BR - Creating market socialism

Contemporary China Center, Australian National University Review: [untitled] Author(s): Thomas B. Gold Source: The China Journal, No. 61 (Jan., 2009), pp. 159-161 Published by: Contemporary China Center, Australian National University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20648057 . Accessed: 13/07/2011 05:22 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ccc. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Contemporary China Center, Australian National University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The China Journal. http://www.jstor.org REVIEWS 159 many of its institutions were holdovers from the decades under socialism?store managers, for example, were more concerned about their relationships with those above them in the state hierarchy than about customers (p. 62). This orientation gave the salesclerks at Harbin No. X much more autonomy than those at Sunshine. The salesclerks in turn reinforced this autonomy by invoking the Marxist ideology of egalitarianism and resisting status distinctions between themselves and managers, factory representatives and customers. However, customers also failed to mark any status distinction between Harbin No. X and low-status open markets like the Underground, and treated the salesclerks and products with suspicion. The sales clerks at Harbin No. X allayed some of this distrust by portraying the store as a socialist haven in a risky market, invoking a nostalgic myth of a safer, friendlier past (p. 176)?given that the Maoist era was known for shoddy goods and terrible service, this is ironic. Harbin No. X, like the Underground, was associated with China's "backward" past. If the Underground represented the feudal past of self serving peasants, Harbin No. X was seen as something from the socialist one of old fashioned morals (p. 85). The middle-aged working-class women at Harbin No. X were seen as a vestige of China's "backward" socialist era. Their low "quality" rendered them unfit to participate fully in New China's current economic boom. The salesclerks' strategy of Maoist nostalgia converted the insult into a virtue, turning the store's "backwardness" into a selling point for those Harbiners, especially the elderly, bewildered by New China's transformation. Hanser notes that this strategy was doomed to obsolescence: Harbin No. X was sold to private investors, who sought to replace its aging salesclerks with "high quality" young women like Sunshine's. Hanser draws lightly upon theory. This is mostly a good thing; the book does not get bogged down in abstract conceptualization or complex jargon. Service Encounters is a book I would both happily assign to undergraduates and recommend to seasoned China scholars. However, there were times when I wanted Hanser to use her data to construct her own theory, especially a deeper analysis of gender issues. What does it mean that certain young women, marked by both discipline and deference, are seen as the embodiment of modernity in China? Are they understood to be modern subjects, or objects, like the high-priced goods they sell? Carolyn L. Hsu Colgate University Creating Market Socialism: How Ordinary People Are Shaping Class and Status in China, by Carolyn L. Hsu. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. + 225 pp. US$74.95 (hardcover), US$21.95 (paperback). China's continuing process of reinventing itself occurs at many levels. Many scholars have investigated changes at the institutional level; Carolyn Hsu focuses at the level of the individual. Her interest lies in the dialectic relationship between 160 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 61 macro institutional changes and the daily practice and thinking of citizens at the grass-roots. She wants to know how people on the ground make sense of their constantly changing world and then translate this into action. To answer this question, she adopts the narrative theory of social action, narratives being "the cognitive tools used by social actors to organize information and construct strategies of social action" (p. 11). Post-socialism has opened the door to a deluge of information, in contrast to the days when the Communist Party strictly rationed information, defined reality and told people what they should think. People now organize this complex and often contradictory information into narratives, a process known as "emplotment", which makes it possible for them to act in an increasingly complex world. They draw on a range of tools to do so. Hsu introduces three kinds of narratives: ontological (by the individual); public (by political figures, media and experts); and collective, the things that "everyone knows". This book is concerned with the third one, particularly as regards inequality?how it comes about, as well as moral judgements about inequality. To pursue this topic, she conducted 82 interviews in a variety of work sites in Harbin, mostly in the late 1990s. These included government agencies and state enterprises; hybrid state enterprises; foreign, joint and private firms; and open markets. The first two chapters lay out the theoretical and methodological approach, as well as retelling modern Chinese history as a succession of narratives. In the third chapter she