In Search of Paradise - 9780801475627

"The emergence of an increasingly assertive Chinese middle class, aware of its rights but selectively attentive to the civic values that speculators and developers frequently trample underfoot, infuses both the analytic precision and the passion ate chiaroscuro of In Search of Paradise. Against the appalling backdrop of the construction laborers' living conditions and of massive patterns of eviction and dislocation, Zhang shows how realtors deploy national laws and socialist and environmental values, with a sometimes self-interested cynicism that nevertheless also answers to the drive to generate a wholesale spatial restructuring---from face lifts to high-rise fortreses---of Chinese society and subjectivity."----Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University, author of Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome

"Li Zhang's perceptive analysis of the `spatialization of class' and its role in the emergence of a new middle class offers important insights into a Chinese version of modernization and urban development while also uncovering the unstable and complex ways in which spatial transformation creates new forms of identity and experiences of urbanity. Our ability to understand the impact of increasing private home ownership globally depends on this kind of in-depth culturally, politically, and economically informed ethnography. The regional city of Kunming, scarred and deprived of its historical and architectural heritage, becomes the image of modernity and the answer to the dreams of the Chinese middle class and their search for a modern future. But at the same time something is lost, and homeowners along with other citizens begin to struggle against the government and private developers who are capitalizing on the remaking of the urban landscape."---Setha Low, Professor of Anthropology, Geography, and Environmental Psychology, Cuny Graduate Center, author of Behind the Gates and On the Plaza

"In Search of Paradise is an engaging ethnography of the very different ways in which individuals, families, and social strata are affected by the experience of home ownership. Li Zhang explains how, in the process, they become citizens of a different political order, building responsibilities and elaborating desires. This important book is a significant addition to the literature on China's housing reform and to our understanding of the political and cultural dynamics of urban social change."---Luigi Tomba, Anu College of Asia and the Pacific