Service Encounters: Class, Gender, and the Market for Social Distinction in Urban China

ISBN: 0804758379

Author: Hanser, Amy

Condition: Used

This lively study explores how social and economic changes to Chinese society create new cultural values and forms of inequality. Amy Hanser examines changes to a particular set of jobsservice work, in this case salesclerk workand the nature of the social interactions involved. It argues that a new "structure of entitlement," which makes elite groups feel more entitled to public forms of respect and social esteem, is constructed in settings like new, luxury department stores. The book not only shows how this change involves increasingly unequal relations between clerks and customers, but also demonstrates how marketplaces have become sites where social differencesand inequalitiesare recognized and justified. The study's importance lies in its attention to ethnographic detail, its application of cultural theories of inequality to China, and its contribution to our understanding of contemporary China. Unlike other studies of inequality in urban China, this book takes a unique settingthe marketplace and the interactions between customers and salespeopleand a unique approachthe author herself worked as a salesclerk in three settings.