Leisure and Power in Urban China
Leisure and Power in Urban China

Author: Unn Målfrid Rolandsen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1136738509

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Leisure and Power in Urban China is the first comprehensive study of leisure activities in a medium size Chinese city. Hitherto, studies of Chinese leisure have focused on holidays, festivals and tourism. This, however, is a study of the kinds of leisure that take place on regular workdays in a local environment of Quanzhou city. In doing so, Leisure and Power introduces leisure studies to China studies, and data from China to the field of Leisure studies. Based on interviews with people from all walks of life and case studies from bookshops, internet bars, Karaoke parlours, streets and public squares, Rolandsen brings to attention the importance of fun and socializing in the lives of Chinese urbanites. Central to the study is the contrast between popular practices and official discourse. Rolandsen provides in-depth analyses of the moralist "PRC leisure ethic" so characteristic of official Chinese publications and news media. Using examples from everyday life as a contrast, this study demonstrates that official propaganda has but little influence on how Chinese individuals lead their lives. Taking leisure as a point of departure, this book describes the new kinds of interaction between the local party-state and the population it seeks to govern. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Leisure Studies, Urban Studies and Asian Studies in general.

Leisure and Power in Urban China
Leisure and Power in Urban China

Author: Unn Målfrid Rolandsen

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1136738517

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Leisure and Power in Urban China is the first comprehensive study of leisure activities in a medium size Chinese city. Hitherto, studies of Chinese leisure have focused on holidays, festivals and tourism. This, however, is a study of the kinds of leisure that take place on regular workdays in a local environment of Quanzhou city. In doing so, Leisure and Power introduces leisure studies to China studies, and data from China to the field of Leisure studies. Based on interviews with people from all walks of life and case studies from bookshops, internet bars, Karaoke parlours, streets and public squares, Rolandsen brings to attention the importance of fun and socializing in the lives of Chinese urbanites. Central to the study is the contrast between popular practices and official discourse. Rolandsen provides in-depth analyses of the moralist "PRC leisure ethic" so characteristic of official Chinese publications and news media. Using examples from everyday life as a contrast, this study demonstrates that official propaganda has but little influence on how Chinese individuals lead their lives. Taking leisure as a point of departure, this book describes the new kinds of interaction between the local party-state and the population it seeks to govern. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Leisure Studies, Urban Studies and Asian Studies in general.

Urban Mobility in Modern China
Urban Mobility in Modern China

Author: Dennis Zuev

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-04-20

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 3319765906

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is an empirically rich case-study of what is currently the most popular alternative-fuel vehicle in the history of motorization – the electric two-wheeler (e-bike). The book provides sociological insights into e-bike mobility in China and discusses politics, social practices and larger issues of mobility transition in urban China. Taking an accessible approach to the subject, the book identifies the main sociospatial conflicts regarding the use of e-bikes and discusses why electric two-wheeler mobility is important for the future of urban China and urban transportation globally. This book will be an invaluable read for urban geographers and transportation researchers, but also for academics and general readers interested in Chinese Studies, specifically in the area of urban mobility in China.

Rural Migrants in Urban China
Rural Migrants in Urban China

Author: Fulong Wu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-08-15

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1135095345

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

After millions of migrants moved from China’s countryside into its sprawling cities a unique kind of ‘informal’ urban enclave was born – ‘villages in the city’. Like the shanties and favelas before them elsewhere, there has been huge pressure to redevelop these blemishes to the urban face of China’s economic vision. Unlike most developing countries, however, these are not squatter settlements but owner-occupied settlements developed semi-formally by ex-farmers turned small-developers and landlords who rent shockingly high-density rooms to rural migrants, who can outnumber their landlord villagers. A strong state, matched with well-organised landlords collectively represented through joint-stock companies, has meant that it has been relatively easy to grow the city through demolition of these soft migrant enclaves. The lives of the displaced migrants then enter a transient phase from an informal to a formal urbanity. This book looks at migrants and their enclave ‘villages in the city’ and reveals the characteristics and changes in migrants’ livelihoods and living places. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book analyses how living in the city transforms and changes rural migrant households, and explores the social lives and micro economies of migrant neighbourhoods. It goes on to discuss changing housing and social conditions and spatial changes in the urban villages of major Chinese cities, as well as looking into transient urbanism and examining the consequences of redevelopment and upgrading of the ‘villages in the city’; in particular, the planning, regeneration, politics of development, and socio-economic implications of these immense social, economic and physical upheavals.

Urban Public Spaces
Urban Public Spaces

Author: Lucia Capanema Alvares

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-02-23

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 3319742531

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is about understanding, contextualizing and carrying out critical analyzes of the policies intended and/or implemented by the various public and private actors in urban public spaces, as well as the daily, or eventual, politics exercised by the organized civil society and by citizens. It presents a collection of contributions about the public space in different theoretical, conceptual and methodological approaches. Coming from different disciplines, the authors share an understanding about the need to analyze the uses and appropriations of the city by social subjects and groups as they represent difference and see the city as a place to share life experiences; as such, they argue, through their cases studies, that places of public use should be thought of and understood as concept and as social practice. As an analytic tool, the book offers a five-dimension model to explore how people relate to daily life activities and confront imposed inequalities in their meeting places, how they engage in individual and collective manifestations and/or how they symbolically appropriate public spaces in face of the late capitalism led by large corporations and globalization. Together the authors seek to contribute to a city of utopia, where all differences can be seen and dealt with in public spaces and where free individuals can present themselves and engage in a vita activa.

