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SUMMARY:High Modernism and Local State: Neighbourhood Reconstruction in Po
 st-Maoist China  - Jialing Luo
DTSTART:20130129T131000Z
DTEND:20130129T140000Z
UID:TALK42429@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Xinyi Liu
DESCRIPTION:Recent anthropological scholarship approaches modernism from d
 ifferent perspectives and examines a variety of ‘forms and norms’ that
  are conceived of as modern in different contexts across the borders of na
 tion-states (Rabinow 1989\, Holston 1989\; Scott 1998\; Collier 2011). Eng
 aging with this body of literature\, and in the light of Feuchtwang’s (2
 004) description of state projects\,  my work discusses the subtle politic
 s surrounding a Chinese variant of modernism and the ways in which it is p
 layed out in a surviving old-town neighbourhood in central Beijing and bey
 ond prior to the Olympics.  It reveals that\, despite active adaptation to
  the overwhelming global capitalist discourse\, the ‘coming-of-age’ of
  China in the post-Maoist period does not turn away from ‘actually exist
 ing socialism.’ Devolution entails new forms of governmentality\, which 
 enhance\, rather than diminish\, neighbourhood governance. The now localiz
 ed state continues to reconstruct grassroots urban society without promoti
 ng much of a sense of community or civil society in the way these are unde
 rstood in the West. My work attempts to\, in Litzinger’s (2002: 34) term
 s\, “reconceptualize the meaning of Chinese socialism in the context of 
 global capitalist modernity.” 
LOCATION:The Richard King Room\, Darwin College
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