TechnoViews #14. ‘Chinese Village Life Today’ | Gonçalo Santos (University of Coimbra)

Gonçalo SANTOS, interviewed by Jun ZHANG on May 26, 2022

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

This podcast episode discusses village life in China today after more than four decades of radical programs of urbanization and modernization. As China became a predominantly urban and industrial society with increasing levels of affluence, the government expanded its capacity to implement large-scale programs of development aimed at turning “backward” Han Chinese peasant populations into modern “civilized” subjects more aligned with global and national standards of modernity. In this episode, anthropologist Gonçalo Santos discusses this technocratic transition from the perspective of impoverished rural communities, drawing on two decades of longitudinal field research in one rural township in Guangdong Province. Santos shares his views on what has changed in  ...