Awards

• Winner of Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for East Asian Studies, Modern Language Association 2024

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9780231212151

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Reviews

"Hillenbrand examines the precarity of life for the outcasts of Chinese capitalism, indispensable yet unwanted, living in a state that she calls “zombie citizenship.” Her analysis of a wide range of fractious, rebarbative cultural productions by China’s underclass reveals how links between precarity, labor, life, and art generate new spaces for understanding protest, class, exploitation, and control. -- Leigh K. Jenco, author of <i>Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West</i> Brilliant and perceptive, this book explores “precarity” as an affective and material human condition in China. Expressed through art forms and cultural practices, precarity unleashes unmanageable and undisciplined feelings that haunt the regime as much as society. This is one of the most original works on contemporary China I have ever read. -- Ching Kwan Lee, author of <i>The Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View</i> Revealing vital connections between creativity and precarity, On the Edge features incisive and nuanced analyses of Chinese avant-garde art, migrant worker poetry and video, documentary cinema, and livestreaming performances. This inspiring book should be essential reading for all students of contemporary art, media, and society. -- Jie Li, author of <i>Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China</i> On the Edge engages with precarity as a critical issue of our time. Coupled with its theoretical sophistication, the scope of its subject matter, its analytical strength, and its eloquence, this makes it a key intervention. Combining social engagement and aesthetic sensitivity, this scholarship is as imaginative as it is rigorous. -- Maghiel van Crevel, author of <i>Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money</i> Hillenbrand is as searing and uncompromising in her critique of the power of the state and neoliberal market as she is sensitive and compassionate to rural migrant labourers. The book is definitely not “China for Dummies”, nor will it leave you with a feelgood aftertaste. But you’ll be rewarded with a deeper appreciation of the moral complexity that is essential to understanding China. -- Wanning Sun * The Conversation's ""Best books of 2023"" * Hillenbrand records the thrashing of the Chinese body politic in a way that makes this book necessary reading for anyone interested in the wages of drastic economic disparity, in China or beyond. * Critical Inquiry * [An]exceptionally sophisticated and rich book. * China Quarterly *"

"Hillenbrand examines the precarity of life for the outcasts of Chinese capitalism, indispensable yet unwanted, living in a state that she calls “zombie citizenship.” Her analysis of a wide range of fractious, rebarbative cultural productions by China’s underclass reveals how links between precarity, labor, life, and art generate new spaces for understanding protest, class, exploitation, and control. -- Leigh K. Jenco, author of <i>Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West</i> Brilliant and perceptive, this book explores “precarity” as an affective and material human condition in China. Expressed through art forms and cultural practices, precarity unleashes unmanageable and undisciplined feelings that haunt the regime as much as society. This is one of the most original works on contemporary China I have ever read. -- Ching Kwan Lee, author of <i>The Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View</i> Revealing vital connections between creativity and precarity, On the Edge features incisive and nuanced analyses of Chinese avant-garde art, migrant worker poetry and video, documentary cinema, and livestreaming performances. This inspiring book should be essential reading for all students of contemporary art, media, and society. -- Jie Li, author of <i>Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China</i> On the Edge engages with precarity as a critical issue of our time. Coupled with its theoretical sophistication, the scope of its subject matter, its analytical strength, and its eloquence, this makes it a key intervention. Combining social engagement and aesthetic sensitivity, this scholarship is as imaginative as it is rigorous. -- Maghiel van Crevel, author of <i>Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money</i> Hillenbrand is as searing and uncompromising in her critique of the power of the state and neoliberal market as she is sensitive and compassionate to rural migrant labourers. The book is definitely not “China for Dummies”, nor will it leave you with a feelgood aftertaste. But you’ll be rewarded with a deeper appreciation of the moral complexity that is essential to understanding China. -- Wanning Sun * The Conversation's ""Best books of 2023"" *"

On the Edge engages with precarity as a critical issue of our time. Coupled with its theoretical sophistication, the scope of its subject matter, its analytical strength, and its eloquence, this makes it a key intervention. Combining social engagement and aesthetic sensitivity, this scholarship is as imaginative as it is rigorous. -- Maghiel van Crevel, author of <i>Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money</i>

Author Information

Margaret Hillenbrand is professor of modern Chinese literature and culture at the University of Oxford. Her previous books include Negative Exposures: Knowing What Not to Know in Contemporary China (2020).

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