Yueju – The Formation of a Legitimate Culture in Contemporary Shanghai
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.124213Keywords:
Shanghai opera, economic development, urban regeneration, culture capital, social class, taste, distinction, habitusAbstract
This article presents a case study of the development of a local cultural form – Shanghai Yueju – caught up in the rapid urban redevelopment of post-socialist China. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of ’habitus’ and ’distinction’, it analyses the processes of the reformation of taste and class in a Chinese city. It explores the following question: can high levels of financial investment revive Yueju and allow it to gain market success and cultural distinction? The question is examined in the context of Shanghai’s swift urbanisation process, throughout which the government has reinforced its control over not only economic but also social and cultural capital. It suggests that ignoring Yueju’s rootedness in a local habitus of long history and focusing only on its economic organisation has had a damaging effect on the vibrancy and viability of this cultural form. This case study of Yueju in Shanghai suggests that economically driven cultural development could lead to the erosion of local culture and restricting its social and cultural innovation.
References
Andreas, Joel (2009): Rise of the Red Engineers, the Cultural Revolution and the Origins of Chna’s New Class, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bauman, Zygmunt (1998): Globalization: The Human Consequences, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bell, Daniel (2008): China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society, Princeton: University Press.
Bergere, Marie-Claire (2009): Shanghai, China’s Gateway to Modernity, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984): Distinction, A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, London: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1991): Language and Symbolic Power, Malden: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1998): Practical Reason, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Chan, Anita (1985): Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation, Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Cohen, Paul (1986): Discovering History in China, Columbia: Columbia University Press.
DiMaggio, Paul (1977): “Market structure, the Creative Process, and Popular Culture: Toward an Organizational Reinterpretation of Mass-Culture Theory”, Journal of Popular Culture, 11, 436–452. [Read this article]
Fu, Jin (2002): A History of Chinese Drama: 1949 – 2000, Changsha: Hunan Art Publisher.
Gao, Yilong (1991): Yueju Historical Talk (Yueju Shihua), Shanghai: Shanghai Culture Publisher.
Goodman, David (2008): The New Rich in China: Future Rulers, Present Lives, London: Routledge.
Hamm, Charles (1991): “Music and Radio in the People’s Republic of China”, Asian Music, 22:2, 1-42. [Read this article]
Honig, Emily (1986): Sisters and Strangers, Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919 – 1949, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Jiang, Jin (2007): “Modernity East and West: Melodrama and Yanqing in Shanghai’s Popular Culture”, Frontiers of History in China, 2:2, 234-253. [Read this article]
Mackerras, Colin (1983): Chinese Theatre: From Its Origins to the Present Day, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Pan, Zhongdang (2005): “Spatial Configuration in Institutional Change: A Case of China’s Journalism Reforms”, Journalism, 1, 253-281. [Read this article]
Schwartz, Benjamin (1968): Communism and China: Ideology in Flux, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Tian, Hung-mao & Yun-han Chu (2000): China under Jiang Zemin, London: Lynne Rienner Publisher.
Wang, Hui (2009): Against Despair, Luxun and his Literary World (Fankang Juewang: Luxun ji qi Wenxue Shijie), Beijing: Shentong Print Ltd.
Warde, Alan & Mike Savage (1993): Urban sociology, Capitalism and Modernity, Basingstoke:Macmillan.
Wei, Li (2008): “Changing Asian Immigration and Settlement in the Pacific Rim”, New Zealand Population Review, 33:34, 69-93.
Wu, Weiping & Shahid Yusef (2002), “Pathways to a World City: Shanghai Rising in an era of Globalisation”, Urban Studies, 39: 7, 1213-1240. [Read this article]
Ying, Zhiliang (2002): The Development History of Chinese Yueju, Beijing: China Opera Publisher.
Yuan, Lijun (2005): Reconceiving Women’s Equality in China: A Critical Examination of Models of Sex Equality, Lanham: Lexington Books.
Yuan, Xuefen (2002): The Biography of Yuan Xuefen (Yuan Xuefen Zishu), Shanghai: Shanghai Cishu Publisher.
Zhang, Jian (2004): Government and Market in China, a Local Perspective, New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Zhao, Minghua (1998): “Who Makes Decisions: Enterprise Decision-Making in China”, The China Journal, 7, 205-207. [Read this article]
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2012 Ma
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Copyright for all manuscripts rests with the author(s). The editors reserve the right to edit manuscripts. Contributors are responsible for acquiring all permissions from the copyright owners for the use of quotations, illustrations, tables, etc. Each author must, before final publication fill, in a publishing agreement provided by LiU E-Press.
Since 2021 Culture Unbound uses a Creative Commons: Attribution license for new articles, which allows users to distribute the work and to reform or build upon it without the author's permission. Full reference to the author must be given. For older articles please see each article landing page.
