Description:
This book examines the political economy of China's rural livelihoods transformations during the past three decades and in contemporary China. It probes the dynamics, be they local, national or global, which affect rural livelihoods, in particular livelihood security, mobility, diversity, and sustainability.
Review Quotes:
"Rural Livelihoods in China challenges us to transcend modernist frameworks in the analysis of China's massive historical transformation and its attendant social development issues. By examining the struggle over rural livelihoods in China through the double lens of sustainability and mobility, this superb collection eloquently demonstrates why debates on China should move to the center stage in mainstream and critical debates on development alike. Through careful empirical research, policy analysis, and far-sighted theoretical argumentation, successive chapters accomplish a significant rearticulation of established concepts in livelihood analysis. What emerges from these pages, in the last instance, is a much enriched and transformed view of both Chinese studies and development theory and practice."
Arturo Escobar, University of North Carolina, USA
"This collection by leading scholars urges us to critically rethink the taken-for-granted urban-biased development and modernization discourse that has been dominating China's development for decades. It invites all readers to think deeply about a basic question, that is, what kind of life rural people really want? And what kind of countryside a developmental state could allow rural people to have?"
Jingzhong Ye, China Agricultural University, China
"Without losing sight of the specificities of each case in China's historical and social contexts, chapters in this collection subject a range of timely topics to analytical interrogation from the livelihood perspective. This is a book that offers rich empirical details and insightful theoretical discussions for both China experts, and students and scholars in development studies."
Qian Forrest Zhang, Singapore Management University, Singapore