Rural Origins, City Lives: Class and Place in Contemporary China by Roberta Zavoretti (review)

China has made enormous advances since the late 1970s, when Deng Hsiao-ping pushed economic reforms. These reforms raised the overall standard of living but also had major consequences for the country's workers. Roberta Zavoretti relates how Nanjing workers, rural–urban transplants who had lived for many years in the city, tell a story not conveyed through standard generalizations about urban versus rural workers or media-promoted depictions of the "rise of the middle class." Her account brings an entirely new perspective that breaks down stereotypes of China's economic and social life in urban areas and explains how these developments reflect changing relations with rural communities.

The standard portrayal of "Chinese workers" has focused on factories, construction, and coal mines. In studies of urban workers, the focus invariably has been on industrial zones like Guangzhou. Workers are often depicted as transitory migrants from the countryside. As a social anthropologist, Zavoretti has sought another approach in Nanjing. Her ethnographic fieldwork focuses on street-based workers and those in retail shops (a bakery and a tailor shop geared to fashion). She spent time getting to know workers in these settings, rather than asking a set of research questions in time-limited interviews. This approach required building trust over time and included building friendships. Her fluency in Chinese (not mentioned in the book, but obvious from her direct contact with people without using interpreters) seems to have proved crucial as well.

All those she interviewed were originally from rural villages, but not "migrants" in the sense of going to Nanjing only for temporary work. Long-term Nanjing residents, particularly those in middle-class and professional positions, stereotype these people as "peasant workers" and not genuine Nanjingren (Nanjing people). This class prejudice originated in the "urban/rural" distinction enforced during the Maoist era through hukou (household registration), issued to all Chinese by the government. Under this regime, the hukou became a kind of internal passport. Those in urban areas with this registration had access to "state-provided services and were therefore considered to be better off," while "rural residents had to provide for themselves" (162). In the current era of reform, this policy has been modified considerably, but social inequality has persisted as urban residence has become commodified, linked to access to less expensive housing and education with lower fees. Zavoretti's informants considered themselves Nanjing residents, even if a different type, but they were not accepted by those who had lived their whole lives in the city.

The ongoing debate over whether China remains socialist or has embraced a new form of capitalism has some intriguing twists in Zavoretti's narrative. She relates the experiences of Nanjing workers but effectively links their stories to a broader theoretical analysis incorporating Gramsci on hegemony, Bourdieu on "practice theory," and E. P. Thompson on class not as a category but as something that happens in social relations, as well as China specialist literature and sociological research. Perhaps Zavoretti's most effective strategy is allowing us to follow the lives and emotions of those she encounters daily in their workplaces. We learn that healthcare is not free or public but is tied to one's workplace, so those not employed by a major enterprise, whether state or private, pay their own way. Education also costs more for those without a Nanjing hukou. Street vendors are not considered legitimate traders. Sometimes their presence is tolerated by police, sometimes not, though in the wake of the 2020 pandemic Chinese authorities have actually encouraged street vendors as a way to compensate for unemployment. If this is "socialism," then it is very different than even many capitalist countries that have free public education and national healthcare accessible to all.

The prejudice against the workers and small business owners (categorized as "household businesses" or getihu) who originally came from rural areas has been reinforced in the ideology of the state. In place of...