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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities
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Two-Dimensional People - Lives, Desires, and Social Attitudes in a Changing Chinese Village (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R4,215
Discovery Miles 42 150
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Two-Dimensional People - Lives, Desires, and Social Attitudes in a Changing Chinese Village (Hardcover)
Series: China Perspectives
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Based on almost eight years of fieldwork in a town and a village in
South China, this book analyzes contradictions among various
dimensions of the peasant economy, social relationships, popular
religion, and local politics in rural China. Compared to many
anthropological, sociological, and political studies of rural
China, which regard Chinese peasants as one-dimensionally
materialistic, politically conservative, egocentric (lacking
public-mindedness, as in anthropologist Yan Yunxiang's notion of
the "uncivil individual"), with collapsed beliefs, and thinking
only of the present (or the "today-ness of today" according to
anthropologist Liu Xin), this book shows that people in
contemporary rural China are actually "two-dimensional": trying to
combine the calculation of self-interest with affective networks of
reciprocity, but often falling into awkwardness or cynicism, in a
paradoxical symbiosis between nihilism and transcendence. While
Marcuse used the words of Benjamin to analyze "one-dimensional
man," writing "Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been
given hope," this book writes of two-dimensional people, "Only when
the vast majority of ordinary people can find hope in everyday life
can we finally be given hope!" This book will be of interest to
scholars and students of Sociology, Anthropology and East Asian
Studies. It will also be a great read to those who are interested
in contemporary China in general.
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