Shanghai in Transition: Changing Perspectives and Social Contours of a Chinese Metropolis

by Gamble,Jos

• ISBN13: 9780700715718
• ISBN10: 0700715711
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-12-20
• Publisher: RoutledgeCurzon

Summary

China's largest metropolis, Shanghai, has undergone a decade of far-reaching economic and social transformation. This book presents an evocative and richly nuanced series of ethnographic perspectives of the city's shifting sociological landscape in this period of transition. It is based upon research conducted over the past 10 years. The topics explored range from the perceived consequences of Shanghai's more porous boundaries to intra-national and global flows of people, capital and cultural items, to notions of 'Shanghaiese' identity, the impact of mass consumerism and the work of share dealers in Shanghai's recently recreated stock exchange. The book builds upwards from street level perspectives and stresses ways in which the lives of Shanghai citizens are implicated with wider historical, political and economic phenomena.

Author Biography

Jos Gamble is an anthropologist and Lecturer in Asia Pacific Business at the School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Table of Contents

List of maps	ix
Preface: ethnography of a city	x
Acknowledgments	xxiii
Notes on the text	xxv
Introduction	1	(1)
Historical background to Shanghai	1	(12)
Structure of the book	13	(3)
Opening the door, crossing the stream: representations and metaphors of reform in contemporary Shanghai	16	(48)
Gaige Kaifang	16	(7)
Opening the sluice: representations of the place of Gaige Kaifang in modern Chinese history	23	(4)
Opening the floodgates: changes brought about by Gaige Kaifang	27	(13)
Flood water, dangerous currents, murky depths, and whirlpools	40	(17)
Where water flows, a channel is formed (shuidao qucheng)	57	(7)
Global and intra-national cultural flows: renegotiating boundaries and identities in contemporary Shanghai	64	(46)
Introduction	64	(1)
Shanghai: porousness and enclosure	64	(5)
Orientalising Shanghai: representing others, defining selves	69	(7)
Opening Shanghai's boundaries: identities in the reform era	76	(5)
Being Shanghainese	81	(11)
Shanghai's re-internationalisation	92	(14)
Concluding remarks	106	(4)
The walls within: Shanghai inside out	110	(29)
The changing city environment	111	(1)
Uptown, downtown Shanghai	111	(7)
Two points: work place/home	118	(8)
The inner circle: home spaces	126	(9)
Connecting lines	135	(3)
Concluding remarks	138	(1)
Consuming Shanghai: hairy crabs, ghosts, and Christmas trees	139	(27)
Historical background to the new consumerism	140	(1)
From revolutionary slogans to advertising jingles: the re-emergence of consumerism	141	(10)
The state as conspicuous consumer/consuming the state	151	(4)
Emergent contours of lifestyle consumption	155	(7)
Concluding remarks	162	(4)
Share dealers, trading places and new options in contemporary Shanghai	166	(23)
The Shanghai share market: from coagulation to speculation	167	(4)
`Share people': Shanghai punters	171	(8)
Widening the margins	179	(7)
Back to the future?	186	(3)
Concluding impressions	189	(17)
Notes	206	(10)
Glossary of Chinese terms	216	(11)
Bibliography	227	(19)
Index	246