| This work examines the role of markets in contemporary Chinese life and argues that the marketplace has become a model of and a model for the modernization process currently underway in the People's Republic of China. Based on 15 months of field research in the city of Taiyuan in northern China's Shanxi province, this micro-level approach explores the ways in which modernization is being interpreted, experienced and realized through the arena of the marketplace. While many people are enthusiastically supporting the changes and enjoying the economic benefits of reform, numerous individuals are also confronting social and cultural constraints as they attempt to put into practice the ideology of reform.;This work focuses on a number of market types. These include produce, luxury-item, tourist, private and semi-private shops, state-run stores, department stores and malls. Through a detailed analysis of these market types, issues which underlie the modernization process are revealed and reflect an ambivalence many feel towards economic reform. This work blends a folkloric perspective on individuals and their artistic and personal strategies in the marketplace with a concern for the relationship between economic ideology and cultural practice. Merchants, vendors, shopkeepers and other sellers are striving to participate in a process which while providing economic and material opportunities has yet to accommodate for the social and cultural restrictions based on both Confucian and Maoist ideology. Many people, especially those in northern China where the benefits of reform are slow to appear, are disillusioned by the ideology of "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and have begun to protest against both the economic reforms and marketplaces where reforms are being applied. Some of these folk movements involve the utilization of a deified Mao. Against the backdrop of a recontextualizing and a copying of Western commodities, their promotion and consumption, the anti-capitalist ideology of Mao remains a powerful framework for interpreting and practicing social, cultural and economic change. As individuals begin to experiment with the promotion and consumption of goods, with the blending of domestic and foreign products and ideas, they find themselves confronting their own identities and that of their nation. |
