Contemporary Chinese Society and Politics, (4 Volume Set)

Chinese society and its political system are predicated on traditions of governing that are deeply alien to most readers from liberal, Western powers. Chinese governance reflects both a long, indigenous tradition of statecraft and the Leninist legacies of the People’s Republic’s ruling Communist Party. As China becomes ever more powerful - economically, diplomatically, militarily, and culturally - it becomes increasingly important to understand its governing dynamics. But to what extent can social-science theories of political rule, hierarchy and power, class formation, economic development, urbanization, and demographic and family transition, which were developed in Western contexts, explain China’s societal and political dynamics? What sorts of theoretical language have emerged from the study of Chinese society and politics, and how might these theories enable social scientists to view social and political dynamics in other parts of the world in a new light?

Contemporary Chinese Society and Politics, a new four-volume Major Work from Routledge, explores and answers these and other urgent questions by collecting the best foundational and cutting-edge scholarship on Mao-era and contemporary Chinese society and politics. The collection adopts a dual approach. On the one hand, to address the increasing fascination about China among Western scholars and students from a number of disciplines, it collects the best work that empirically describes Chinese society and its politics. On the other hand, to examine the theoretical implications of the study of Chinese society for Western social science, it also brings together the best work to have used empirical examinations of the People’s Republic to interrogate theories developed in Western contexts or to develop new theoretical positions. The editors have in particular paid especial attention to cases where debates have arisen about the proper ways of describing and theorizing Chinese governance and social dynamics.

The first volume in the collection (‘The Maoist Era’) brings together the best work to have been published on Chinese society and politics in the Maoist period (1949–76). Volume II (‘Politics and Social Institutions’), meanwhile, collects the key research dealing with both the theoretical implications and the empirical complexities of the post-Mao evolution at the highest level of the political leadership.

The distinctions between urban and rural are especially significant in the People’s Republic, not least because of China’s system of residential registration which denies rural residents any right to live permanently in a city, and the final two volumes are organized with these fundamental distinctions in mind. Volume III (‘Urban China’) gathers the best work on topics including: urban spaces (e.g. the creation and dismantlement of the socialist city, the creation of virtual cities, and the making of Olympics Beijing); the newly prosperous constituencies (including China’s ‘new rich’ and the development of a huge and increasingly self-identifying middle class); China’s working class; internal migration; and urban social change. Volume IV (‘Rural China in the Reform Era’) includes work brought together under themes such as rural politics; family farming; changes in rural society in a period of economic reform; and China’s ethnic minorities.

Contemporary Chinese Society and Politics is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, leading academics in the field, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

Volume I  : The Maoist Era

Part 1 : The Political System
Chapter 1 : Mao Zedong a Hundred Years On : The Legacy of a Ruler’, The China Quarterly
Chapter 2 : Bureaucracy in China : The Maoist Critique’, American Sociological Review

Part 2 : The 1950s and Early 1960s
Chapter 3 : Land Reform : The Bourgeois Revolution in The Countryside’, Mao’s China : A History of The People’s Republic
Chapter 4 : Cooperation and Conflict : Cooperative and Collective Formation in The Chinese Countryside, The Political Economy of Chinese Socialism
Chapter 5 : Governing Urban China : Labour Welfare and The Danwei’, Social Space and Governance in Urban China : The Danwei System from Origin to Reform
Chapter 6 : Mao Zedong and The Famine of 1959–1960 : A Study in Wilfulness’, The China Quarterly
Chapter 7 : China’s Mass Campaigns and Social Contro, Deviance and Social Control in Chinese Society

Part 3 : Cultural Revolution Upheaval (1966–8) and The Maoist 1970s
Chapter 8 : Conclusion’, The Politics of The Chinese Cultural Revolution
Chapter 9 : Images of China’s Social Structure : The Changing Perspectives of Canton Students’, World Politics
Chapter 10 : The Chinese Cultural Revolution in The Factories : Party-State Structures and Patterns of Conflict, Putting Class in its Place : Worker Identities in East Asia
Chapter 11 : Cultural Revolution Conflict in The Villages’, The China Quarterly
Chapter 12 : Dilemmas of The Post-Revolutionary Struggle’ and ‘The Failure of Agrarian Radicalism’, Agrarian Radicalism in China, 1968–1981

