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In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis
A new revolution in homeownership and living has been sweeping the booming cities of China. This time the main actors on the social stage are not peasants, migrants, or working-class proletariats but middle-class professionals and entrepreneurs in search of a private paradise in a society now dominated by consumerism. No longer seeking happiness and fulfillment through collective sacrifice and socialist ideals, they hope to find material comfort and social distinction in newly constructed gated communities. This quest for the good life is profoundly transforming the physical and social landscapes of urban China.
Li Zhang, who is from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, turns a keen ethnographic eye on her hometown. She combines her analysis of larger political and social issues with fine-grained details about the profound spatial, cultural, and political effects of the shift in the way Chinese urban residents live their lives and think about themselves. In Search of Paradise is a deeply informed account of how the rise of private homeownership is reconfiguring urban space, class subjects, gender selfhood, and ways of life in the reform era.
New, seemingly individualistic lifestyles mark a dramatic move away from yearning for a social utopia under Maoist socialism. Yet the privatization of property and urban living have engendered a simultaneous movement of public engagement among homeowners as they confront the encroaching power of the developers. This double movement of privatized living and public sphere activism, Zhang finds, is a distinctive feature of the cultural politics of the middle classes in contemporary China. Theoretically sophisticated and highly accessible, Zhang's account will appeal not only to those interested in China but also to anyone interested in spatial politics, middle-class culture, and postsocialist governing in a globalizing world.
Li Zhang, who is from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, turns a keen ethnographic eye on her hometown. She combines her analysis of larger political and social issues with fine-grained details about the profound spatial, cultural, and political effects of the shift in the way Chinese urban residents live their lives and think about themselves. In Search of Paradise is a deeply informed account of how the rise of private homeownership is reconfiguring urban space, class subjects, gender selfhood, and ways of life in the reform era.
New, seemingly individualistic lifestyles mark a dramatic move away from yearning for a social utopia under Maoist socialism. Yet the privatization of property and urban living have engendered a simultaneous movement of public engagement among homeowners as they confront the encroaching power of the developers. This double movement of privatized living and public sphere activism, Zhang finds, is a distinctive feature of the cultural politics of the middle classes in contemporary China. Theoretically sophisticated and highly accessible, Zhang's account will appeal not only to those interested in China but also to anyone interested in spatial politics, middle-class culture, and postsocialist governing in a globalizing world.
264 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 9, 2018
For an anthropology class
February 17, 2020
Urban Ethnography of Asia
November 19, 2022
Again, books about China in the 21st century age like tweets. This was good when it was released, but it's already ancient history.
February 26, 2012
Over the years, I've come across various articles discussing urban development in China, the land reforms undertaken to facilitate this development and the downsides to this. The image of a solitary "nail house" standing forlornly in the centre of a giant construction site as its owners tried to stand their ground against a powerful property developer is still vivid in my mind. But I never quite understood the background and context to this visual image - what did the land reforms entail exactly? Without resorting to the throwaway term of "corruption" (although that plays a part), how did things get this way?
In this respect, Zhang's book does a good job in summarizing the key developments in Chinese housing policy over the past few decades, with the collectivization of land holdings in 1949, to the gradual introduction of housing reforms in the 1980s, to the heady rush to commercialise land use rights we see today. Zhang's book isn't about urban development in China or about housing policy in general. It's actually an ethnographic study of the middle class in Kunming and how they increasingly define themselves through their homes/properties.
Perhaps because Zhang is writing about a population that is relatively familiar - the middle class, as opposed to ethnographies of more marginalized populations e.g. Duneier's street vendors, or Bourgois' drug addicts - that you don't feel that you're reading anything particularly earth shattering or mind blowing. But she does a good job in articulating the key issues in a highly readable style. Some of the issues she touches on include the different kinds of housing developments coming up and how they seek to appeal to the middle class either by emphasizing their 'foreignness', their greenery (something in short supply in government built/sponsored housing) or their privacy and security; how individuals are increasingly defining themselves in terms of their material possessions, rather than their social ties and networks, or their personal characteristics; the spatialization of class and the social implications of this, etc.
