Teresa Wright

TL;DR: Wright as discussed by the authors argues that China's combination of state-led development, late industrialization, and socialist legacies have affected popular perceptions of socioeconomic mobility, economic dependence on the state, and political options, giving citizens incentives to perpetuate the political status quo and disincentives to embrace liberal democratic change.

TL;DR: The Professional Guinea Pig as mentioned in this paper investigates the motivations, reflections, and practices of professionalized clinical trial participation, and argues that the drug industry deliberately uses the consent form to obfuscate the commodified relationship with research subjects.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare China's student movement with Taiwan's month of March Movement of 1990. But they focus on the wrong choices of student leaders that contributed to its tragic outcome.

TL;DR: Chen et al. as mentioned in this paper discuss social protest and contentious authoritarianism in China and present a new book, Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism: A History of China.

Abstract: Chinese Citizenship: Views from the Margins, edited by Rachel Murphy and Vanessa L. Fong. London: Routledge, 2006. xii + 194 pp. £65.00 (hardcover). This volume provides fresh insights into some fascinating questions. Through a wide assortment of rich case-studies, it sheds new light on current understandings of changing, contested, and often conflictual conceptions of citizenship in the post-Mao period. At the same time, it paints a nuanced portrait of the complex interplay between the state and society, enabling a more informed assessment of the state's attempts to maintain both control and legitimacy amidst dramatic economic and social transformation. Further, the book focuses on an understudied yet important topic: individuals at the margins of Chinese society. As such, it provides both detailed information about little-known groups and a new perspective on the changes of the reform era. The case studies upon which the volume is based draw on recent, mostly onthe-ground fieldwork undertaken by scholars in a variety of academic disciplines. The authors examine a broad range of marginal groups, including highly privileged mainland youths who migrate to "First World" countries (Vanessa L. Fong), mainland migrants to Hong Kong (Nicole Newendorp), school-age rural migrants to prosperous mainland cities (Lu Wang), the victims and perpetrators of crime (Yingchi Chu), Tibetan high school students (Lin Yi), laid-off residents of Shanghai's "lower quarters" (Tianshu Pan) and poor farmers (Rachel Murphy). While illuminating the varied causes of each group's marginality, as well as the different living conditions experienced by each, the authors find striking commonalities among these seemingly dissimilar groups. Regardless of the cause of their marginality (choice or misfortune), all feel stigmatized by their status. Moreover, although many express disappointment with their denigrated position, and some question or contest its legitimacy, most come to internalize the demeaning judgment of "mainstream" society that they are "backward" or "uncivilized". Murphy's poor farmers, for example, attribute their hardship to deficiencies in their personal quality (suzhi) (p. 21), while Yi's Tibetan youths "th[ink] themselves to be of poor quality (suzhi chd) and morally degenerate (daode baihuai)" (p. 59). Similarly, Pong's elite migrants to the First World look down on their native country as "poor and corrupt" (p. 163). In addition, virtually all of the groups who have chosen to become marginal in the hope of achieving upward mobility experience a loss of connection and identity. Many of the Tibetan youths who have attempted to join mainstream Han society feel that they have become "nothing (shenme ye bushi)" (p. 61). Similarly, a highly successful mainland immigrant to Australia laments that while he was abroad, he was extremely homesick and felt out of place, but when "[he] went back to China ... [he] couldn't get used to it". He concludes, "[once] you've come out, you can't return" (p. 172). Findings such as these make for interesting comparisons with the experiences of migrant and otherwise marginal groups across the globe. Of equal interest, the volume examines a variety of specific state attempts to maintain social order and political control through citizen education. Because this is done through the firsthand accounts of both government cadres and ordinary citizens, the volume expands on recent efforts to "unpack" both the state and society, and moves beyond simplistic characterizations of a state/society dichotomy. For example, Pan interviews both Maoist-era "granny cadres" and "professionalized" reform-era social workers in the economically depressed Bay Bridge district of Shanghai. Despite great differences in background, motivations, strategies and effectiveness, Pan shows that both types of cadres sincerely work to help the people in their community, and often circumvent or flout higher-level directives in the pursuit of this aim. …