Publisher comments
A brilliant execution of what we can think of as a new research strategy: how to study globalization through the details of a micro-level focus, how to capture cross-border dynamics in the complexities of localized social forms. Saskia Sassen, author of Globalization and Its Discontents, Columbia University
In this ethnography Jan Lin brilliantly explodes multiple fables about Chinatown constructed by white mythmakers over the last century. Politicians, movies, and TV shows have created stereotypes of dangerous or mysterious Orientals and of exotic urban zones and red light districts. This anti-immigrant imagery gives way as we see the complexity and vitality of life in Manhattan's Chinatown community, a real place with the sights and sounds of real people. These Americans have built community in the face of chronic intrusions--from government redevelopment and federal immigration policy to corporate exploitation and cycling investment from China. Using diverse research methods, Lin reveals the problems and change characteristic of urban communities thrust increasingly into the globalizing economy of the late twentieth century. Joe Feagin, professor of sociology, University of Florida and author of The New Urban Paradigm, and coeditor of The Bubbling Cauldron
Much has been made of the increasingly transnational character of Asian American communities, but virtually no community studies have emerged to thoroughly interrogate this condition. Lin engages this absence by dramatically illustrating how localized processes of development and change are shaped by the new global economy. His study of Chinatown explores the connections between capital and labor, the community, and the state, and demonstrates how structural forces and representational practices are intertwined in the construction of racialized places. This book truly represents the next wave of community studies. Michael Omi, University of California, Berkeley
