Globalization Studies 2006
Social Identity and Alternative Modernities in Comparative Perspectives
www.ssdpp.fudan.edu.cn/globalization/index.htm
The Course will be given entirely in English by scholars from Fudan University and
Bergen University.
RESPONSIBLE ORGANISERS

Professor Gunnar Haaland, Department of Social Anthropology, University of
Bergen gunnar.haaland@sosantr.uib.no

Professor Fan Lizhu, Department of Sociology, Fudan University
lizhufan@fudan.edu.cn, 5538-7810, 1348-2222-695

Professor Yu Hai, Department of Sociology, Fudan University
haiyu@fudan.edu.cn, 6530-4777,1332-1859-728

Programme Coordinator Gry-Irene Skorstad, Nordic Center, Fudan University,
gry-irene@nordiccentre.org , 6564-2627
PROGRAMME
1. Course content.
The course aims to give an introduction to the interplay between globalization of
interactions (flows of material goods, of political influence, and of information) and
people construction of social identities giving meaning and direction to their daily
life. Today, the revolution in information technology, in speed and costs of
transportation, in the restructuring of capitalism, and in the development of means
of mass destruction create new tensions in this interplay - transforming societies,
challenging received ideologies, restructuring the distribution of material wealth, as
well as dramatically changing lifestyles and consumption patterns.
In China this transformation is particularly dramatic, e.g. as manifested in a yearly
GDP growth of about 10%, of large scale urban developments, in enormous
infra-structural investments, in rural-urban migrations of mega scale, in extremely
rapid spread of new information technology. In peoples’ struggle to improve their
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material conditions by increased participation in global networks of organization,
new disjuncture between economy, politics and culture, between the local and the
global emerge. At the same time as participation in global interactions stimulates
trends towards shared lifestyles on a worldwide scale, a counter-trend challenging
the
hegemonic
western
modernity
by
articulating
alternative
modernity
emphasizing social identities anchored in non-western cultural traditions is
emerging. As the ideologies of Marxism and liberalism are being contested on
different levels of society from rural to urban areas a space for discourse about new
ideologies is opened. The course aims at introducing students to some dimensions
of these disjuncture as they are played out in modern Chinese communities.
2. Syllabus
READING FOR YU HAI’S LECTURES
Chinese Society and Social Transformation
-
Fei Xiao Tong: From the Soil (Xiang tu Zhongguo)
Anthony Giddens: Runaway World
-
Peter Berger: Four Faces of Global Culture
-
Arjun Appoadurai: Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination
Robert Heffer. Introduction: society and Morality in the New Asian Capitalisms
-
Leslie Sklair: Capitalist Globalization in China.
-
Robert Weller: Divided Market Cultures in China: Gender, Enterprise and
Religion
-
Dru Gladney: Getting Rich is not so Glorious: Contrasting perspectives on
Prosperity Among Muslims and Han in China
-
Barth: Introduction to the Role of the Entrepreneur in Social Change in
Northern Norway.
-
Bourdieu; The forms of capital.
-
Yunxiang Yan 抯 book: The flow of Gifts.
-
Jamie Mackie: Business Success Among Southeast Asian Chinese: The role
of culture, values and social structures
-
Pun Ngai: Made in China: Women Fa ctory workers in in a global work place.
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Cultural Globalization in Local contexts.
-
Bergers perspectives on cultural Globalization.
-
Yunxiang Yan: Managed globalization: State Power and Cultural Transition in
China.
-
Yunxiang Yan: The Politics of Consumerism in Chinese Society
-
Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao: Coexistence and Synthesis. Cultural Globalization
and localization in Contemporary Taiwan.
-
Yunxiang yan: Of hamburger and social space: Consuming McDonalds in
Beijing.
-
Deborah Davis and Julika Sensenbrenner: Commercializing Childhood:
Parental purchases for Shanghai Only Child.
-
James Farrer: Dancing through the Market Transition: disco and dance hall
sociability in Shanghai
Heritage of Redistributive System and Multi-Logics of Social Transition
Obligatory reading

Bian,Yanjie and John R.Logan.1996.Market Transition and the Persistence of
Power: The
Changing Stratification System in Urban China . American
Sociology Review 61:739-58
Recommended reading:

Nee,Victor.1989.A Theory of Market Transition: From Redistribution to
Markets in State Socialism. American Sociology Review 54:663-81.

