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Thought reform and China's dangerous classes : reeducation, resistance, and the people / Aminda M. Smith.

Van Pelt Library HN737 .S65 2013
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Smith, Aminda M., 1973-
Series:
Asia/Pacific/perspectives
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Education--Social aspects.
History.
Political culture.
China--Social conditions--1949-1976.
China.
Social conditions.
China--Politics and government--1949-1976.
Politics and government.
Political culture--China--History--20th century.
Education and state--China--History--20th century.
Education and state.
Education--Social aspects--China--History--20th century.
Education.
Communism--China--History--20th century.
Communism.
Physical Description:
xi, 255 pages ; 24 cm.
Place of Publication:
Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, [2013]
Summary:
This book offers the first detailed study of the essential relationship between thought reform and the "dangerous classes"-the prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, and other "lumpenproletarians" the Communists saw as a threat to society and the revolution. Aminda Smith takes readers inside early-PRC reformatories, where the new state endeavored to transform "vagrants" into members of the laboring masses. As places where "the people" were literally created, these centers became testing grounds for rapidly changing ideas and experiments about thought reform and the subjects they produced. Smith explores reformatories as institutions dedicated to molding new socialist citizens and as symbolic spaces in which internees, cadres, and the ordinary masses made sense of what it meant to be a member of the people in the People's Republic. Drawing on extensive, previously unavailable source material, she offers convincing answers to much-debated questions about the development and future of Chinese political culture. Book jacket.
Contents:
Finding a place for the Lumpenproletariat : vacillators and rural revolution
The people versus their enemies : urban reeducation and the old society
The curriculum of consciousness raising : low consciousness and mass reeducation
The laboring masses : voluntarism and the people
The people stand up : resistance and reform.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:
9781442218376
1442218371
9781442218390
1442218398
OCLC:
809365672

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