Course Objectives
This course addresses several major themes focusing on the dynamics of China’s unprecedented
socioeconomic transformations. Topics covered will include the implications of globalization for
everyday life in the local contexts, the rise of consumerism in contemporary China, important policies
and various emerging markets etc. One important goal of this course is to provide a set of conceptual
tools and a new perspective that will hopefully help you better describe and understand the social world
around you. In learning this new perspective, I hope that you develop a critical, even “skeptical” view
toward superficial explanations of take-for-granted practices by replacing your common sense
understandings of interpersonal interactions with an uncommon sense about the links between individual experiences, structural forces and particular marketplaces.

 Introduction: Historical Background, Methods
Week 1 (03/12) Course Overview
Film: Young and Restless in China
Week 2 (03/19) The Validity of “Soft Data”
Ken Anderson, Ethnographic Research: A Key to Strategy, Harvard Business Review (March
2009)
Skim Chapters 1 & 2, The Cultural Dimension of International Business.
Week 3 (03/26) Consumer Revolution, Individualization, Consumerism
Deborah Davis “Introduction: A Revolution in Consumption”;
Bosco, Joseph. 2014. The Problem of Greed in Economic Anthropology: Sumptuary Laws and
New Consumerism in China. In Economic Anthropology 2014;1: 167-185
Yan, Yunxiang 2010. The Chinese Path to Individualization. In The British Journal of
Sociology 2010 Vol 61 Issue 3
Discussions: Project Topics
Week 4 (04/02) Glocalization
Yan, Yunxiang. 2000. Of hamburger and social space: Consuming McDonalds in Beijing. In
The Consumer Revolution in Urban China, Edited by Deborah S. Davis, University of
California. 201-225
Lu, Hanchao. 1995. Away from Nanking Road: Small Stores and Neighborhood Life in Modern
Shanghai. In Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 54 Issue 1 93-123
Veeck, Ann 2000. “The Revitalization of the Marketplace: Food Markets of Nanjing,” in The
Consumer Revolution in Urban China.
Week 5(04/09) Challenges and Prospects for China’s Quality Growth and Sustainable
Development (Dr. Tianshu Pan)
The World Bank. 2002. “China 2020: Understanding the Present;” The WB, 2012. “China 2030:
Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society” (Executive Summary); K.
Lieberthal and G. Lieberthal. The Great Transition, HBR on Doing Business in China;
Skim: Shanghai 2020 (Kelly Brown 2013)

II. Globalization, Localization, Tradition and Modernity

Week 6 (04/16) Values and Morals
Thomas Donaldson, Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home, Harvard Business Review
(Sept-Oct 1996)
Katherine Xin and Vladimir Pucik, Trouble in Paradise, HBR Review on Doing Business in
Chin
Wang, Lei and Heikki Juslin. 2010 The Effects of Value on the Perception of Corporate Social
Responsibility Implementation: A study of Chinese Youth. In Corporate Social Responsibility
and Environmental Management
Film: Killing us softly 4
Week 7 (04/23) Guanxi from Cultural perspectives
Kipnis, Andrew 1997. Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self and Subculture in a North China
Village. Chapter 1,3. Durham and London: Duke University Press
Harmon, Brian. 2014. The Crisscrossed Agency of a toast: Personhood, individualion and deindividuation
in Luzhou, China. In The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2014) 25, 357-372
Week 8 (04/30) mid-term exam in-class presentation

III. Policies and Market: Case studies of marketing and consumer behaviors
Week 9 (05/07) Understanding Chinese Entrepreneuralism （Dr. Tianshu Pan）
Ming Zeng and Peter Williamson, The Hidden Dragons, HBR on Doing Business in China
Arindam K. Bhattacharya and David C. Michael, How Local Companies Keep Multinationals at Bay, HBR
on Thriving in Emerging Markets; David L Davies, Corporate Cadres: Management and Corporate Culture
at Chinese Wal-Mart Stores The Economist, Bamboo Capitalism (03/11/2011); China Buys Up the World
(11/11/2010); Jasper Becker 2000. “The Pig that Fears to Become Fat,” in The Chinese.; Lindah Yueh,
China’s Entrepreneurs, Centerpiece (Spring 2008);
Week 10 (05/14) Understanding Chinese Consumers
Tian, Kelly & Lily Dong (2011). Consumer-Citizens of China: the role of foreign brands in the
imagined future China. London: Routledge. Chapter 3
Croll, Elisabeth (2006). China’s New Consumers: social development and domestic demand.
London: Routledge. Chapters 1 and 2.
Hooper, Beverley (2005). “The Consumer Citizen in Contemporary China”, Centre for East
and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Working Paper No. 12, at
http://www.ace.lu.se/images/Syd_och_sydostasienstudier/working_papers/Hooper.pdf

Lu, Pierre Xiao (2008). Elite China: luxury consumer behavior in China. Singapore: John Wiley
& Sons (Asia). Introduction, Chapter 1.
Week 11 (05/21) Consuming Motherhood and Childhood
Gottschang, Suzanne. 2001. The consuming Mother: Infant feeding and the Feminine Body in
Urban China.
Davis and Sensenbrenner 2000. “Commercializing Childhood: Parental Purchases for
Shanghai’s Only Child,” in The Consumer Revolution in Urban China.
Week 12 (05/28) Cosmopolitanism, Beauty, New Man
Zheng, Tiantian 2011. Karaoke Bar Hostesses and Japan-Korea Wave in Post-socialist China:
Fashion, Cosmopolitanism and Globalization. In City &. Society
Song, Geng 2012. “New Man” and “New Lad” with Chinese Characteristics? Cosmopolitanism,
cultural hybridity and Men’s lifestyle magazines in China
Week 13 (06/04) Guest Speaker (Tian Zi Fang Visit)
Week 14(06/11) Final Presentation