Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Add to GoodReads Exam Copies

Polarized Cities

Portraits of Rich and Poor in Urban China

Edited by Dorothy J. Solinger

This powerful book presents a fresh and compelling set of portraits that bring to life the human dimension of the vast and growing social and economic divides in urban China. Leading scholars explore the increasing rigidity of class and social boundaries, focusing on two new “castes” in contemporary China’s cities—the immensely wealthy and the abjectly poor. Much has been made of the rise in incomes, the elimination of much rural poverty, and the expansion of an urban middle class over almost forty years of spectacular economic growth. But what often has been overlooked is the polarization, exclusion, and exclusiveness in cities that have accompanied this rise, along with the threat that these trends will extend to future generations. The book considers five cases that emblematize these castes and depict their varying degrees of agency. Highlighting the social groups at opposite ends of the social hierarchy, the contributors illuminate the growing inequality in urban China today.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-5381-1647-0 • Hardback • September 2018 • $87.00 • (£67.00)

978-1-5381-1648-7 • Paperback • September 2018 • $44.00 • (£34.00)

978-1-5381-1649-4 • eBook • September 2018 • $41.50 • (£32.00)

Subjects: Political Science / World / Asian, Social Science / World / Asia

Courses: International & Area Studies; Asian Studies; China; Economics, International & Area Studies; Asian Studies; China; Politics

Polarized Cities

Portraits of Rich and Poor in Urban China

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

This powerful book presents a fresh and compelling set of portraits that bring to life the human dimension of the vast and growing social and economic divides in urban China. Leading scholars explore the increasing rigidity of class and social boundaries, focusing on two new “castes” in contemporary China’s cities—the immensely wealthy and the abjectly poor. Much has been made of the rise in incomes, the elimination of much rural poverty, and the expansion of an urban middle class over almost forty years of spectacular economic growth. But what often has been overlooked is the polarization, exclusion, and exclusiveness in cities that have accompanied this rise, along with the threat that these trends will extend to future generations. The book considers five cases that emblematize these castes and depict their varying degrees of agency. Highlighting the social groups at opposite ends of the social hierarchy, the contributors illuminate the growing inequality in urban China today.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-5381-1647-0 • Hardback • September 2018 • $87.00 • (£67.00)

978-1-5381-1648-7 • Paperback • September 2018 • $44.00 • (£34.00)

978-1-5381-1649-4 • eBook • September 2018 • $41.50 • (£32.00)

Subjects: Political Science / World / Asian, Social Science / World / Asia

Courses: International & Area Studies; Asian Studies; China; Economics, International & Area Studies; Asian Studies; China; Politics

Author

Dorothy J. Solinger is professor emerita of political science at the University of California, Irvine.

Table of Contents

Introduction: State Policies, Castes, and Agency
Dorothy J. Solinger
Part I: Polarization: Scope, Causes, Manifestations
1 China’s Uphill Battle Against Inequality
Wang Feng
2 Convergence and Divergence Among the Rich and the Poor
Li Zhang
Part II: Portraits of the Urban Poor
3 Banish the Impoverished Past: The Predicament of the Abandoned Urban Poor
Dorothy J. Solinger
4 The Passionate Poor: Foxconn Workers Invited as Volunteers
Mun Young Cho
5 On the Rough Edge of Prosperity: Informal Migrant Recyclers in Beijing
Joshua Goldstein
Part III: The Upper Reaches of the Urban Rich
6 China’s Party Kings: Shanghai Club Cultures and Status Consumption, 1920s–2010s
Andrew David Field and James Farrer
7 Corruption, Anti-Corruption, and the Dynamics of Class: Formation in Post-Mao China
John Osburg
Urban Polarities: Inequality, Social Mobility, and the Role of the State
David S. G. Goodman
About the Contributors

Reviews

In this volume, Polarized Cities: Portraits of Rich and Poor in Urban China, the editor, Dorothy Solinger, employs a caste-like formation framework to examine the growing urban inequality in China. This book widens our understanding of rising urban inequality in contemporary China and would be an excellent teaching resource for China scholars who study social stratification, social mobility, and social inequality.

— American Journal of Sociology

This book will be a good read for those who are interested in inequality and social mobility, China’s post-reform transformations, or, more specifically, the daily lives of Chinese urban residents from across the socioeconomic spectrum. Hopefully this book will spur discussions on ways out of a polarized society among researchers, policy makers, and practitioners.
— Eurasian Geography and Economics

Dorothy Solinger, who has brought much attention to the plight of China's urban poor, here assembles a distinguished group of scholars to throw light on an underside of that country's vaunted economic miracle: the hardening of inequalities of income and wealth to form an increasingly polarized society. This revealing book explores the lives of both the ultra-rich and the destitute and makes clear that the state itself has played a large role in fostering polarization.
— Carl Riskin, Columbia University

Going beyond the statistics on expanding social inequality, this important book, authored by world authorities on urban China, provides a stunning account of drastic social contrasts. The portraits of the rich and poor reveal not only their monumentally disparate lifestyles but also variegated agencies and life opportunities. Solinger’s marvelous conceptual design brings the two social extremes under the same scrutiny.

— Fulong Wu, University College London

This richly researched volume shows that, even though China's four decades of economic growth have lifted tens of millions of Chinese out of poverty, they have also created rigid structures of inequality and diverging mobility opportunities. China has also been rapidly urbanizing in recent decades, and today more than half of all Chinese live in cities. The dramatic contrasts between the fabulous and flaunted wealth of urban elites and the struggles of rural migrants and the urban poor documented by researchers in this volume will add fuel to debates about whether socialism any longer has meaning in contemporary China.

— Martin K. Whyte, Harvard University

This is an important book, tackling the most salient feature of Chinese society today: its polarization between the wealthy and the poor. Solinger's insights into the caste-like ‘hierarchy of agency’ in contemporary China are fresh and illuminating, and the case study chapters provide fascinating—and unsettling—details about the daily lives of Chinese citizens from across the socio-economic spectrum.

— Teresa Wright, California State University at Long Beach

Features

Paints novel portraits of little-studied groups

Provides equal treatment of urban rich and poor

Written by leading scholars across the disciplines of political science, sociology, anthropology, and history

Based on the authors’ original fieldwork

Challenges the popular perceptions of a growing middle class and undermines the story of a universal rise in incomes across China

Polarized Cities

Portraits of Rich and Poor in Urban China

Edited by Dorothy J. Solinger

Polarized Cities

Portraits of Rich and Poor in Urban China

ALSO AVAILABLE