The Mirage of China by Xin Liu

The Mirage of China by Xin Liu

Today's world is one marked by the signs of digital capitalism and global capitalist expansion, and China is increasingly being integrated into this global system of production and consumption. As a result, China's immediate material impact is now felt almost everywhere in the world...

“The book as a piece of writing is fluid and gracefulLiu's ethnographic accounts are indeed masterly--deftly weaving dialogue, observation, metaphor, and analysis in a way that would make many writers (of both fiction and nonfiction) sigh with envy. Liu juxtaposes characters and incidents in such a way as to subtly highlight the themes at hand, using humor, irony, and understatement to bring to life the world of ‘making up numbers.’ Liu effectively suggests that the rise of statistics and the objective mode are, like the rise of Maoism and the ideological mode, a phase in history that may or may not appear equally ridiculous in years to come. Can we see outside our own spot in history, Liu asks, and should we (and the people of China) give up dreaming and utopias merely because our current historical moment favors the narcissistic, corporeal statistic?”  ·  H-Ideas

Xin Liu is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley and Fellow of the Sociology Division, the E-Institutes of Shanghai Universities. He is the author of In One's Own Shadow (University of California Press, 2000) and The Otherness of Self (University of Michigan Press, 2002); and editor of New Reflections on Anthropological Studies of (greater) China (IEAS, UC Berkeley, 2004).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781845455453
ISBN 10	1845455452
Title	The Mirage of China
Author	Xin Liu
Series	Culture And Politics Politics And Culture
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Berghahn Books
Year published	2009-04-01
Number of pages	222
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.