Skip to Content

China Constructing Capitalism

Economic Life and Urban Change

By Scott Lash, Michael Keith, Jakob Arnoldi, Tyler Rooker

To Be Published November 30th 2012 by Routledge – 256 pages

Series: International Library of Sociology

    Purchasing Options:

    • Paperback: 978-0-415-49706-0: $42.95
      Not Yet Available
    • Hardback: 978-0-415-49705-3: $160.00
      Not Yet Available
    • eBook: 978-0-203-87739-5:
      Not Yet Available

    Description

    Dominant theorists of globalization take on the assumptions of a 'Washington Consensus' which presumes the centrality of neo-liberal American individualism. For them, America's globalization is at stake. Scott Lash and his colleagues argue that there is a new global driving force: a new logic that is Global China. Here, Washington neo-liberal individualism is displaced by the collective relationalityof a 'Beijing Consensus'. This relationality harks back to Taoism and Confucianism, yet is a motor of Chinese global hypermodernity. This book analyzes China as a 'risk culture', embracing the boundless opportunity and adventure of Beijing's Olympic architecture, Shenzhen investment bank young traders, Shanghai property developers and art markets. It examines the risk-sharing of inter-generational family mortgages, wage-pooling microfinance and regimes of collective saving. It scrutinizes the ever-present shadow of the risk-averse (yet uncertainty-creating) state. China Constructing Capitalism is a must read for social scientists, policy makers and investors.

    Contents

    Introduction Part 1: Theorising China Constructing Capitalism Part 2: The Trading Room Part 3: Young Traders Part 4: Financial Products Part 5: Consumers: House Slaves, Stock Slaves Part 6: From Urbanism to City Building (‘Bottom Up’) Part 7: Urbanism’s Risky Future in China (‘Top Down’) Part 8: China Banks

    Author Bio

    Scott Lash, (co-) author of such books as Sociology of Postmodernism (Routledge), Reflexive Modernization, Economies of Signs and Space, The End of Organized Capitalism, Critique of information and Global Culture Industry. Lash has published 17 books, now translated in fifteen languages. He is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has acquired a working knowledge of Mandarin.

    Michael Keith is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths. For a decade he has been leader of Tower Hamlets Council, London. His books include After Cosmopolitanism and Geographies of Resistance. He is learning to speak Mandarin.

    Jakob Arnoldi is Vice-Dean of the Business School at Aarhus University, Denmark. He was until recently Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lehrstuhl Ulrich Beck’s at the University of Munich. He has just completed the book, Uncertain Knowledge to appear in 2008 at Cambridge Polity. Arnoldi has written widely in economic sociology.

    Tyler Rooker did his PhD at University of California, Santa Cruz – an ethnography of a high-tech innovation district in Beijing. He is Research Associate on the Goldsmiths China project. He reads, speaks writes Mandarin fluently.

    Name: China Constructing Capitalism: Economic Life and Urban Change (Paperback) – Routledge 
    Description: By Scott Lash, Michael Keith, Jakob Arnoldi, Tyler Rooker. Dominant theorists of globalization take on the assumptions of a 'Washington Consensus' which presumes the centrality of neo-liberal American individualism. For them, America's globalization is at stake. Scott Lash and his...
    Categories: Sociology & Social Policy, Economic Geography, Asian Politics, Globalisation, Political Sociology, Social Theory