Friederike Fleischer

Bio: Friederike Fleischer is an academic researcher from Max Planck Society. The author has contributed to research in topics: China & Beijing. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 17 publications receiving 149 citations. Previous affiliations of Friederike Fleischer include University of Los Andes.

A diáspora chinesa: uma aproximação à migração chinesa na Colômbia

Abstract: The Chinese diaspora is the largest and most extensive among the world’s migrant populations. Recent estimates put the number of Chinese emigrants at 40 million people. Far from being a homogenous group, members of the Chinese diaspora have diverse economic, cultural, social, educational, and personal backgrounds as well as very different life stories and emigration experiences. Despite the growing interest in the Pacific Rim and the constant immigration of Chinese to the Americas through the 20th century, there is very little information about their migration to Colombia. This article explores the topic from a historical point of view in order to fill this void. The little that is known about Chinese migrants to Colombia is presented in the context of a discussion on the diaspora in order to highlight the transnationality and multiplicity of identities among this migrant group. The article also examines the similarities and differences between Chinese migration to Colombia and other countries in Latin America and on other continents, relating these particularities to local contexts.

‘Like Sardines in a Can’. Gender, Stratification and Mobility in the Lives of Female Household Employees in Bogotá, Colombia

Abstract: According to the Colombian Labour Ministry, in 2015, 750,000 persons officially worked as household employees. Ninety-eight per cent of these employees are women who tend to live in Bogota’s (southern) urban fringe and travel to the city’s wealthier north on a daily basis. Yet public transportation in the Colombian capital is subject to stratification. Besides overcrowding and delays, petty crime and sexual harassment, fringe areas remain underserved. Based on ethnographic data, in this chapter, the authors discuss findings from a 3-year research project on female household employees’ subjective experience of space. Specifically, the authors explore their capacity (motility) to be mobile. This perspective breaks with the limits of bounded categories such as ‘urban’, ‘neighbourhood’ or ‘class’, to highlight their situational and spatial mutability. Moreover, an investigation of motility includes people’s potential to move as well as their subjective experiences of mobility. The research shows how gender intersects with local labour regimes and infrastructure to negatively affect women’s mobility. Urban stratification is not only a question of locale of residence and access to services, but importantly (re)produced in the household employees’ subjective experience of their daily commute, which they describe as suffering. In their limited spare time, female household employees abstain from travelling, effectively curbing their active appropriation of urban space. The research thus illuminates how spatial, social and economic dimensions mutually interact to impact on the women’s lives and possibilities.

The Transition Study of Postsocialist China: An Ethnographic Study of a Model Community. Wing-Chung Ho

Abstract: The Transition Study of Postsocialist China: An Ethnographic Study of a Model Community, by Wing-Chung Ho. Singapore: World Scientific, 2010. xvi + 265 pp. US$77.00/£53.00 (hardcover), US$100.00 (eBook). The making and un-making of the socialist subject has been the focus of various studies on China. Approaching the topic from different perspectives, such studies share a focus on the apparent generational divide among Chinese people as regards their self-identifications, life experiences and reflections about the transformations of the last 30 years. In a similar vein, Wing-Chung Ho studies the transformation of Cucumber Lane, Shanghai, from the pre-revolutionary period until today. Originally a slum area peopled by poor \"Subei\" migrants, during the Maoist period Cucumber Lane was turned into a \"model community\" showcasing the \"triumph of the proletariat\" (p. 2). In the 1990s, the area was reconceptualized as a \"civilized small community\", yet Ho suggests that its residents have become a \"forgotten people\" (p. 12). How these changes have affected and are reflected upon by the residents is the center of Ho' s study. Chapter 1 lays out the book's project, namely, an anthropological understanding of the Chinese experience of socialist and postsocialist transformations. To this end, Ho suggests a focus on the three interconnected \"elements of social structure - ideology, resources and cultural schema\" (p. 14) as expressed in his informants' narratives. Chapter 2, one of the most interesting chapters of the book, examines how the state appropriated \"the past of a people\" for political uses. Ho shows how, in Cucumber Lane, national and local histories were selectively constructed and inscribed into an official narrative structure called yiku sitian. This technique contrasted people's difficult pre-revolutionary experiences with a favorable situation under Communism. It was through this process that formerly diverse experiences were transformed into a common proletarian or \"revolutionary\" subjectivity. Ho emphasizes that \"the development of Cucumber Lane into a thought-education base was not a contingent event in history but involved the purposive 'making' of the place into a 'revolutionary holy land'\" (p. 54). Importantly, this not only involved a homogenizing of residents' pasts but also the political exclusion of those people who did not really fit into the narrative of socialist progress (the extremely poor, the very sick and the mentally ill). In the reform period, Ho argues, the state has loosened its control over people's memories. As a result, today people express different and often contradictory versions of the past. The chapter that follows analyzes collectivism and resistance in Cucumber Lane. Despite the shared experience of desolation, only during the Maoist period did residents develop a spirit of community. Only when the distinct technologies of socialist subject formation combined with mass mobilization campaigns did the state succeed in overcoming people's internal divisions relating to native-place origins. Ho shows that the collective spirit of the community depended not only on ideological influences, however, but also on available resources and moral politics. Importantly, residents felt obliged to reciprocate the benefits that they received from the state by dedication to the regime. During the reform period, however, the internal cohesion of Cucumber Lane has worn thin. …

