Description
About the Authors

China in Comparative Perspective provides an overview of China based on empirical observation by field workers, as well as on historical documents, Chinese literary and philosophical texts and core theoretical frameworks in the social sciences. It enables readers to develop ways of putting the modern history, politics, economy and society of China into a framework in which China can be compared and contrasted with other countries.

Topics covered include the rise of capitalism, post-socialist transformations, family and gender, nationalism, democracy, and civil society. Each chapter offers a comparison with other countries in East and South-Asia, Europe and the rest of the world, showing how analytic concepts have to be modified to avoid either Eurocentric or Sinocentric bias, and how ideas derived from Chinese sources and observations must be accommodated for complete understanding of the issues discussed.

Written by two well-known anthropologists of China from the London School of Economics, Stephan Feuchtwang and Hans Steinmüller, this book is a comprehensive course for postgraduate students in Chinese and Asian studies, anthropology, sociology, political economy, politics and international relations.
Stephan Feuchtwang is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics. His main area of research has been China, most recently on neighbourhood planning and governance in Chinese cities.

Hans Steinmüller has conducted long-term fieldwork in the Enshi region of Hubei Province. The main object of his research is the ethics of everyday life in rural China. Both have also written about the nature of the Chinese state and about ritual and fengshui.

Authors

China In Comparative Perspective