Part 4 : Social Order and Hierarchy under Mao
Chapter 13 : The Position of Peasants in Modern China’s Social Order’, Modern China
Chapter 14 : Class Conflict and The Vocabulary of Social Analysis in China’, The China Quarterly
Chapter 15 : Organized Dependency and Cultures of Authority in Chinese Industry’, Journal of Asian Studies
Chapter 16 : Status and Power’, Village and Family in Contemporary China

Part 5 : Social and Gender Relations
Chapter 17 : From Friendship to Comradeship : The Change in Personal Relations in Communist China’, The China Quarterly
Chapter 18 : Eating Bitterness : The Past and The Pattern’, Revolution Postponed : Women in Contemporary China

Volume II  : Politics and Social Institutions

Part 6 : Theories of Culture and Power in The PRC
Chapter 19 : The Gift Economy and State Power in China’, Comparative Studies in Society and History
Chapter 20 : On Models, Modelling and The Exemplary’, The Exemplary Society : Human Improvement, Social Control, and The Dangers of Modernity in China

Part 7 : Governing after Mao
Chapter 21 : China’s Political System : Challenges of The Twenty-first Century’, The China Journal
Chapter 22 : Modernizing Chinese Informal Politics, The Nature of Chinese Politics, From Mao to Jiang
Chapter 23 : Studying Chinese Politics : Farewell to Revolution?’, The China Journal
Chapter 24 : Market Transition and The Remaking of The Administrative State’, Remaking The Chinese Leviathan : Market Transition and The Politics of Governance in China
Chapter 25 : From Local Experiments to National Policy : The Origins of China’s Distinctive Policy Process’, The China Journal
Chapter 26 : Career Advancement as Party Patronage : Sponsored Mobility into The Chinese Administrative Elite’, American Journal of Sociology

Part 8 : Changing Economic and Administrative Institutions
Chapter 27 : The Command Economy and The China Difference’, Growing Out of The Plan : Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993
Chapter 28 : The Blind Man and The Elephant : Analysing The Local State in China, East Asian Capitalism : Conflicts and The Roots of Growth and Crisis

Part 9 : The Legal and Policing Systems
Chapter 29 : Principals and Secret Agents : Central vs : Local Control Over Policing and Obstacles to "Rule of Law" in China’, The China Quarterly
Chapter 30 : Judicial Independence and Judicial Accountability : An Empirical Study of Individual Case Supervision’, The China Journal

Part 10 : Nationalism
Chapter 31 : After 1989 : Nationalism and The New Global Elite’, Chinese Nationalism in The Global Era

Part 11 : Authoritarianism and Democratization
Chapter 32 : From Comrades to Citizens in The Post-Mao Era’ and ‘Redefinition of Chinese Citizenship on The Eve of The Twenty-First Century’, From Comrade to Citizen : The Struggle for Political Rights in China
Chapter 33 : In Search of a "Third Way" : A Conversation Regarding "Liberalism" and The "New Left Wing", Voicing Concerns : Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry
Chapter 34 : China’s Changing of The Guard : Authoritarian Resilience’, Journal of Democracy

Volume III  : Urban China

Part 12 : Governing Urban spaces
Chapter 35 : Urban Transformation in Post-Mao China : Impacts of The Reform Era on China’s Urban Form, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China : The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China
Chapter 36 : Revitalizing The State’s Urban "Nerve Tips"’, The China Quarterly

Part 13 : The Chinese Mass Media and Internet
Chapter 37 : Nothing but The Truth : News Media, Power and Hegemony in South China’, The China Quarterly
Chapter 38 : Negotiating Power Online : The Party State, Intellectuals, and The Internet’, Historicizing Online Politics : Telegraphy, The Internet and Political Participation in China