The SAGE Handbook of New Urban Studies
The SAGE Handbook of New Urban Studies

Author: John Hannigan

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2017-05-01

Total Pages: 869

ISBN-13: 1526421615

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The last two decades have been an exciting and richly productive period for debate and academic research on the city. The SAGE Handbook of New Urban Studies offers comprehensive coverage of this modern re-thinking of urban theory, both gathering together the best of what has been achieved so far, and signalling the way to future theoretical insights and empirically grounded research. Featuring many of the top international names in the field, the handbook is divided into nine key sections: SECTION 1: THE GLOBALIZED CITY SECTION 2: URBAN ENTREPRENEURIALISM, BRANDING, GOVERNANCE SECTION 3: MARGINALITY, RISK AND RESILIENCE SECTION 4: SUBURBS AND SUBURBANIZATION: STRATIFICATION, SPRAWL, SUSTAINABILITY SECTION 5: DISTINCTIVE AND VISIBLE CITIES SECTION 6: CREATIVE CITIES SECTION 7: URBANIZATION, URBANITY AND URBAN LIFESTYLES SECTION 8: NEW DIRECTIONS IN URBAN THEORY SECTION 9: URBAN FUTURES This is a central resource for researchers and students of Sociology, Cultural Geography and Urban Studies.

China's One-Child Policy and Multiple Caregiving
China's One-Child Policy and Multiple Caregiving

Author: Esther Goh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-05-18

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1136715622

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the effects of China’s one child policy on modern Chinese families. It is widely thought that such a policy has contributed to the creation of a generation of little emperors or little suns spoiled by their parents and by the grandparents who have been recruited to care for the child while the middle generation goes off to work. Investigating what life is really like with three generations in close quarters and using urban Xiamen as a backdrop, the author shows how viewing the grandparents and parents as engaged in an intergenerational parenting coalition allows for a more dynamic understanding of both the pleasures and conflicts within adult relationships, particularly when they are centred around raising a child. Based on both survey data and ethnographic fieldwork, the book also makes it clear that parenting is only half the story. The children, of course, are the other. Moreover, these children not only have agency, but constantly put it to work as a way to displace the burden of expectations and steady attention that comes with being an only child in contemporary urban China. These ‘lone tacticians’, as Goh calls them, are not having an easy time and not all are living like spoiled children. The reality is far more challenging for all three generations. The book will be of interest to those in family studies, education, psychology, sociology, Asian Studies, and social work.

Poverty and Development in China
Poverty and Development in China

Author: Caizhen Lu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1136652671

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

China has made huge economic strides in recent decades but poverty is still a major issue on the agenda for rural China. Poverty and Development in China analyses how poverty is recognized and measured and how people in poverty are identified, literally asking: who is poor in China? Lu Caizhen’s research compares four approaches to poverty assessment: China’s official poverty identification method, the participatory approach to poverty assessment, the monetary approach, and use of multidimensional poverty indicators. Each of these is applied to the same population of households to identify the poor in rural Wuding County, Yunnan Province. The analysis shows that there is in fact very little overlap of households identified as poor by the various means, and that choice of approach does matter in the outcome of who is identified as poor. This has implications at the theoretical, methodological, and policy levels. Lu discusses these in detail, concluding that at present, there is a need to shift away from poverty reduction strategies that narrowly emphasize income generation activities, as these are often short-term efforts. Instead, the focus should move towards a broader combination of short-term and long-term strategies to break poverty’s inter-linked structural causes.

The Reception and Rendition of Freud in China
The Reception and Rendition of Freud in China

Author: Tao Jiang

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-07

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 1136208372

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although Freud makes only occasional, brief references to China and Chinese culture in his works, for almost a hundred years many leading Chinese intellectuals have studied and appropriated various Freudian theories. However, whilst some features of Freud’s views have been warmly embraced from the start and appreciated for their various explanatory and therapeutic values, other aspects have been vigorously criticized as implausible or inapplicable to the Chinese context. This book explores the history, reception, and use of Freud and his theories in China, and makes an original and substantial contribution to our understanding of the Chinese people and their culture as well as to our appreciation of western attempts to understand the people and culture of China. The essays are organised around three key areas of research. First, it examines the historical background concerning the China-Freud connection in the 20th century, before going on to use reconstructed Freudian theories in order to provide a modernist critique of Chinese culture. Finally, the book deploys traditional Chinese thought in order to challenge various aspects of the Freudian project. Both Freudianism’s universal appeal and its cultural particularity are in full display throughout the book. At the same time, the allure of Chinese cultural and literary expressions, both in terms of their commonality with other cultures and their distinctive characteristics, are also scrutinized. This collection of essays will be welcomed by those interested in early modern and contemporary China, as well as the work and influence of Freud. It will also be of great interest to students and scholars of psychology, psychoanalysis, literature, philosophy, religion, and cultural studies more generally.