Urban Society In China
There is considerable confusion in both Chinese and foreign sources over definitions of urban places and hence considerable variation in estimates of China's urban population (see Migration in China).
The problem of determining the size of the urban population reflects inconsistent and changing administrative categories; the distinction between rural and urban household registry and between categories of settlements; the practice of placing suburban or rural districts under the administration of municipal governments; and the differences in the status accorded to small towns. In sociological terms, urban refers to an area characterized by a relatively high degree of specialization in occupational roles, many special-purpose institutions, and uniform treatment of people in impersonal settings. In this sense, a Chinese market town is more urban than a village, and settlements become more urban as they grow in size and economic complexity. Municipalities like Beijing and Shanghai have the highest degree of division of labor and the most specialized institutions.
Read more about Urban Society In China: Distinctive Features, Housing, Families and Marriage, Providing For The Next Generation, Opportunities and Competition, Examinations, Hereditary Transmission of Jobs, and Connections, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words urban, society and/or china:
“Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–62)
“Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor any one in society alone among the others, so man is not alone in the universe.”
—Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908)
“It all ended with the circuslike whump of a monstrous box on the ear with which I knocked down the traitress who rolled up in a ball where she had collapsed, her eyes glistening at me through her spread fingers—all in all quite flattered, I think. Automatically, I searched for something to throw at her, saw the china sugar bowl I had given her for Easter, took the thing under my arm and went out, slamming the door.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)