How, Robin Visser asks in this timely and valuable study, is Chinese culture changing in the wake of the unprecedented rapidity and scope of its urbanization process? Visser's answer takes the form of a series of field reports from across the fluid and fast-transforming topography of postsocialist urban culture, touching on phenomena ranging from city planning practices to the rise of cultural studies in the Chinese academy, avant-garde art, cinema, and urban popular fiction. As Visser makes clear, to pose the “urban question” in contemporary China is also to invoke the fault lines of a postsocialist (and particularly post-1992) moment, in which an aggressively developmentalist state and the logic of capital grinds up against local communities, histories, and practices. Visser not only provides a sensitive account of the massive urban demolition and dislocation that has been one product of this seismic encounter, but also chronicles the sparks of creative and...

You do not currently have access to this content.