Young Chinese in Urban China

摘要

Alex Cockain, a British sociologist who has taught in China, starts his book with an interesting premise: to conduct interviews with a group of young Chinese to counter the "heady, febrile, seemingly intoxicated language of superlatives [which] has become the standard lexicon to describe Chinese urban areas" (p. 23). In a nicely structured account, he examines three contexts in which young people (meaning those in their late teenage years and early twenties) live their lives in China: the macro, micro and mediated spaces. The macro context starts with urban neighbourhoods, covers the tensions of city living, and assesses the nature of youthful connections to the nation and world.