New Mentalities of Government in China

New Mentalities of Government in China: Emerging Professions, Vocations and Citizens examines how the privatization and professionalization of ‘public’ service provision is transforming the nature of government and everyday life in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Government in Mao-era China (1949–1976) operated almost entirely through official organs and agencies in a hierarchical and highly regulated system of formal authority. This system administered and mobilized the population through urban work-units and rural collectives to participate in the governing of everyday life. In the post-1978 era of market-based economic reform, the old ‘mass-line’ mode of government has been progressively replaced, but not entirely supplanted, by more complex and diffuse forms of governance, which increasingly rely on expertise and service provision from a host of new professions and professionals, and vocationally orientated organizations and people, focussing on new social problems, social subjects and citizenries.

David Bray is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. His current research seeks to chart the socio-technical assemblages that constitute China’s rapidly changing built environments. He is the author ofSocial Space and Governance in Urban China: The Danwei System from Origins to Reform(2005, Stanford University Press).

Elaine Jeffreys is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (FT100100238) at the China Research Centre, and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney. Elaine is the author ofProstitution Scandals in China: Policing, Media and Society (2012 Routledge) andChina, Sex and Prostitution (2012 [2004] Routledge). She is the editor of China’s Governmentalies: Governing Change, Changing Government (2011 [2009] Routledge) andSex and Sexuality in China (2009 [2006] Routledge); and co-editor, with Louise Edwards, ofCelebrity in China (2010 Hong Kong University Press).