Thought Reform and China''s Dangerous Classes - Reeducation, Resistance, and the People

Informationen zum Autor By Aminda M. Smith Klappentext This book offers the first detailed study of the essential relationship between thought reform and the "dangerous classes"-the prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, and other "lumpenproletarians" the Communists saw as a threat to society and the revolution. Aminda Smith takes readers inside early-PRC reformatories, where the new state endeavored to transform "vagrants" into members of the laboring masses. As places where "the people" were literally created, these centers became testing grounds for rapidly changing ideas and experiments about thought reform and the subjects they produced. Smith explores reformatories as institutions dedicated to molding new socialist citizens and as symbolic spaces in which internees, cadres, and the ordinary masses made sense of what it meant to be a member of the people in the People's Republic. Drawing on extensive, previously unavailable source material, she offers convincing answers to much-debated questions about the development and future of Chinese political culture. Inhaltsverzeichnis Chapter 1: Finding a Place for the Lumpenproletariat: Vacillators and Rural Revolution Chapter 2: The People versus Their Enemies: Urban Reeducation and the Old Society Chapter 3: The Curriculum of Consciousness Raising: Low Consciousness and Mass Reeducation Chapter 4: The Laboring Masses: Voluntarism and the People Chapter 5: The People Stand Up: Resistance and ReformConclusionBibliography

Product details

• Authors: Smith, Aminda M Smith, Aminda M. Smith
• Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 13.12.2012
• EAN: 9781442218376
• ISBN: 978-1-4422-1837-6
• No. of pages: 268
• Series: Asia/Pacific/Perspectives; Asia/Pacific/Perspectives
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > General, dictionaries; China, Cultural Studies, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / Asian, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, HISTORY / Asia / China, Social and cultural history, Far-left political ideologies and movements, Asian History, Marxism & Communism, Asian studies;China studies