Mun Young Cho
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451652
- eISBN:
- 9780801467431
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451652.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Despite massive changes to its economic policies, China continues to define itself as socialist; since 1949 and into the present, the Maoist slogan “Serve the People” has been a central point of ...
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Despite massive changes to its economic policies, China continues to define itself as socialist; since 1949 and into the present, the Maoist slogan “Serve the People” has been a central point of moral and political orientation. Yet several decades of market-based reforms have resulted in high urban unemployment, transforming the proletariat vanguard into a new urban poor. How do unemployed workers come to terms with their split status, economically marginalized but still rhetorically central to the way China claims to understand itself? How does a state dedicated to serving “the people” manage the poverty of its citizens? This book addresses these questions in a book based on more than two years of fieldwork in a decaying residential area of Harbin in the northeast province of Heilongjiang. It analyzes the different experiences of poverty among laid-off urban workers and recent rural-to-urban migrants, two groups that share a common economic duress in China's Rustbelt cities but who rarely unite as one class owed protection by the state. Impoverished workers seek protection and recognition by making claims about “the people” and what they deserve. They redeploy the very language that the party-state had once used to venerate them, although their claim often contradicts government directives regarding how “the people” should be reborn as self-managing subjects. The slogan Serve the People is no longer a promise of the party-state but rather a demand made by the unemployed and the poor.Less
Despite massive changes to its economic policies, China continues to define itself as socialist; since 1949 and into the present, the Maoist slogan “Serve the People” has been a central point of moral and political orientation. Yet several decades of market-based reforms have resulted in high urban unemployment, transforming the proletariat vanguard into a new urban poor. How do unemployed workers come to terms with their split status, economically marginalized but still rhetorically central to the way China claims to understand itself? How does a state dedicated to serving “the people” manage the poverty of its citizens? This book addresses these questions in a book based on more than two years of fieldwork in a decaying residential area of Harbin in the northeast province of Heilongjiang. It analyzes the different experiences of poverty among laid-off urban workers and recent rural-to-urban migrants, two groups that share a common economic duress in China's Rustbelt cities but who rarely unite as one class owed protection by the state. Impoverished workers seek protection and recognition by making claims about “the people” and what they deserve. They redeploy the very language that the party-state had once used to venerate them, although their claim often contradicts government directives regarding how “the people” should be reborn as self-managing subjects. The slogan Serve the People is no longer a promise of the party-state but rather a demand made by the unemployed and the poor.
Ilan Katz and Gerry Redmond
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781847423733
- eISBN:
- 9781447303480
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781847423733.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Research and Statistics
This chapter considers the issue of intercountry adoption. It presents an almost bewildering range of statistics and adoption patterns that is both comprehensive and surprising. Its conclusions are ...
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This chapter considers the issue of intercountry adoption. It presents an almost bewildering range of statistics and adoption patterns that is both comprehensive and surprising. Its conclusions are sobering — that demand for children internationally far outstrips the number of children available for adoption, and that there is significant danger that, where market mechanisms are allowed, this will raise the ‘price’ of children or lead to prospective parents taking on children, particularly older children, with a range of problems for which they may be unprepared. It observes that despite many intercountry adoptions having positive outcomes for children, it is also an area where trafficking is a significant problem, and raises questions about the implication of market-based reforms.Less
This chapter considers the issue of intercountry adoption. It presents an almost bewildering range of statistics and adoption patterns that is both comprehensive and surprising. Its conclusions are sobering — that demand for children internationally far outstrips the number of children available for adoption, and that there is significant danger that, where market mechanisms are allowed, this will raise the ‘price’ of children or lead to prospective parents taking on children, particularly older children, with a range of problems for which they may be unprepared. It observes that despite many intercountry adoptions having positive outcomes for children, it is also an area where trafficking is a significant problem, and raises questions about the implication of market-based reforms.
