From the years 2004 to 2008, Beijing and Shanghai witnessed the construction of an extraordinary number of new buildings, many of which were designed by architectural firms overseas. Combining ethnographic fieldwork, historical research, and network analysis, Building Globalization closely scrutinizes the growing phenomenon of transnational architecture and its profound effect on the development of urban space.
Roaming from construction sites in Shanghai to architects’ offices in Paris, Xuefei Ren interviews hundreds of architects, developers, politicians, residents, and activists to explore this issue. She finds that in the rapidly transforming cities of modern China, iconic designs from prestigious international architects help private developers to distinguish their projects, government officials to advance their careers, and the Chinese state to announce the arrival of modern China on the world stage.
China leads the way in the globalization of architecture, a process whose ramifications can be felt from Beijing to Dubai to Basel. Connecting the dots between real estate speculation, megaproject construction, residential displacement, historical preservation, housing rights, and urban activism, Building Globalization reveals the contradictions and consequences of this new, global urban frontier.
In the post-Maoist era, China adopted a strategy for investing in the “quality” of its people—through education and training opportunities—that created talented labor. In her significant ethnographic study, Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China, Lisa Hoffman explains why the development of “human capital” is seen as fundamental for economic growth and national progress. She examines these new urban employees, who were deemed vital to the success of the global city in China, and who hoped for social mobility, a satisfying career, and perhaps a family.
Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China addresses the emergence of this urban professional subject in Dalian, a port city in China. Hoffman identifies who these new professionals are, what choices they have made, and how they have remained closely connected with the nation—although not necessarily the Communist party—leading to a new social form she calls “Patriotic Professionalism.”
Hoffman contributes to the understanding of changing urban life in China while providing an analysis of the country’s “late-socialist neoliberalism.” In the process, she asks pressing questions about how such shifts in urban life reshape cities, impact individual and family decisions, and reflect economic growth in China in tandem with “global” neoliberal practices.
During the years before the advent of the Nationalist regime in China, a public concern for social welfare took shape. The cry for reform and the need for energies with which to meet the new demands of urban life opened the way for the Y.M.C.A. and other Western institutions to influence the course of change.
In this volume Garrett presents the impressive early history of the Y.M.C.A. in China, an organization which, during the first quarter of the twentieth century, became that country's most prominent private agency of social planning.
The men who went to China as Y.M.C.A. personnel were a new breed, infused not only with a sense of service but also with qualities of practicality and flexibility that enabled them to appreciate another culture. The author interviewed many ex-Y.M.C.A. China hands and combed a variety of archives to complete this inside account of the missionary origins of, and Chinese participation and leadership in, the Chinese Y.M.C.A. In describing its many constructive measures of reform, she covers the Y's formation of the first youth association in the country, its pioneer work in education, health, and welfare programs, and its promotion of community-wide urban action. What emerges is a portrait of a reform-minded institution, eager to respond to the needs of students and workers, but fearful that revolutionary change might alter its identity beyond recognition.
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