Dragons in Diamond Village And Other Tales from the Back Alleys of Urbanising China
Dragons in Diamond Village And Other Tales from the Back Alleys of Urbanising China

Author: David Bandurski

Publisher: Penguin Group Australia

Published: 2015-11-03

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0143800000

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In 2009, on the outskirts of the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, Xian villagers secretly prepared for the Dragon Boat Festival. For them, the commemoration of the 221 BC poet Qu Yuan, who threw himself into a river to protest official corruption, held particular resonance. Guangzhou's drive to become a 'National Model City' ahead of the 2010 Asia Games accelerated a voracious demand for land, turning the ground beneath the villagers' feet into a commodity as valuable as diamonds, a treasure too rich for local officials to ignore. Dragons in Diamond Village is about the courage of individuals: Huang Minpeng, a semi-literate farmer turned self-taught rights defender; He Jieling, a suburban housewife who just wanted to open a hair salon; Xian villagers like Lu Zhaohui who refuse to give up the land their families have cultivated for generations. Theirs is a community bound by shared history and a belief in the necessity of change, a band of unlikely activists fighting for their place in China's new cities. 'A beautifully written account of how China's traditional rural past is meeting – and struggling with – its urbanising present . . . Via deftly told tales of China's little-known urban villages, Bandurski expertly guides readers through a mostly overlooked landscape and modern history.' Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet 'David Bandurski is a modern-day Marco Polo taking us into the heart of new China.' Kevin Sites, author of Swimming with Warlords and In the Hot Zone 'Vivid depictions of how villagers and migrants, living through the lawless and violent storms of Chinese urban land development, turn into political resistors. An important book of social reportage in the traditions of Liu Binyan and Studs Terkel.' Susan Shirk, author of China: Fragile Superpower and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during the Clinton administration 'Bandurski combines his deep knowledge of China's history and culture with graceful writing to produce a thoroughly enjoyable book, and an important one for understanding the tension at the heart of China's breakneck pace of change.' Keith B. Richburg, author of Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa and former China correspondent for the Washington Post

Dragons in Diamond Village
Dragons in Diamond Village

Author: David Bandurski

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2016-10-25

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1612195725

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“David Bandurski is a modern-day Marco Polo taking us into the heart of new China.” —Kevin Sites, author of In the Hot Zone China’s explosive modernization has led to a unique phenomenon: voraciously-growing cities absorbing formerly distant villages that become tenement communities. Dragons in Diamond Village is about the plight—and the courage—of the village-dwellers caught in this tide of urbanization: Huang Minpeng, a semi-literate farmer turned self-taught rights defender; He Jieling, a suburban housewife who just wanted to open a hair salon; and villagers like Lu Zhaohui who refuse to give up the land their families have cultivated for generations. It is, in short, a stirring tale -- a community of unlikely activists, they are fighting for identity, justice, and their rightful place in China’s new cities. Behind them stand millions of others who exist in the strange limbo of the urban village. Because their villages stand on invaluable tracts of land—vulnerable to the machinations of corrupt local officials—their homes have become a battleground in the war over China's urban future.

The Planetary Gentrification Reader
The Planetary Gentrification Reader

Author: Loretta Lees

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-30

Total Pages: 574

ISBN-13: 1000816265

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Gentrification is a global process that the United Nations now sees as a human rights issue. This new Planetary Gentrification Reader follows on from the editors’ 2010 volume, The Gentrification Reader, and provides a more longitudinal (backward and forward in time) and broader (turning away from Anglo-/Euro-American hegemony) sense of developments in gentrification studies over time and space, drawing on key readings that reflect the development of cutting-edge debates. Revisiting new debates over the histories of gentrification, thinking through comparative urbanism on gentrification, considering new waves and types of gentrification, and giving much more focus to resistance to gentrification, this is a stellar collection of writings on this critical issue. Like in their 2010 Reader, the editors, who are internationally renowned experts in the field, include insightful commentary and suggested further reading. The book is essential reading for students and researchers in urban studies, urban planning, human geography, sociology, and housing studies and for those seeking to fight this socially unjust process.

The City in China
The City in China

Author: Forrest, Ray

Publisher: Bristol University Press

Published: 2020-07-15

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1529205522

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In 1915 Robert Park penned his seminal paper “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment”. This essay provided an agenda for the Chicago School of Urban Sociology, which formed the basis of urban research for decades. Given that China’s urban centres now occupy the spotlight that once belonged to American cities, Park’s essay is a platform and point of departure for this volume, which gathers together reflections from a broad range of urban China specialists to consider Park’s (ir)relevance today – for cities in China, for questions about the social life of the city and for urban research more generally. Essential for a broad range of urban studies scholars, this book is an invaluable teaching resource and a useful tool for policy-makers and planners.

The Globalizing Cities Reader
The Globalizing Cities Reader

Author: Xuefei Ren

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-12

Total Pages: 848

ISBN-13: 1317410467

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The newly revised Globalizing Cities Reader reflects how the geographies of theory have recently shifted away from the western vantage points from which much of the classic work in this field was developed. The expanded volume continues to make available many of the original and foundational works that underpin the research field, while expanding coverage to familiarize students with new theoretical and epistemological positions as well as emerging research foci and horizons. It contains 38 new chapters, including key writings on globalizing cities from leading thinkers such as John Friedmann, Michael Peter Smith, Saskia Sassen, Peter Taylor, Manuel Castells, Anthony King, Jennifer Robinson, Ananya Roy, and Fulong Wu. The new Reader reflects the fact that world and global city studies have evolved in exciting and wide-ranging ways, and the very notion of a distinct "global" class of cities has recently been called into question. The sections examine the foundations of the field and processes of urban restructuring and global city formation. A large number of new entries focus on the emerging urban worlds of Asia, Latin America and Africa, including Beijing, Bogota, Cairo, Cape Town, Delhi, Istanbul, Medellin, Mumbai, Phnom Penh, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai. The book also presents cases off the conventional map of global cities research, such as smaller cities and less known urban regions that are undergoing processes of globalization. The book is a key resource for students and scholars alike who seek an accessible compendium of the intellectual foundations of global urban studies as well as an overview of the emergent patterns of early 21st century urbanization and associated sociopolitical contestation around the world.

The Great Han
The Great Han

Author: Kevin Carrico

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2017-08-22

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0520967682

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The Great Han is an ethnographic study of the Han Clothing Movement, a neotraditionalist and racial nationalist movement that has emerged in China since 2001. Participants come together both online and in person in cities across China to revitalize their utopian vision of the authentic “Great Han” and corresponding “real China” through pseudotraditional ethnic dress, reinvented Confucian ritual, and anti-foreign sentiment. Analyzing the movement’s ideas and practices, this book argues that the vision of a pure, perfectly ordered, ethnically homogeneous, and secure society is in fact a fantasy constructed in response to the challenging realities of the present. Yet this national imaginary is reproduced precisely through its own perpetual elusiveness. The Great Han is a pioneering analysis of Han identity, nationalism, and social movements in a rapidly changing China.

Dragon Tales
Dragon Tales

Author: Fuyang Wang

Publisher: Bejing : Chinese Literature Press

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9787507100242

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Investigative Journalism in China
Investigative Journalism in China

Author: David Bandurski

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2010-06-01

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9622091741

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Despite persistent pressure from state censors and other tools of political control, investigative journalism has flourished in China over the last decade. This volume offers a comprehensive, first-hand look at investigative journalism in China, including insider accounts from reporters behind some of China's top stories in recent years. While many outsiders hold on to the stereotype of Chinese journalists as docile, subservient Party hacks, a number of brave Chinese reporters have exposed corruption and official misconduct with striking ingenuity and often at considerable personal sacrifice. Subjects have included officials pilfering state funds, directors of public charities pocketing private donations, businesses fleecing unsuspecting consumers - even the misdeeds of journalists themselves. These case studies address critical issues of commercialization of the media, the development of ethical journalism practices, the rising specter of "news blackmail," negotiating China's mystifying bureaucracy, the dangers of libel suits, and how political pressures impact different stories. During fellowships at the Journalism & Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong, these narratives and other background materials were fact-checked and edited by JMSC staff to address critical issues related to the media transitions currently under way in the PRC. This engaging narrative gives readers a vivid sense of how journalism is practiced in China. --David Bandurski is a scholar at the University of Hong Kong's China Media Project, a research and fellowship initiative of the Journalism & Media Studies Centre. Martin Hala has taught journalism at the Universities in Prague and Bratislava. -

London’s Urban Landscape
London’s Urban Landscape

Author: Christopher Tilley

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 1787355608

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London’s Urban Landscape is the first major study of a global city to adopt a materialist perspective and stress the significance of place and the built environment to the urban landscape. Edited by Christopher Tilley, the volume is inspired by phenomenological thinking and presents fine-grained ethnographies of the practices of everyday life in London. In doing so, it charts a unique perspective on the city that integrates ethnographies of daily life with an analysis of material culture. The first part of the volume considers the residential sphere of urban life, discussing in detailed case studies ordinary residential streets, housing estates, suburbia and London’s mobile ‘linear village’ of houseboats. The second part analyses the public sphere, including ethnographies of markets, a park, the social rhythms of a taxi rank, and graffiti and street art. London’s Urban Landscape returns us to the everyday lives of people and the manner in which they understand their lives. The deeply sensuous character of the embodied experience of the city is invoked in the thick descriptions of entangled relationships between people and places, and the paths of movement between them. What stories do door bells and house facades tell us about contemporary life in a Victorian terrace? How do antiques acquire value and significance in a market? How does living in a concrete megastructure relate to the lives of the people who dwell there? These and a host of other questions are addressed in this fascinating book that will appeal widely to all readers interested in London or contemporary urban life.

Prosperity
Prosperity

Author: Jane Golley

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2018-04-09

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 1760462039

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A ‘moderately prosperous society’ with no Chinese individual left behind—that’s the vision for China set out by Chinese President Xi Jinping in a number of important speeches in 2017. ‘Moderate’ prosperity may seem like a modest goal for a country with more billionaires (609 at last count) than the US. But the ‘China Story’ is a complex one. The China Story Yearbook 2017: Prosperity surveys the important events, pronouncements, and personalitites that defined 2017. It also presents a range of perspectives, from the global to the individual, the official to the unofficial, from mainland China to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Together, the stories present a richly textured portrait of a nation that in just forty years has lifted itself from universal poverty to (unequally distributed) wealth, changing itself and the world in the process.