Unhomely Life

"In this exciting and innovative exploration of one tourist town in southwest China, Xiaobo Su traces the outlines of a new 'homelessness' among the temporary migrants and tourists who move from cities such as Shanghai and Beijing in search of a 'lost' or 'inner' China to call home. The meanings of home in contemporary China come into focus in a town in which escape from the homelessness of modern urbanity has become its leitmotif."
-John Agnew (UCLA) "Su's steadfast and sustained study of a single site - in the best tradition of deep ethnography - has afforded him the opportunity to observe the impact of China's great transformation in intimate terms. Su is masterful in presenting the life stories of individuals, situating them at the local level and within epochal transformations in China. This book is very compellingly written and deserves to be read by all interested in the major shifts in Chinese society across disciplines."
-Lily Kong (Singapore Management University) A journey-based critical analysis of the process and implications of homemaking in post-Mao China Unhomely Life examines why mobile individuals in China experience the loss of home feelings and how they search for home in a rapidly changing world. Offering new insights into the continuity and disruption of home in the context of China's great transformation, Xiaobo Su narrates the subjective experiences of lifestyle migrants, retreat tourists, displaced natives, and rural migrants attempting to bridge the gap between the home they leave behind and the ideal home they imagine. Developing an original theory that integrates a robust theoretical framework, in-depth research data, and traditional Chinese ideas of home, the author explores how 'unhomely' life reflects and reinforces the unevenness of mobilities and modernity while considering the socio-cultural costs of China's high-speed economic growth. The making of home is not a solely economic calculation for maximum return, Su argues, but rather a search for balance between meaning and money in everyday life under the disappointing conditions of modernity. Unhomely Life: Modernity, Mobilities, and the Making of Home in China is an invaluable resource for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, lecturers, and academic researchers in cultural studies, migration, tourism, China studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, social geography, and cultural geography.

Xiaobo Su is a Professor of Urban and Regional Development in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon. He is the co-author of The Politics of Heritage Tourism in China: A View from Lijiang and serves on the editorial boards of Geopolitics and Tourism Tribute. His research investigates China's transformation from a planned economy to a market economy, focused on urban and regional development, tourism, migration, urban entrepreneurialism, and border politics.