

Found in Transition PDF

Author: Yiu-Wai Chu

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2018-10-16

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1438471696

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Presents an updated account of Hong Kong and its culture two decades after its reversion to China. In Found in Transition, Yiu-Wai Chu examines the fate of Hong Kong’s unique cultural identity in the contexts of both global capitalism and the increasing influence of China. Drawing on recent developments, especially with respect to language, movies, and popular songs as modes of resistance to “Mainlandization” and different forms of censorship, Chu explores the challenges facing Hong Kong twenty years after its reversion to China as a Special Administrative Region. Highlighting locality and hybridity along postcolonial lines of interpretation, he also attempts to imagine the future of Hong Kong by utilizing Hong Kong studies as a method. Chu argues that the study of Hong Kong—the place where the impact of the rise of China is most intensely felt—can shed light on emergent crises in different areas of the world. As such, this book represents a consequential follow-up to the author’s Lost in Transition and a valuable contribution to international, area, and cultural studies. “This is a wide-ranging and worthy sequel to Chu’s Lost in Transition. By juxtaposing a series of critical issues—urban development, self-writing, language education, and cultural production, among others—that have confounded those who care deeply about this former British colony, Chu offers his readers an intelligent and sensitive guide to connect and make sense of the various debates, and he places the conundrums Hong Kong faces in the contexts of both the limits of neoliberal capitalism and the ‘Age of China.’” — Leo K. Shin, author of The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands

Hong Kong’s New Identity Politics

Hong Kong’s New Identity Politics PDF

Author: Iam-chong Ip

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-28

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1000764982

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Ip uses Hong Kong as a case study in how the production of the desire for "the local" lies at the heart of global cultural economy. Perhaps more so than most places, the construction of a local identity in Hong Kong has come about through a complex interplay of neoliberalism, postcoloniality and reaction to the consequent anxieties and uncertainties. As its importance as an economic centre has diminished and its relationship with Mainland China has become more strained, its people have become more concerned to define a "Hong Kong" identity that can be defended from external threat. Ip analyses the working and reworking of power relations and modes of agency in this global city. A must read for scholars of Hong Kong politics and society as well as a fascinating case study for scholars of identity politics as a global phenomenon.

Asia and China in the Global Era

Asia and China in the Global Era PDF

Author: Adrian J. Bailey

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-01-18

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1501505599

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China's strong economic growth occurring alongside modernization across the great majority of Asian societies has created what many see as a transnational space through and by which not only economic, social and cultural resources, but also threats and crises flow over traditional political boundaries. The first section of the work lays out a clear conceptual framework. It draws on arguments about nation no longer being the only container of society, about trans-disciplinary thinking, and about knowledge being context-bound. It identifies and discusses distinctive features of China and Asia in the global era. These include population, urbanization and climate change; the continuing reach of Orientalist shadows; cultural politics of knowledge. It closes by arguing how global studies adds value to existing accounts. The second, and longer, section applies this framework through a series of original empirical case-studies in three areas: migration/poverty/gender; culture/education; well-being. Both the conceptual framework and case-studies are drawn from research presented at HKBU since 2011 under the auspices of the Global Social Sciences Conference Series and supplemented by additional papers.

In the Ruins of Neoliberalism

In the Ruins of Neoliberalism PDF

Author: Wendy Brown

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-07-16

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 0231550537

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Across the West, hard-right leaders are surging to power on platforms of ethno-economic nationalism, Christianity, and traditional family values. Is this phenomenon the end of neoliberalism or its monstrous offspring? In the Ruins of Neoliberalism casts the hard-right turn as animated by socioeconomically aggrieved white working- and middle-class populations but contoured by neoliberalism’s multipronged assault on democratic values. From its inception, neoliberalism flirted with authoritarian liberalism as it warred against robust democracy. It repelled social-justice claims through appeals to market freedom and morality. It sought to de-democratize the state, economy, and society and re-secure the patriarchal family. In key works of the founding neoliberal intellectuals, Wendy Brown traces the ambition to replace democratic orders with ones disciplined by markets and traditional morality and democratic states with technocratic ones. Yet plutocracy, white supremacy, politicized mass affect, indifference to truth, and extreme social disinhibition were no part of the neoliberal vision. Brown theorizes their unintentional spurring by neoliberal reason, from its attack on the value of society and its fetish of individual freedom to its legitimation of inequality. Above all, she argues, neoliberalism’s intensification of nihilism coupled with its accidental wounding of white male supremacy generates an apocalyptic populism willing to destroy the world rather than endure a future in which this supremacy disappears.

Postsocialism and Cultural Politics

Postsocialism and Cultural Politics PDF

Author: Xudong Zhang

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2008-04-25

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780822342304

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Xudong Zhang offers a critical analysis of China's 'long 1990s', the tumultuous years between the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and China's entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001.

Labor and Class Identities in Hong Kong

Labor and Class Identities in Hong Kong PDF

Author: C. Lee

Publisher: Series in Asian Labor and Welf

Published: 2017-07-24

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9781349704156

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This cutting edge volume investigates how Hong Kong's economic structure and neoliberal policies have contributed to class inequality in China's global city. Specific topics include educational stratification, attitudes towards works, political attitudes, and class identifications.