The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City

Abstract

systems and political posturing affect the global environment, political economy, and individual ecosystems and beings far beyond its national borders. Two of many such examples include Xi Jinping’s major speech about China becoming a leader against global climate change as introduced in “Apparatus F. A Sinocene,” and an incredibly fascinating story about scientists tracking chemical accumulation in trophic levels on the California coast, where Chinese chemical particulates from the air have mixed with once-benign mercury left over from the California gold rush to create new heavily toxic inorganic pollutants. Continent in Dust makes many very important and novel contributions to the study of contemporary China’s political economy and how this plays out in global environmental politics and planetary health. The idea presented of the possibility of living in a Sinocene era is novel and should be lauded and widely acknowledged and read for discussion among scholars, graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Whether or not one agrees with this concept, Zee provides excellent fodder for discussion over China’s role in the configuration of global environmental change. Within anthropology, and environmental anthropology in particular, it is my sincere hope that this book will gain wide readership and traction beyond merely those working in and studying China. For a long time the canon of environmental anthropology has tended to ignore incredible ethnographic works from China. Zee excellently makes the case that today’s environmental anthropology should not only pay attention to China but begin to centre China as a mode and locale of analysis in the potential era of the Sinocene, with China’s continent in dust existing far beyond national borders.