Routledge Ritual and Economy in Metropolitan China: A Global Social Science Approach (Routledge Studies in the Growth Economies of Asia)

This book focuses on Shenzhen, one of China’s most globalized metropolises, a leading centre of high-tech industries and, as a melting pot of migrants from all over China, a place of vibrant cultural creativity. While in the early stages of Shenzhen’s development this vibrant cultural creativity was associated with the resilience of traditional social structures in Shenzhen’s migrant ‘urban villages’, today these structures undergird dynamic entrepreneurship and urban self-organization throughout Shenzhen, and have gradually merged with the formal structures of urban governance and politics. This book examines these developments, showing how important traditional social structures and traditional Chinese culture have been for China’s economic modernization. The book goes on to draw out the implications of this for the future of Chinese culture and Chinese economic engagement in a globalized world. Review "Ritual and Economy in Metropolitan China is essential background for understanding how traditions modernize within and through global processes. It is essential reading for understanding Shenzhen's emergence as China's fourth city by making salient how South Chinese villagers repurposed family identities and kinship networks to become successful entrepreneurs." - Mary-Ann O’Donnell, co-editor of Learning from Shenzhen: China's Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City" "This is a stimulating study of the cultural underpinnings of urbanisation and economic development in the People’s Republic of China, using the case-example of the southern metropolis Shenzhen. The authors’ unusual combination of economic, sociological and anthropological approaches offers novel perspectives for specialists in all these fields, and for scholars in Chinese Studies more generally." - Philip Clart, Leipzig University "A great deal of social science scholarship on China gets caught up in a false dichotomy of Chinese exceptionalism vs. ‘Western’ social theory, resulting in studies that focus on either how much China differs from ’the West’ or on how China serves as a site where abstract ‘Western’ theory yields ‘Chinese characteristics’ on the ground. Ritual and Economy in Metropolitan China is one of those rare and rewarding studies that succeeds in transcending this dichotomy by laying the groundwork for a genuine ‘global social science’. Through a rich and highly grounded exploration of ritual practice and the ritual economy in Shenzhen, the authors demonstrate effectively that our taken-for-granted assumptions about social theory can be enriched and broadened by paying some attention to practices in places less heard from in the Western canon. A fascinating account that reaches far beyond the ‘China studies’ field." - Tim Oakes, University of Colorado at Boulder About the Author Carsten Herrmann-Pillath is a Professor and Permanent Fellow in the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University, Germany Guo Man is an Associate Research Professor in the School of Economics and Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China Feng Xingyuan is a Professor and Executive President, Cathay Institute for Public Affairs, Beijing, China