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"In BEIJING FROM BELOW, Harriet Evans weaves together oral history, archival research, and ethnographic knowledge to tell the story of the residents of Dashalar, an under-resourced Beijing neighborhood adjacent to Tiananmen Square. In popular thinking about China, the Mao and post-Mao development of Beijing's cityscape has often been understood as the result of teleological progression and entrance to a market economy. However, what is lost in such narratives are the effects that development has had on Beijing's urban underclass; for example, during the 1950s, construction projects throughout Beijing led to the mass displacement of many urban dwellers, and current development projects still require the forced movement of residents. In this book, which focuses on events from the 1950s onwards, Evans attends to the experiences of the working-class residents of Dashalar, using their own oral testimony and state records to understand how they interpret and relate to the changing city. In this regard, BEIJING FROM BELOW is a study on the interwoven nature of subaltern lives and state authority, as it seeks to discern subalternity within dominant state systems by shedding light on Beijing's overlooked residents. Through deft readings of the historical record, Evans also reveals how Dashalar's residents have been left out of the historical record, thereby providing an alternative historiography of Beijing outside of the progressive version offered by the People's Republic. This book is organized around the stories of individual families, and each chapter is followed by a critical interlude analyzing the main themes of the family's story. Through these narratives, Evans draws out historical and theoretical topics such as: reworking traumas from the past in service of surviving the present; the experiences of migrant families in an already under-resourced neighborhood; and the negotiations families and individuals are willing to make to find stability. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of China and Chinese history, anthropology, history, and subaltern studies"--

The CCP's commitment to gender equality since 1921 has produced vast gains in employment and education for countless women while overlooking established gender hierarchies in family life. Long-term research in Beijing reveals that crossing class, sectoral and generational differences, there is an apparent paradox between women's increasing access to education and employment and their abiding attachment to ideas and practices associated with their roles as wives, mothers and daughters-in-law. A reconfigured "patchy" form of patriarchy is sustained by a dominant discourse of gender difference that naturalizes women's association with the domestic sphere. Unprecedented engagements with international feminism after 1995 introduced new approaches to gender equality. Recently, young feminists from diverse backgrounds have launched public protests targeting expectations of women in marriage and family life, marking a contestation of previous articulations of gender equality. Online platforms are flooded with exchanges about women's empowerment in a market environment that grants them considerable leverage to manage their marital and domestic relationships. The focus of this new generation of feminists on social reproduction signifies a radical departure from the classical Marxist principles underpinning earlier approaches to women's emancipation. Nevertheless, a "patchy patriarchy" continues to characterize widely held gender assumptions and expectations, spanning class and sectoral difference. (China Q / GIGA)

ABSTRACTOral accounts of life over seven decades in Dashalanr, a popular neighbourhood in central Beijing, reveal a social world that despite being shaped by the state's policies of social and political classification, housing and employment, has been resistant to complete appropriation by them. Based on research in the neighbourhood since 2005, and drawing on Xuanwu District archives, this article examines local residents' accounts of long decades of hardship and neglect. With an analytical framework that links gender with temporality, place and space, it suggests ways in which their singular experiences can be read as historical narrative.