China's Governmentalities: Governing Change, Changing Government / Edition 1

by Elaine Jeffreys

Overview

Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) embarked on a programme of ‘reform and openness’ in the late 1970s, Chinese society has undergone a series of dramatic transformations in almost all realms of social, cultural, economic and political life and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has emerged as a global power. China’s post-1978 transition from ‘socialist plan’ to ‘market socialism’ has also been accompanied by significant shifts in how the practice and objects of government are understood and acted upon.

China’s Governmentalities outlines the nature of these shifts, and contributes to emerging studies of governmentality in non-western and non-liberal settings, by showing how neoliberal discourses on governance, development, education, the environment, community, religion, and sexual health, have been raised in other contexts. In doing so, it opens discussions of governmentality to ‘other worlds’ and the glocal politics of the present.

The book will appeal to scholars from a wide range of disciplines interested in the work of Michel Foucault, neo-liberal strategies of governance, and governmental rationalities in contemporary China.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415666237
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/07/2011
Series:	Routledge Studies on China in Transition
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr Elaine Jeffreys is Senior Lecturer in China Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, and a member of the China Research Centre at UTS.

Table of Contents

1. Governmentality and China Elaine Jeffreys and Gary Sigley 2. Passionately Governmental: Maoism and the Structured Intensities of Revolutionary Governmentality Michael Dutton 3. Governing China’s Peasant Migrants: Building Xiaokang Socialism and an Harmonious Society Feng Xu 4. Negotiating Modernity At China’s Periphery: A Case Study Of Development and Policy Interventions from Nujiang Prefecture Russell Harwood 5. Building ‘Community’: New Strategies of Governance in Urban China David Bray 6. Governmental Rationalities of Environmental City-Building in Contemporary China Lisa Hoffman 7. ‘Religious Work’: Governing Religion in Reform-Era China Susette Cooke 8. Governing Sexual Health in the People’s Republic of China Elaine Jeffreys and Huang Yingying

Editorial Reviews

"China's Governmentalities presents a set of important essays critically examining reform and the role of changing conditions of state and society in the People's Republic of China (PRC)" - Newsroom, University of Technology, Sydney, 2009

"In many ways, this book sets the agenda for governmentality studies in the Chinese context. Indeed, as one of the first collections of essays on this topic, this book has certainly fulfilled its goal of decolonising governmentality studies and bringing Foucauldian theories into critical dialgoue with China Studies." - Hongwei
Bao, The University of Sydney; Asian Studies Review, Mar 2011, 35:1

From the Publisher