Walder,Andrew G.1992.Property Rights and Stratification in Socialist
Redistributive Economies. American Sociological Review 57:524-39.
Shanghai Development as a National Strategy
Obligatory reading:

Hanlong Lu: To be Relatively Comfortable in an Egalitarian Society (15 pages)
Recommended reading:

Deborah S. Davis: A Revolution in Consumption
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Social communication and residential space
Obligatory reading:

Li Zhang, Migration and Privatization of Space and power in late socialist
China
Recommended reading

Fan Wenbing: The Conservation and Renewal of Lilong (Alleys) Housing in
Shanghai, the third Chapter, Shanghai Science and Technology Press, 2004
READING FOR GUNNAR HAALAND’S LECTURES
Obligatory reading:

Smart Alan, Gifts Bribes and Guanxi: A Reconsideration of Bourdieu’s Social
Capital Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Aug., 1993) (16 pages)

Lisa Rofel: Rethinking Modernity: Space and Factory Discipline in China. In
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (eds): Culture, Power and Place. 1997 Duke
University Press. Durham and London.(24 pages)

Yunxiang Yan: McDonald’s in Beijing: The Localization of Americana. In
James Watson (ed) Golden Arches East. McDonalds in East Asia
Recommended reading:

Mayfair Yang: Putting Global Capitalism in its Place. Current Anthropology
2000 Vol 41 No 4
READING FOR FAN LIZHU’S LECTURES
Chinese Culture Heritage in Modern World
Obligatory:

Ambrose Y. C. King, Kuan-his and Network Building: A Sociological
Interpretation, The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese
Today, edt. By Tu Weiming, Stanford University Press (17 pages)
Recommended reading:

Berger, Peter
Secularity: West and East
http://www.kokugakuin.ac.jp/ijcc/wp/cimac/berger.html

Yan, Yunxiang, Introduction, The Flow of Gifts---Reciprocity and Social
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Networks in a Chinese Village, Stanford University, 1996 (21 pages)
From Spiritual Hunger to Spiritual Nourishment
Obligatory:

Fan Lizhu, and Whiteheads, "Fate and Fortune: Popular Religion and Moral
Capital in Shenzhen", Journal of Chinese Religion, Febuary, 2005, vol. 32.
Recommended reading

Fan, Lizhu, Popular Religion in Contemporary China, Social Compass,
Volume 50 Issue
04, 12/2003, SAGE Publication, Cambridge (29 pages)
Migrant Issues in Big Cities
Obligatory reading:

Chan, Anita, The Culture of Survival: Lives of Migrant Workers through the
Prism of Private Letters, Popular China: The Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing
Society, edited by Perry Link, Richard Madsen, Paul Pickowicz, Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2002. (24 pages)
Recommended reading:

Dorothy Singer: The floating Population in the Cities: Chances for assimilation?

Richard Knaus, Barry Naughton, Elizabeth Perry (eds): Urban Spaces in
Contemporary China (19 pages)
3. Course Arrangement
Week 1 (September 4-1)
Introduction to the Social Ecology of Shanghai

September 4 (Monday)
Welcome party 6:00pm

September 5 (Tuesday) 8:00pm-9:45am
H5205

Lecture by Prof. Yu Hai, Introduction to Shanghai
September 7 (Thursday) 6:30-8:15pm
Seminar: Surviving Chinese

September 8 (Friday) 1:30-3:15pm
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H5109 Lecture By Prof. Gunnar Haaland
Globalisation and Shanghai Urban Development
Week 2 and 3 (September 11-23)
Analytical perspectives on the study of Social Scale and Globalization

September 12 (Tuesday)
8:00pm-9:45am Lecture by Prof. Gunnar Haaland
Forms of Capital. Guanxi, renxing, bureaucratic position and material wealth.

September 14 (Thursday) 6:30pm-8:15pm
Lecture by Prof. Gunnar Haaland
Factory Regimes and Consumption of Modernity

September 15 (Friday) 1:30-3:15pm,
Lecture by Prof. Fan Lizhu

September 19 (Tuesday) 8:00pm-9:45am
Lecture by Prof. Fan Lizhu

September 21 (Thursday) 6:30-8:15pm
Lecture by Prof. Fan Lizhu

September 22 (Friday) 1:30-3:15pm
Lecture by Prof. Fan Lizhu
After three weeks, pairs of Fudan and UoB students should be formed for the
purpose of preparing joint mini field work and essay papers (see separate paper
with more info regarding themes for the essays)
Week 4 (September 25-October 29)
Lessons on literature relevant for fieldwork theme

September 26 (Tuesday ) 8:00pm-9:45
Lecture by Prof. Yu Hai

September 28 (Thursday) 6:30-8:15pm
Lecture by Prof. Yu Hai

September 29 (Friday) 1:30-3:15pm
Student group seminars on the topics of given lectures
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
October 1-7 Public Holiday
Week 5 and 6 (October 7-16)
Mini fieldwork by pairs of students focused on aspects of Globalization in specific
localities. Supervision by Fudan and UofB staff members.
Excursion: Ruian, Zhejiang Province
Field Work Topics: Urban Space Study in Shanghai, Community Volunteers,
Migrant Study, Spirituality
Week 7 and 8 (October 17-29)
Essay analysis of field material
End of Week 8. Written and oral exams
4. Examinations
The joint essay paper (4-6000 word) counts for 50% of the total Course mark.
The students in a pair share the same mark.
A written exam (Two hours) on questions from specific topics from the course will
count 50% of the total mark.
Oral exam (40-60 minutes) is used to make minor adjustments to the total mark
from the essay paper and the written exam.
The marks will be given according to Fudan system of marking and will not be
translated to the UoB system
October 24 (Tuesday) H5205 Q & A
October 27 (Friday)
H5109 Examination 1:30- 6:30pm
October 31 (Tuesday) H5205 Oral Presentation
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