Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China
The rise of popular politics is among one the most significant social and political developments the Peoples Republic of China has witnessed in the post-Mao era. People from all walks of life have responded to rising inequalities and the privatization of collective goods with a new quest for justice. Although China has remained a censorial society under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party, statesociety relations are being remade by interventions of emergent publics through word and action.
In this book, a group of anthropologists, specializing in Chinese society, examine various facets of popular politics, which are animated by the pursuit of justice, fairness and good government. The ethnographic chapters collectively analyse how the political arises in particular judicial situations, provoking public judgements or other forms of critical engagement. Focusing on the interplay between private and public spaces, between morality and law and between speech and action, the contributors in this book explore how such engagements are changing Chinese society from the bottom-up.
As the first systematic exploration of the relationship between popular politics, emergent publics and notions of justice in contemporary China, this book will be useful for students of Chinese Studies, Politics and Anthropology.
Susanne Brandtstdter is Professor and Chair in the Anthropology of Globalization at the University of Cologne.
Hans Steinmller is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
Routledge Contemporary China
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Susanne Brandtstdter is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cologne. As a China anthropologist, her work has focused on issues of gender and kinship, moral economies, justice and value, and local responses to global capitalism. She is author of a recent book in Spanish (Falsificaciones, Fondo Cultura Economica, 2015) and co-editor of Irony, Cynicism and the State (with Hans Steinmller, Routledge, 2016) and of Rights, Cultures, Subjects and Citizens (with Pete Wade and Kath Woodward, Routledge, 2013).
Chi-Pui Cheung is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology at Xiamen University. He has conducted fieldwork in different parts of China, focusing on the politics of urbanized development in rural areas, rural land use, local policy implementation, and peasant resistance, and published on those topics that address the central issue of policy imagination. He is working on a research project on local funeral and burial practices in response to the Chinese governments cremation policy.
Weishan Huang is a sociologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her work mainly focuses on migration and religion, new religious movements, and urban gentrification and religion. She is the co-editor of the book Ecology of Faith in New York City (Indiana University Press, 2013). Her current research project is to examine the reconfiguration of two significant state-planned social phenomena, urbanization and religious revival, and its impacts on Mahayana Buddhist communities in contemporary Shanghai, China.
Ellen Hertz is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Neuchtel. Her background in Chinese studies, law and anthropology has translated into a long-standing interest in the complex and ambiguous mechanisms of bureaucratization and marketization that characterize contemporary modernity, and on the place of gender in these configurations. She has published on diverse topics: financial markets, international organizations, intangible cultural heritage, sex work, corporate social responsibility and environmental anthropology.
Marylne Lieber is a sociologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at the University of Geneva. Her work has focused on gender violence in public places, Chinese migration and Chinese sex workers in Paris, and more recently on corporate social responsibility, with a research project on soft governance in the electronics industry in China. Her most recent publications include
