Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2022 -

This modestly sized book has an ambitious goal. By providing a broad overview of urban development throughout Chinese history, Lincoln (Univ. of Leicester, UK) makes a strong argument that Chinese civilization "is nothing less than an urban civilization" (p. 9). He begins with the Neolithic period of the Longshan culture in the central plains and follows that history to China's present through eight chapters that follow the general periodization of the country's past from an urban-history perspective. According to Lincoln, China's urban civilization took its shape from antiquity through the Han dynasty and, after Han's fall, expanded from north to south, characterized by the rise of Sui and Tang dynasties. The Tang-Song transition gave rise to cities in the lower Yangtze Delta, paving the way for the "flowering of Chinese imperial urban civilization" in the late imperial period. A more impressive development occurred in the reform period from 1978, with a pace and scale "unprecedented in human history" (p. 223). Beneath the grand structure, the book contains enthralling details about city dwellers' day-to-day lives. It is a fascinating read, entertaining a new perspective on the course of Chinese history.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.

Xu (sociology, Emory Univ.) provides one of the most comprehensive studies of the formation and representation of the memory of zhiqing, or the "sent-down generation," urban youth who were sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Using mixed methods to analyze the life-history interviews of 87 zhiqing, literary works, museum exhibits, and participant observations of their commemoration activities, Xu reveals a dynamic picture of the memories of zhiqing at the individual, group, and public levels. He shows that class positions in the past and present generate considerable intragenerational variations in individual zhiqing memories about their personal experiences and historical evaluations of the send-down program. These variations create fault lines between different zhiqing groups. However, at the public level, elite members of the zhiqing generation control the representation of their experiences and highlight a positive zhiqing image to meet their political and economic agendas. Consequently, memories of the "losers" from the send-down program were marginalized or faded away. Theoretically sophisticated and meticulously researched, this book is an important work on the zhiqing generation and a must-read for scholars who wish to better understand the processes of the social construction of generation.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

This brilliant historical account of the condition of mentally ill people in colonial North India provides rare insight into the political, socioeconomic, medical, and cultural milieu of the cities of Agra, Benares, Bareilly, Lucknow, Delhi, and Lahore. This institutional and non-institutional study covers the plight of people cared for in asylums as well those who were looked after by their families at home, traditional Ayurveda practitioners, black magic practitioners, and temple priests. Most subjects were indigenous people who were the victims of racist stigmatization, control, and exploitation by British colonists. The text highlights the social prejudices, inequality, and entrenched caste system of Indian society, as it was mostly the lower classes, poor people, and women who were designated insane in the absence of a scientific inquiry. Rajpal (Auro Univ., India) discusses the laws related to lunacy, the structure of lunatic asylums, the life and case histories of patients, and Eastern and Western medicine. The extensive research, based on repositories, archival collections, and Hindi books and medical journals from the period, provides readers with an informed critical perspective.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels.

This interesting book presents a socioeconomic and political history of poor people in the city of Bombay (today, Mumbai), covering 1896 to 1984. Drawing on archives, interviews, and regional Marathi literary sources, Shaikh (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) explores the relationship between industrial capitalism, caste, class, gender, the built environment, and urban poverty. He focuses on Dalits (untouchables), a segment of the population that has been segregated and exploited by the upper castes for centuries, arguing that caste was seminal to the production of urban space, and urbanity was central to the making of Dalit cultural politics in Bombay. The analysis deals with Dalit industrial labor and Dalit exploitation, the lives of sex workers in slums, and the impact of Marxist ideology on the regional Dalit literature and how it stimulated Dalit revolutionary movements. Shaikh argues that urban planning was a limited response to the Dalit political movement in the city. Highlighting the nexus among caste, class, language, urban space, and the tensions within these categories, as well as how caste and class shaped the urban environment, this remarkable book contributes significantly to social/labor history and urban studies.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

This intriguing and informative volume by Hung (Hong Kong Univ. of Science and Technology) seeks to explore how a system of cultural control was created and evolved to implement party-state decisions in the early years of the People's Republic of China. Following an introduction, chapter 1 looks into the censorship of books, chapter 2 deals with censorship of the news, chapter 3 examines control of religion (both domestic and foreign), and chapter 4 investigates cultural centers, the lower-level propaganda stations designed to work closely with ordinary people. Chapter 5 focuses on education, which "was by definition political and class oriented"; chapter 6 reviews the Party's control of public parks, which "signaled the reach and intrusion of the CCP into people's leisure time and private lives"; and chapter 7 concerns museum architecture. In conclusion, the author suggests that "official directives on the correct approach to writing continue to emanate from the highest levels of the government." He believes that this approach will continue to be implemented, "reinforc[ing] the concept that the CCP should be in charge of culture and that intellectuals and writers must not cross certain lines."Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Du (Cornell Univ.) breathes new life into a classic issue--the Chinese regulation of intimate intergenerational relationships. Much has been written about filial piety as a moral, ritual, and historical phenomenon, but Du reorients the conversation by exploring legal records produced in Qing and Republican China. She convincingly shows that filial piety was not merely a moral indoctrination but also a robust, evolving legal and economic regime that engaged both officials and commoners. As she finds, though law codes and judicial practice in the Qing granted parents almost lifelong control over their children's labor, assets, and attitudes, the various Chinese legal and political orders of the 20th century wavered between strengthening filial cults and curbing parental authority. Du details the interplay between the political and legal realms in three representative historical periods and compares the social and gender presumptions and implications of different Chinese legal configurations. Enriched by a careful analysis of fresh civil and criminal cases and a fine synthesis of recent scholarship, this innovative, accessible study will interest not only specialists of Ming-Qing and 20th-century China but also anyone interested in comparative legal and gender studies.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty.