The Artisans and Entrepreneurs of Dongyang County: Economic Reform and Flexible Production in China: Economic Reform and Flexible Production in China

The book represents a continuation of research begun by Cooper in Hong Kong in the early 1970s among expatriate artisan furniture makers and woodcarvers from Dongyang County, Zhejiang Province. He now sets out to investigate the fate of the same craft in the hands of the same folk under totally different socio-economic conditions in their native county in communist People's Republic of China. Such a focus makes possible the isolation of systemic features of the socio-economic environment that influenced the evolution of the mode of production, with technical requirements of production and regional/ethnic variability held more or less constant.

Eugene Cooper is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chinese Studies at the University of Southern California