Part 14 : Social and Economic Mobility
Chapter 39 : Life Chances : Education and Jobs’, Chinese Urban Life Under Reform
Chapter 40 : Capitalist Without a Class : Political Diversity Among Private Entrepreneurs in China’, Comparative Political Studies
Chapter 41 : Creating an Urban Middle Class : Urban Engineering in Beijing’, The China Journal
Chapter 42 : The Second Liberation’, in Deborah Davis (ed.), The Consumer Revolution in Urban China

Part 15 : Public Opinion
Chapter 43 : Cultural Values and Democracy in The People’s Republic of China’, China Quarterly
Chapter 44 : Trust in Knowledge : Human Capital and The Emerging Suzhi Hierarchy’, Creating Market Socialism : How Ordinary People are Shaping Class and Status in China

Part 16 : Urban Workers
Chapter 45 : The Internal Politics of an Urban Chinese Work Community : A Case Study of Employee Influence on Decision-Making at a State Owned Factory’, The China Journal
Chapter 46 : Pathways of Labour Insurgency’, in Elizabeth J : Perry and Mark Selden (eds.), Chinese Society : Change Conflict and Resistance, 2nd edn.
Chapter 47 : Realities and Possibilities for Chinese Trade Unionism, The Future of Organised Labour : Global Perspectives

Part 17 : Rural/Urban Migration
Chapter 48 : Negotiations of Modernization and Globalization among Rural Women in Beijing’, Critical Asian Studies
Chapter 49 : Native Place, Migration and The Emergence of Peasant Enclaves in Beijing’, The China Quarterly

Part 18 : The Urban Family and Sexuality
Chapter 50 : Continuity and Change in Urban Chinese Family Life’, The China Journal
Chapter 51 : China’s One-Child Policy and The Empowerment of Urban Daughters’, American Anthropologist
Chapter 52 : Cool Masculinity : Male Clients’ Sex Consumption and Business Alliance in Urban China’s Sex Industry’, Journal of Contemporary China, 15, 46, 2006, 161–82.

Volume IV  : Rural China in The Reform Era

Part 19 : Rural Politics
Chapter 53 : Remaking The Communist Party-State : The Cadre Responsibility System at The Local Level in China’, China : An International Journal
Chapter 54 : Inheritors of The Boom : Private Enterprise and The Role of Local Government in a Rural South China Township’, The China Journal
Chapter 55 : The Empowering Effect of Village Elections in China’, Asian Survey

Part 20 : Farming in a Post-Socialist Age
Chapter 56 : Land’, Chinese Lives : An Oral History of Contemporary China
Chapter 57 : Full Circle? Rural Land Reforms in Globalizing China’, Critical Asian Studies
Chapter 58 : Continuity and Change in China’s Rural Periodic Markets’, The China Journal

Part 21 : The ‘Peasant Burden’, Rural Protests, and The Poor
Chapter 59 : Popular Contention and its Impact in Rural China’, Comparative Political Studies
Chapter 60 : Poverty in The Rural Hinterlands : The Conundrums of Underdevelopment’, The Transformation of Rural China
Chapter 61 : Rural Resettlement : Past Lessons for The Three Gorges Project’, The China Journal

Part 22 : Family and Relationships in Village China62 : Andrew Kipnis, ‘The Language of Gifts : Managing Guanxi in a North China Village’, Modern China
Chapter 63 : The Triumph of Conjugality : Structural Transformation of Family Relations in a Chinese Village’, Ethnology
Chapter 64 : Chinese Women and Their Natal Families’, Journal of Asian Studies
Chapter 65 : Domination, Resistance and Accommodation in China’s One-Child Campaign, Chinese Society : Change, Conflict and Resistance, 2nd edn :
Chapter 66 : Working Until You Drop : The Elderly of Rural China’, The China Journal

Part 23 : Teachings : Schooling and Religion
Chapter 67 : The Disturbing Educational Discipline of "Peasants"’, The China Journal
Chapter 68 : The Politics of Legitimation and The Revival of Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China’, Modern China

Part 24 : China’s Rural Ethnic Minorities
Chapter 69 : Civilizing Projects and The Reactions to Them, Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers
Chapter 70 : Representing Nationality in China : Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities’, Journal of Asian Studies