Driving toward modernity : cars and the lives of the middle class in contemporary China / Jun Zhang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zhang, Jun, 1977- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Middle class--China--Guangdong Sheng.

Middle class.

Automobile ownership--China--Guangdong Sheng.

Automobile ownership.

Automobiles--Social aspects--China--Guangdong Sheng.

Automobiles.

Economic development.

History.

Automobiles--Social aspects.

China--Economic conditions--2000-.

China.

Economic conditions.

Economic development--China--History--21st century.

Economic history.

China--Guangdong Sheng.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 220 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2019.

Summary:

"In Driving toward Modernity, Jun Zhang ethnographically explores the entanglement between the rise of the automotive regime and emergence of the middle class in South China. Focusing on the Pearl River Delta, one of the nation's wealthiest regions, Zhang shows how private cars have shaped everyday middle-class sociality, solidarity, and subjectivity, and how the automotive regime has helped make the new middle classes of the PRC. By carefully analyzing how physical and social mobility intertwines, Driving toward Modernity paints a nuanced picture of modern Chinese life, comprising the continuity and rupture as well as the structure and agency of China's great transformation." -- Publisher's description

"This book explores, ethnographically, the entanglement between the rise of the automotive regime and emergence of the middle class in South China, through which a nuanced picture of China's great transformations is depicted"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : a mobile lifestyle, a middle way of living

Prologue : from official privileges to consumer goods : the changing political economy of automobiles

Driving alone together: sociality, solidarity, and status

Family cars, filial consumer-citizens : becoming properly middle class

The emerging middle class and the car market : mobilities and trajectories

Car crash, class encounter : anxiety of mobility

Bidding for a license plate : the importance of being a free and proper consumer

Parking : contesting space in middle-class complexes

Epilogue: politics of transformation.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Zhang, Jun, 1977- Driving toward modernity.

ISBN:

9781501738395

1501738399

9781501738401

1501738402

OCLC:

1056201431

Publisher Number:

40029447632