Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Two-Dimensional People: Lives, Desires, and Social Attitudes in a Changing Chinese Village

Two-Dimensional People: Lives, Desires, and Social Attitudes in a Changing Chinese Village

Tongxue, Tan

Hardcover

Series: China Perspectives

AnthropologyGeneral Racism & Ethnic StudiesGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 1032403543
ISBN13: 9781032403540
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Dec 30 2022
Pages: 392
Weight: 1.36
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Based on almost eight years of fieldwork in a town and a village in South China, this book analyzes contradictions among various dimensions of the peasant economy, social relationships, popular religion, and local politics in rural China.

Compared to many anthropological, sociological, and political studies of rural China, which regard Chinese peasants as one-dimensionally materialistic, politically conservative, egocentric (lacking public-mindedness, as in anthropologist Yan Yunxiang's notion of the uncivil individual), with collapsed beliefs, and thinking only of the present (or the today-ness of today according to anthropologist Liu Xin), this book shows that people in contemporary rural China are actually two-dimensional trying to combine the calculation of self-interest with affective networks of reciprocity, but often falling into awkwardness or cynicism, in a paradoxical symbiosis between nihilism and transcendence. While Marcuse used the words of Benjamin to analyze one-dimensional man, writing Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope, this book writes of two-dimensional people, Only when the vast majority of ordinary people can find hope in everyday life can we finally be given hope!

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