One minor quibble I had with the book was Zhang's liberal scattering hanyu pinyin, indicating the Chinese terms used for certain concepts/terms, throughout the text. Some of the hanyu pinyin used made sense and was helpful; in some cases, the Chinese term packs in a lot more meaning or is more nuanced than what the English translation of that term might suggest. And it was useful in some cases to get a sense of what the commonly used term might be in Kunming. But in other cases, I didn't see the need for giving the Mandarin equivalent (because the English translation was a literal translation of the Chinese term and I don't think anything got lost along the way, e.g. kao ziji for "rely[ing] on oneself; or where the English term used was already a widely accepted translation of the Mandarin term e.g. nature for ziran; renovation for zhuangxiu; or feeling/sensation for ganjue). Putting in the hanyu pinyin in these cases broke the flow of the narrative, was distracting and felt a little superfluous, as if Zhang was trying to burnish her Chinese credentials more than anything else.
On the whole, though, a good read for anyone looking for a 101 on urban issues in China with a focus on housing.
In this respect, Zhang's book does a good job in summarizing the key developments in Chinese housing policy over the past few decades, with the collectivization of land holdings in 1949, to the gradual introduction of housing reforms in the 1980s, to the heady rush to commercialise land use rights we see today. Zhang's book isn't about urban development in China or about housing policy in general. It's actually an ethnographic study of the middle class in Kunming and how they increasingly define themselves through their homes/properties.
Perhaps because Zhang is writing about a population that is relatively familiar - the middle class, as opposed to ethnographies of more marginalized populations e.g. Duneier's street vendors, or Bourgois' drug addicts - that you don't feel that you're reading anything particularly earth shattering or mind blowing. But she does a good job in articulating the key issues in a highly readable style. Some of the issues she touches on include the different kinds of housing developments coming up and how they seek to appeal to the middle class either by emphasizing their 'foreignness', their greenery (something in short supply in government built/sponsored housing) or their privacy and security; how individuals are increasingly defining themselves in terms of their material possessions, rather than their social ties and networks, or their personal characteristics; the spatialization of class and the social implications of this, etc.
One minor quibble I had with the book was Zhang's liberal scattering hanyu pinyin, indicating the Chinese terms used for certain concepts/terms, throughout the text. Some of the hanyu pinyin used made sense and was helpful; in some cases, the Chinese term packs in a lot more meaning or is more nuanced than what the English translation of that term might suggest. And it was useful in some cases to get a sense of what the commonly used term might be in Kunming. But in other cases, I didn't see the need for giving the Mandarin equivalent (because the English translation was a literal translation of the Chinese term and I don't think anything got lost along the way, e.g. kao ziji for "rely[ing] on oneself; or where the English term used was already a widely accepted translation of the Mandarin term e.g. nature for ziran; renovation for zhuangxiu; or feeling/sensation for ganjue). Putting in the hanyu pinyin in these cases broke the flow of the narrative, was distracting and felt a little superfluous, as if Zhang was trying to burnish her Chinese credentials more than anything else.
On the whole, though, a good read for anyone looking for a 101 on urban issues in China with a focus on housing.
December 15, 2016
Zhang is an anthropologist who traces the rise of classed living communities in Kunming, China.
The book starts out a bit slow. She covers several real estate magnates (probably too strong a term) and how they came to get their jobs. As the state retreats from providing housing, private developers have moved in, but many developers are either still state-owned or semi-public, semi-private entities that blur public and private interests. This leads to corruption. The second half of the book is fascinating, as Zhang interviews and distinguishes between three urban classes: the rich, middle-class, and lower income. Commodity housing has let to a sorting of where people live, an erosion of public space, tensions over shitting pets, and even the commodification of women's bodies. Beautiful green homes seem to require beautiful thin women to fill them. Zhang even covers divorce and the growing role of houses and cash as measurement for love. This book is of the Hu Jintao era, so it would be interesting to get an update for the age of Xi.
The book starts out a bit slow. She covers several real estate magnates (probably too strong a term) and how they came to get their jobs. As the state retreats from providing housing, private developers have moved in, but many developers are either still state-owned or semi-public, semi-private entities that blur public and private interests. This leads to corruption. The second half of the book is fascinating, as Zhang interviews and distinguishes between three urban classes: the rich, middle-class, and lower income. Commodity housing has let to a sorting of where people live, an erosion of public space, tensions over shitting pets, and even the commodification of women's bodies. Beautiful green homes seem to require beautiful thin women to fill them. Zhang even covers divorce and the growing role of houses and cash as measurement for love. This book is of the Hu Jintao era, so it would be interesting to get an update for the age of Xi.
June 9, 2015
At times a dry academic read, but really facinating material and ethnographic work. The author actually grew up in the part of China that this book observes and she has a very personal and intellectual analysis of China's middle class and their housing situation along with social, historical, economic and political factors that are shaping the middle class.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews