Dryburgh, M.E. (2016) Living on the Edge: welfare and the urban poor in 1930s Beijing. Social History, 41 (1). pp. 14-33. ISSN 0307-1022
Abstract
This article examines poverty and welfare provision in early twentieth-century Beijing as dialogue and transaction between the city government and the urban poor. Earlier studies of the Chinese urban have tended to emphasize the material aspects of urban development, and the efforts of planners and city governments to modernize China’s cities, rather than the human experience of the city. This article draws on the extensive archives of the Beijing Municipal Government Social Affairs Bureau to extend our understanding of the experience of poverty and the agency of the poor. The archive confirms that Beijing’s growing and increasingly formalized welfare institutions were designed to discipline the poor as they alleviated poverty. However, the correspondence between applicants for welfare and the Social Affairs Bureau also reveals that the poor often approached these institutions instrumentally and assertively. Recourse to the welfare institute became a livelihood tactic, a claim on the authorities in pursuit of which certain sub-groups within the poor mobilized intangible assets, from social networks to understanding of the intended terms of the system, to sway the terms of their engagement with the authorities in their own favour.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Taylor and Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Beijing; China; poverty; twentieth century; welfare |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of East Asian Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 13 Jul 2016 11:50 |
Last Modified: | 13 Jul 2016 11:57 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2015.1108708 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis (Routledge) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/03071022.2015.1108708 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:101912 |
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