Description
This lively study explores how social and economic changes to Chinese society create new cultural values and forms of inequality. Amy Hanser examines changes to a particular set of jobs--service work, in this case salesclerk work--and the nature of the social interactions involved. It argues that a new structure of entitlement, which makes elite groups feel more entitled to public forms of respect and social esteem, is constructed in settings like new, luxury department stores. The book not only shows how this change involves increasingly unequal relations between clerks and customers, but also demonstrates how marketplaces have become sites where social differences--and inequalities--are recognized and justified. The study's importance lies in its attention to ethnographic detail, its application of cultural theories of inequality to China, and its contribution to our understanding of contemporary China. Unlike other studies of inequality in urban China, this book takes a unique setting--the marketplace and the interactions between customers and salespeople--and a unique approach--the author herself worked as a salesclerk in three settings.
Author: Amy Hanser
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 02/06/2008
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.76lbs
Size: 8.96h x 5.97w x 0.55d
ISBN13: 9780804758376
ISBN10: 0804758379
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Social Science | Sociology | Urban
About the Author
Amy Hanser is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.