Description:
As China has downsized and privatized its state-owned enterprises, severe unemployment has created a new class of urban poor and widespread social and psychological disorders. In Unknotting the Heart, Jie Yang examines this understudied group of workers and their experiences of being laid off, "counseled," and then reoriented to the market economy.
Brief description: Jie Yang is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. She is the editor of The Political Economy of Affect and Emotion in East Asia.
Review Quotes:
With this book, Yang makes an important contribution by exploring the subjectivities of unemployed workers in China and by making visible the often hidden ideological struggle between the state and the unemployed workers over the interpretation of dislocation and unemployment.
--Ofer Sharone "ILR Review"