Current Institutional Affiliation
Associate Professor, Sociology, University of British Columbia
Award Information
International Dissertation Research Fellowship 2001
Institutional Affiliation (at time of award):
Sociology, University of California / Berkeley
Serving the People: Department Stores and Social Change in Urban China
In China, understandings of "service" reflect fundamental social changes that economic reforms have helped generate. The proposed project seeks to understand social change, and in particular the nature of China's transformation from socialism to a market economy, through the prism of the department store. The project asks what "service" is, who defines it, and what the implications are for identity formation of service workers and consumers.