Locating China: Space, Place, and Popular Culture

Locating Chinaexplores the political economy of place, space and popular culture in contemporary China. This multidisciplinary volume examines the mutual articulations between cultural imaginary and China's continuing drive toward urbanization. The consequences of this relationship are shown to be the development of new space and places, and new forms of spatial practices, thus weakening old concepts of the "local" and "locality." The international group of scholars incorporate theoretical inquiries of space with grounded empirical work on multiple locals throughout China. From village discotheques in Guizhou to tourist villas, tea houses in Hainan to architectural extravaganzas in Shanshen the contributors argue that local places and local cultural practices are not constrained with the local scale. This therefore raises the question - how does the meaning transfer between the local, the national and the global?