Emptiness and Fullness : : Ethnographies of Lack and Desire in Contemporary China / / ed. by Susanne Bregnbæk, Mikkel Bunkenborg.

As critical voices question the quality, authenticity, and value of people, goods, and words in post-Mao China, accusations of emptiness render things open to new investments of meaning, substance, and value. Exploring the production of lack and desire through fine-grained ethnography, this volume e...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2017
MitwirkendeR:
HerausgeberIn:
Place / Publishing House:New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2017]
©2017
Year of Publication:2017
Language:English
Series:Studies in Social Analysis ; 2
Online Access:
Physical Description:1 online resource (154 p.)
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
Illustrations --
Introduction --
Chapter 1 China’s Examination Fever and the Fabrication of Fairness ‘My Generation Was Raised on Poisoned Milk’ --
Chapter 2 Guanhua! Beijing Students, Authoritative Discourse and the Ritual Production of Political Compliance --
Chapter 3 Interior Space s of Hope: Inner Selves, Intersubjectivity and Agency among Chinese Christians in Beijing --
Chapter 4 The Tower and The Tower: Excess and Vacancy in China’s Ghost Cities --
Chapter 5 The Manchu in the Mirror: The Emptiness of Identity and the Fullness of Conspiracy Theory --
Chapter 6 Empty Diseases and Horror Vacui in Rural Hebei --
Chapter 7 The Potentials of Feicui: Indeterminacy and Determination in Human-Jade Interactions in South-west China --
Index
Summary:As critical voices question the quality, authenticity, and value of people, goods, and words in post-Mao China, accusations of emptiness render things open to new investments of meaning, substance, and value. Exploring the production of lack and desire through fine-grained ethnography, this volume examines how diagnoses of emptiness operate in a range of very different domains in contemporary China: In the ostensibly meritocratic exam system and the rhetoric of officials, in underground churches, housing bubbles, and nationalist fantasies, in bodies possessed by spirits and evaluations of jade, there is a pervasive concern with states of lack and emptiness and the contributions suggest that this play of emptiness and fullness is crucial to ongoing constructions of quality, value, and subjectivity in China.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9781785335815
9783110998214
DOI:10.1515/9781785335815?locatt=mode:legacy
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: ed. by Susanne Bregnbæk, Mikkel Bunkenborg.