ASIAN 3389 - China’s Rural-Urban Integration

(GHB) (GLC-AS, HA-AS, HST-AS)

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

R. McNeal.

Today, China’s massive, complex urban infrastructure and breakneck urban growth are driving forces in the global flow of people, money, resources, and ideas. Across its long history, the question of how China’s urban centers have been nested into larger networks of outlying rural areas, and how those outlying regions were or were not well integrated (politically, economically, culturally) with urban centers, has been of great concern to politicians, merchants, moral philosophers, artists, urban planners, and ideologues. This course poses a single fundamental question: are there in fact two enduring Chinas, one urban and one rural, with vastly different cultures, economies, and social landscapes? Additionally, we will ask, what has over a century of industrialization and modernization done to the rural-urban divide and historical modes of rural-urban integration? We will examine these questions from a wide array of sources, including historical and archaeological data, sociological and anthropological inquiry, and artistic and literary production. We will also explore various critical approaches to analyzing and conceptualizing rural and urban life across these sources. (SC)