Ghettos am Rande der Stadt? Sozialwohnungsbaupolitik und soziale Ungleichheit in Kolumbien

Abstract: Konfrontiert mit kontinuierlich wachsender Nachfrage nach preiswertem Wohnraum, begann die Regierung Kolumbiens in den 1980er Jahren mit einer neuen privatisierten Wohnungsbaupolitik, die Hauseigentumerschaft ermoglichen und fordern soll. Dazu wurden staatliche Subventionen und spezielle Hypotheken fur die unteren Einkommensklassen geschaffen, sowie Preislimits und Steuerfreiabkommen fur die privaten Baufirmen eingefuhrt. Besonders seit der Baukrise zu Beginn des Jahrtausends setzen private Konstruktionsfirmen auf den sozialen Wohnungsbau. Seitdem entstehen massenweise grosflachige, standardisierte Wohnsiedlungen an den Randern Bogotas. Bewohner_innen sind Niedrigverdiener_innen, die zuvor in informellen Siedlungen lebten. Fur die staatlich subventionierten Hypotheken, mit denen sie sich einkaufen, mussen Kaufer_innen ein festes Arbeitsverhaltnis nachweisen, was die Halfte der kolumbianischen Bevolkerung ausschliest. Basierend auf mit diversen Forschungsmethoden in neun verschiedenen Sozialwohnungsbaugebieten erhobenen Daten, analysieren wir in diesem Artikel die gegenwartige Wohnungsbaupolitik Kolumbiens und ihre Folgen. Wir argumentieren, dass die neue Politik tatsachlich mehr Menschen Zugang zu Eigentumswohnungen verschafft. Gleichzeitig zeigen wir, dass ohne weiterreichende soziale Reformen die Gefahr besteht, dass sich die isoliert liegenden Wohnsiedlungen in urbane Ghettos verwandeln, die ihre Bewohner_innen weiterhin stigmatisieren. Zugang zu Bildung, Jobs, Kultur und anderen urbanen Ressourcen ist notwendig, um langfristige soziale Mobilitat zu ermoglichen bzw. zu garantieren.

The Chinese Diaspora: Exploring Chinese Migration in Colombia

Abstract: The Chinese diaspora is the largest and most extensive among the world's migrant populations. Recent estimates put the number of Chinese emigrants at 40 million people. Far from being a homogenous group, members of the Chinese diaspora have diverse economic, cultural, social, educational, and personal backgrounds as well as very different life stories and emigration experiences. Despite the growing interest in the Pacific Rim and the constant immigration of Chinese to the Americas through the 20th century, there is very little information about their migration to Colombia. This article explores the topic from a historical point of view in order to fill this void. The little that is known about Chinese migrants to Colombia is presented in the context of a discussion on the diaspora in order to highlight the transnationality and multiplicity of identities among this migrant group. The article also examines the similarities and differences between Chinese migration to Colombia and other countries in Latin America and on other continents, relating these particularities to local contexts.

Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality

Abstract: Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Aihwa Ong. Durham, NIC: Duke University Press, 1999. ix. 322 pp., notes, bibliography, index.

Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture

Abstract: COURSE DESCRIPTION In popular and scholarly discourse, the term \"globalization\" is widely used to put a name to the shape of the contemporary world. In the realms of advertising, a variety of media, policymaking, politics, academia, and everyday talk, \"globalization\" references the sense that we now live in a deeply and everincreasingly interconnected, mobile, and speeded-up world that is unprecedented, fueled by technological innovations and geopolitical and economic transformations. Drawing on perspectives from history, anthropology, cultural and literary studies, geography, political economy, and sociology, this course will explore theories, discourses, and experiences of globalization.

Toward a Theory of Status Consumption in Less Industrialized Countries

Abstract: How does status consumption operate among the middle classes in less industrialized countries (LICs)—those classes that have the spending power to participate effectively in consumer culture? Globalization research suggests that Bourdieu’s status consumption model, based upon Western research, does not provide an adequate explanation. And what we call the global trickle-down model, often invoked to explain LIC status consumption, is even more imprecise. We study the status consumption strategies of upper-middle-class Turkish women in order to revise three of Bourdieu’s most important concepts—cultural capital, habitus, and consumption field—to propose a theory specific to the LIC context. We demonstrate that cultural capital is organized around orthodox practice of the Western Lifestyle myth, that cultural capital is deterritorialized and so accrues through distant textbook-like learning rather than via the habitus, and that the class faction with lower cultural capital indigenizes the consumption field to sustain a national social hierarchy.