Podcast appearances and mentions of Andrew B Kipnis

Today I spoke to Professor Andrew Kipnis about his book on social change in urban China from the perspective of funerals. In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has increased drastically in recent decades, involves the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China (U California Press, 2021) examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I spoke to Professor Andrew Kipnis about his book on social change in urban China from the perspective of funerals. In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has increased drastically in recent decades, involves the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China (U California Press, 2021) examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today I spoke to Professor Andrew Kipnis about his book on social change in urban China from the perspective of funerals. In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has increased drastically in recent decades, involves the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China (U California Press, 2021) examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Today I spoke to Professor Andrew Kipnis about his book on social change in urban China from the perspective of funerals. In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has increased drastically in recent decades, involves the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China (U California Press, 2021) examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Today I spoke to Professor Andrew Kipnis about his book on social change in urban China from the perspective of funerals. In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has increased drastically in recent decades, involves the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China (U California Press, 2021) examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Today I spoke to Professor Andrew Kipnis about his book on social change in urban China from the perspective of funerals. In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has increased drastically in recent decades, involves the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China (U California Press, 2021) examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts. Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press, 2016), “I could not have imagined what the place would be like by 2008” (p. 25). This is scarcely surprising, for over that period the place grew from a quiet county town of 30,000 people to a bustling urban centre of 300,000. All of this came amidst a burst of economic growth and urbanisation in China which have been defining global events for our time. Yet whilst one hears a lot about how the PRC’s headlong rush to urban modernity has affected headline-grabbing metropolises like Shanghai or Beijing, or the increasingly empty Chinese countryside, the experience of China’s many thousands of in-between locations is not so often discussed (p. 18). Andrew Kipnis’ book is a vital addition to our understanding of what has been going on in these arguably much more representative places. Presented to us by an anthropologist with three decades of longitudinal perspective from a single location, the county-level town of Zouping in Shandong province, the book at once serves as a rich ethnography of life there since the late-1980s and as a compelling theoretical argument for how we might understand the idea of ‘modernisation’ in general. Richly supplementing his text from his own photographic archive, Kipnis refuses to over-simplify this compound and multifaceted process. Yet despite dealing with a great many entangled aspects of social transformation, From Village to City is also a really absorbing read from start to finish. Amidst key academic insights, the human stories told here are at turns astonishing, entertaining and, as one would expect from someone with as longstanding a connection to a single place as Kipnis has, deeply personal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press, 2016), “I could not have imagined what the place would be like by 2008” (p. 25). This is scarcely surprising, for over that period the place grew from a quiet county town of 30,000 people to a bustling urban centre of 300,000. All of this came amidst a burst of economic growth and urbanisation in China which have been defining global events for our time. Yet whilst one hears a lot about how the PRC’s headlong rush to urban modernity has affected headline-grabbing metropolises like Shanghai or Beijing, or the increasingly empty Chinese countryside, the experience of China’s many thousands of in-between locations is not so often discussed (p. 18). Andrew Kipnis’ book is a vital addition to our understanding of what has been going on in these arguably much more representative places. Presented to us by an anthropologist with three decades of longitudinal perspective from a single location, the county-level town of Zouping in Shandong province, the book at once serves as a rich ethnography of life there since the late-1980s and as a compelling theoretical argument for how we might understand the idea of ‘modernisation’ in general. Richly supplementing his text from his own photographic archive, Kipnis refuses to over-simplify this compound and multifaceted process. Yet despite dealing with a great many entangled aspects of social transformation, From Village to City is also a really absorbing read from start to finish. Amidst key academic insights, the human stories told here are at turns astonishing, entertaining and, as one would expect from someone with as longstanding a connection to a single place as Kipnis has, deeply personal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press, 2016), “I could not have imagined what the place would be like by 2008” (p. 25). This is scarcely surprising, for over that period the place grew from a quiet county town of 30,000 people to a bustling urban centre of 300,000. All of this came amidst a burst of economic growth and urbanisation in China which have been defining global events for our time. Yet whilst one hears a lot about how the PRC’s headlong rush to urban modernity has affected headline-grabbing metropolises like Shanghai or Beijing, or the increasingly empty Chinese countryside, the experience of China’s many thousands of in-between locations is not so often discussed (p. 18). Andrew Kipnis’ book is a vital addition to our understanding of what has been going on in these arguably much more representative places. Presented to us by an anthropologist with three decades of longitudinal perspective from a single location, the county-level town of Zouping in Shandong province, the book at once serves as a rich ethnography of life there since the late-1980s and as a compelling theoretical argument for how we might understand the idea of ‘modernisation’ in general. Richly supplementing his text from his own photographic archive, Kipnis refuses to over-simplify this compound and multifaceted process. Yet despite dealing with a great many entangled aspects of social transformation, From Village to City is also a really absorbing read from start to finish. Amidst key academic insights, the human stories told here are at turns astonishing, entertaining and, as one would expect from someone with as longstanding a connection to a single place as Kipnis has, deeply personal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press, 2016), “I could not have imagined what the place would be like by 2008” (p. 25). This is scarcely surprising, for over... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“When I first went to Zouping in 1988,” writes Andrew B. Kipnis in From Village to City: Social Transformation in a Chinese County Seat (University of California Press, 2016), “I could not have imagined what the place would be like by 2008” (p. 25). This is scarcely surprising, for over that period the place grew from a quiet county town of 30,000 people to a bustling urban centre of 300,000. All of this came amidst a burst of economic growth and urbanisation in China which have been defining global events for our time. Yet whilst one hears a lot about how the PRC’s headlong rush to urban modernity has affected headline-grabbing metropolises like Shanghai or Beijing, or the increasingly empty Chinese countryside, the experience of China’s many thousands of in-between locations is not so often discussed (p. 18). Andrew Kipnis’ book is a vital addition to our understanding of what has been going on in these arguably much more representative places. Presented to us by an anthropologist with three decades of longitudinal perspective from a single location, the county-level town of Zouping in Shandong province, the book at once serves as a rich ethnography of life there since the late-1980s and as a compelling theoretical argument for how we might understand the idea of ‘modernisation’ in general. Richly supplementing his text from his own photographic archive, Kipnis refuses to over-simplify this compound and multifaceted process. Yet despite dealing with a great many entangled aspects of social transformation, From Village to City is also a really absorbing read from start to finish. Amidst key academic insights, the human stories told here are at turns astonishing, entertaining and, as one would expect from someone with as longstanding a connection to a single place as Kipnis has, deeply personal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices