Overview

Behind China’s growing economic and political power is a vast underworld of marginalized social groups. In this powerful and timely book, Wanning Sun focuses on the country’s hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers, who embody China's most intractable problems of inequality. Drawing on rich and extensive fieldwork, the author argues that despite the critical role their labor has played in enabling and sustaining the country’s remarkable economic growth, workers and peasants have become the nation’s “subalterns.” Sun focuses especially on the role of media and culture in negotiating the unequal relationships that exist between various social groups. She shows that in the face of the harsh reality of injustice and discrimination, China’s rural migrants engage in media and cultural practices that are at once both mundane and profound—invariably imbued with hope and dignity, and motivated by the dream of a better life. Exploring the cultural politics of inequality in post-Mao China, this engaging and compelling book will be essential reading for all concerned with the increasing centrality of media and the cultural politics of representation in our highly digitalized and mediated world.

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9781442236776

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Reviews

This is a highly original and extremely timely work of first-class scholarship. By focusing on migrant workers and foregrounding the media and cultural politics of inequality in contemporary China, Wanning Sun has offered a compelling and much-needed corrective to dominant narratives about 'China's rise.' -- Yuezhi Zhao, Simon Fraser University; author of Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict Infusing a rich media study with an engaged ethnography, Wanning Sun innovatively unravels the contested and nuanced relationship between the state and the subalterns of migrant workers, who appropriate and resist hegemonic media forms, and at the same time invent new genres and forms to reconstruct and reposition themselves. An intriguing read, this book is a major contribution to the cultural politics of social inequality and class in contemporary China. -- Tiantian Zheng, State University of New York, Cortland Wanning Sun's original, probing, and poignant exposure of the voice of China's rural migrants in their role as subaltern artist captures a heretofore unknown dimension of the underbelly hidden beneath China's storied economic success. This heady, jarring, and powerfully written and argued treatise on the cultural politics of this underclass sparkles with insights, empathy, and nuance, as it traces both the possibilities for and yet the often depoliticization of this egregious emblem of the country's searing inequality. -- Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine Only recently have we started to get a sense of the hidden fault lines of social struggle in contemporary China and how media practices are implicated with them. Wanning Sun's remarkable new book is a crucial landmark in this expanding literature. Passionate and engaged, drawing on rich fieldwork from a variety of sites, Sun gives us a vivid sense of how more than 260 million migrant workers use and appropriate mainstream and personal media in their search for some form of political voice. Essential reading. -- Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science

This is a highly original and extremely timely work of first-class scholarship. By focusing on migrant workers and foregrounding the media and cultural politics of inequality in contemporary China, Wanning Sun has offered a compelling and much-needed corrective to dominant narratives about 'China's rise.' -- Yuezhi Zhao, Simon Fraser University; author of Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict Infusing a rich media study with an engaged ethnography, Wanning Sun innovatively unravels the contested and nuanced relationship between the state and the subalterns of migrant workers, who appropriate and resist hegemonic media forms, and at the same time invent new genres and forms to reconstruct and reposition themselves. An intriguing read, this book is a major contribution to the cultural politics of social inequality and class in contemporary China. -- Tiantian Zheng, State University of New York, Cortland Wanning Sun's original, probing, and poignant exposure of the voice of China's rural migrants in their role as subaltern artist captures a heretofore unknown dimension of the underbelly hidden beneath China's storied economic success. This heady, jarring, and powerfully written and argued treatise on the cultural politics of this underclass sparkles with insights, empathy, and nuance, as it traces both the possibilities for and yet the often depoliticization of this egregious emblem of the country's searing inequality. -- Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine

Wanning Sun's Subaltern China succeeds in making an original intervention in an already crowded field. The value of this study lies in its emphasis on cultural productions not only about but by rural migrant workers...Sun offers a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of these cultural expressions of workers' voices...I could not put this book down once I began to read it. Sun offers us a close-up view of workers' hopes and desires, pains and disappointments, and understandings of their exploited situations, putting these in the context of neoliberal economic growth. I look forward to teaching this book in my classes. The China Quarterly This is a highly original and extremely timely work of first-class scholarship. By focusing on migrant workers and foregrounding the media and cultural politics of inequality in contemporary China, Wanning Sun has offered a compelling and much-needed corrective to dominant narratives about 'China's rise.' -- Yuezhi Zhao, Simon Fraser University; author of Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict Infusing a rich media study with an engaged ethnography, Wanning Sun innovatively unravels the contested and nuanced relationship between the state and the subalterns of migrant workers, who appropriate and resist hegemonic media forms, and at the same time invent new genres and forms to reconstruct and reposition themselves. An intriguing read, this book is a major contribution to the cultural politics of social inequality and class in contemporary China. -- Tiantian Zheng, State University of New York, Cortland Wanning Sun's original, probing, and poignant exposure of the voice of China's rural migrants in their role as subaltern artist captures a heretofore unknown dimension of the underbelly hidden beneath China's storied economic success. This heady, jarring, and powerfully written and argued treatise on the cultural politics of this underclass sparkles with insights, empathy, and nuance, as it traces both the possibilities for and the depoliticization of this egregious emblem of the country's searing inequality. -- Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine Only recently have we started to get a sense of the hidden fault lines of social struggle in contemporary China and how media practices are implicated. Wanning Sun's remarkable new book is a crucial landmark in this expanding literature. Passionate and engaged, drawing on rich fieldwork from a variety of sites, Sun gives us a vivid sense of how more than 260 million migrant workers use and appropriate mainstream and personal media in their search for some form of political voice. Essential reading. -- Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science

Author Information

Wanning Sun is professor of media and communication at the University of Technology, Sydney.

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