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CCS 2009 Noon Lecture Series: "A Question of Confidence: State Legitimacy and the New Urban Poor"
September 22, 2009
12:00 PM - 01:00 PM,
Room 1636 School of Social Work Building,
1080 South University
Host Department: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
Dorothy J. Solinger, Professor of Political Science, University of California at Irvine
Further Information
If state benevolence is to serve as a critical condition for Chinese citizens’ acceptance of their government as legitimate, then the concept and practice of official “benevolence” demands some interrogation in today’s China. Does benevolence obtain, and do those who would depend deeply upon it believe in its presence? And, as evidence of such belief, do they entertain an expectation that the state, in its guise as donor, can be counted upon for what for them are vital extensions of its current offerings in the days to come? I target the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee program in Chinese cities and its subjects in order to address this query. Paradoxically, I will argue, a very prominent element in the relationship between the two is the far more abiding confidence that the recipients appear to place in the powers-that-be than the leaders are willing to lead back to them.
Dorothy J. Solinger is Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Irvine where she has been teaching since 1986. Previously, she taught at the University of Pittsburgh. In academic year 1985-86, she was invited to teach and held a fellowship at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Contesting Citizenship in Urban China (1999), which won the Joseph R. Levenson prize of the Association for Asian Studies for the best book on 20th century China published in 1999. Her forthcoming book, “States’ Gains, Labor’s Losses: China, France and Mexico Choose Global Liaisons, 1980-2000,” will be published by Cornell University Press later this year.