provides an overview of Harbin's trajectory "from Paris of the East to the Rust Belt". Harbin has had a rough go of it in the post-Mao era, and thereby offers rich data to understand how individuals are coping with this generally?for too many of them?negative transition. Hsu uses Bourdieu's concept of forms of capital as a way into this subject, primarily focusing on political, economic and human (what Bourdieu would call "cultural") capital, and their changing significance. For each topic, she looks at ontological, public and, especially, collective narratives: the stories people tell to make sense of their world. Through the narratives provided by her interviewees, she sees the declining value of political capital, primarily the lowered status of cadres. There is much discussion of guanxi and corruption in the perception of cadres, but, perhaps ironically, this does not translate into a sense that the regime has lost legitimacy. On economic capital, she observes the different attitudes toward getihu, the micro-entrepreneurs, versus owners of larger businesses. Not surprisingly, the latter enjoy much higher status than the former. Many of the getihu in Harbin are women, who were among the first to be laid off (xiagang) in the reforms. Chapter 6 examines human capital, and the ways in which intellectuals enjoy the highest social status by virtue of what people see as their greater social contribution to society. The three empirical chapters also utilize the hard-to-define concept of suzhi, usually translated as "quality", as the main axis of stratification in the minds of the people of Harbin. Obviously, suzhi also implies moral judgements. Perceptions of social status include evaluations of the suzhi of various categories of people. Not surprisingly, getihu possess the lowest quantity, while intellectuals have the most. REVIEWS 161 "Real entrepreneurs" (p. 139), who have college degrees and technological savvy, also embody high suzhi. Cadres have suffered a major decline in this department. Hsu's methodology certainly provides a texture and depth not captured by survey research. She captures much of the rhythm of daily life and the richness of popular language in Harbin. She perhaps overstates the case that social scientists have neglected the impact of reforms on individuals, but her use of narratives does provide a fresh organizing principle for conveying this. I for one appreciated the extensive discussion of guanxi and her finding that, contra the expectations of some social scientists, it can be positive for economic development, as it relies on and builds trust beyond the kin network. Although I learned a lot, I also found that reading this book was similar to looking at a Zen painting: I noticed what wasn't there as much as what was. For instance, the discussion of morality in China is central throughout the book, but there is no mention of Richard Madsen, probably the foremost authority on the topic. Harbin indeed is an interesting location for research, but why not note the rich monograph by historian David Woolf? Sociologist Amy Hanser also conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Harbin, and has published work on issues of labor, guanxi, gender and adaptation to the new environment, but earns nary a nod. In a book examining how economic activity is embedded in social relationships, I expected to see a discussion of Polanyi's contributions to our thinking. Much of the idea of narratives and performance could also be associated with the classic work of Erving Goffman on the dramaturgical method, but he is nowhere to be found. The major theorist of the practice of everyday life, Michel deCerteau, is likewise conspicuous by his absence. Given the rapidly shifting ground of social life, I would have advised use of the life course approach to help highlight cohort differences. Finally, I found the phrase "emplotment of narratives" rather unfortunate, to say nothing of overused. Thomas B. Gold University of California, Berkeley Boundaries and Categories: Rising Inequality in Post-Socialist Urban China, by Feng Wang. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2008. xvi + 241 pp. US$55.00 (hardcover). This study by Feng Wang of social inequality examines how economic and social inequality is created and maintained in post-socialist China. Wang's most striking argument is that social inequality in post-socialist China should be understood through a focus on two patterns: rising inequality between social groups, and persistent equality within certain groups. The book is clearly organized in three parts. The first part (Chapters 1 and 2) introduces the important roles of institutions and social categories in shaping Article Contents p. 159 p. 160 p. 161 Issue Table of Contents The China Journal, No. 61 (Jan., 2009), pp. 1-260 Front Matter China between Region and World [pp. 1-20] Crisis and Governance: SARS and the Resilience of the Chinese Body Politic [pp. 23-48] Forced Flexibility: A Migrant Woman's Struggle for Settlement [pp. 51-76] Empowering the Child: Children's Rights, Citizenship and the State in Contemporary China [pp. 79-103] Infrastructure Investment in Rural China: Is Quality Being Compromised during Quantity Expansion? 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