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Driving Toward Modernity

Cars and the Lives of the Middle Class in Contemporary China

By: Jun Zhang

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Paperback | 2 September 2019

At a Glance

Paperback
240 Pages

Age
18+

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.91

Paperback

$48.40

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In Driving toward Modernity, Jun Zhang ethnographically explores the entanglement between the rise of the automotive regime and emergence of the middle class in South China. Focusing on the Pearl River Delta, one of the nation's wealthiest regions, Zhang shows how private cars have shaped everyday middle-class sociality, solidarity, and subjectivity, and how the automotive regime has helped make the new middle classes of the PRC. By carefully analyzing how physical and social mobility intertwines, Driving toward Modernity paints a nuanced picture of modern Chinese life, comprising the continuity and rupture as well as the structure and agency of China's great transformation.

Industry Reviews

Jun Zhang's Driving Toward Modernity: Cars and the Lives of the Middle Class in Contemporary China presents an exceptional and fascinating ethnographic study that examines the relationship between the rise of the 'automotive regime' and the (re-)emergence of the middle class.

* China Information *

This rich ethnography will be a benchmark for any forthcoming scholarly work on car consumption in China. Zhang's ethnographic account of the car-owning mobility of middle-class consumers in southern China represents a major contribution to an important topic in the understanding of contemporary Chinese society.

* Pacific Affairs *

Jun Zhang's analytical goal has been admirably achieved, and the book will be a welcome addition to a growing field of scholarship on automobility and its impacts and revelations across different locales.

* Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *

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