Rural Futures in Late Socialist Asia

The Countryside in a Globalising World

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54195/jps.18021

Keywords:

rural development, late socialist asia, rural futures, rural-urban entanglement, the politics of development, globalisation and rural development, China, Vietam, Laos

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed global movements and flows of labour, capital, goods, and technologies into and out of the countryside in the Global South. This special issue discusses how globalisation, increasing urbanisation, and state policies shape rural lives across China, Vietnam and Laos, and how rural people imagine their futures amid the risks and uncertainties generated at the juncture between political, economic, and ecological forces. It unsettles the urban/rural divide while showing that such polarized construction will persist as long as clear benefits for the state and market remain in constructing the countryside as in dire need of development and catching up with the city.

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Author Biographies

  • Jingyu Mao, The University of Edinburgh


    Jingyu Mao is Lecturer in Sociology at Edinburgh University, UK. Her research interests include migration and work, rural-urban inequalities, emotion and personal life, and the politics of care. She is the author of the forthcoming book Intimacy as a Lens on Work and Migration–the Experiences of Ethnic Performers in Southwest China (Bristol University Press, 2024). Her work has appeared in journals including: The China Quarterly, Emotions and Society, Families, Relationships and Societies; and China Perspectives.

  • Minh T.N. Nguyen, Bielefeld University

    Minh T. N. Nguyen is professor of social anthropology at Bielefeld University and visiting professor at University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Her research focuses on labor and work, care and welfare, migration and mobility in Vietnam, China and Southeast Asia. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Starting-Grant project WelfareStruggles and the author of Vietnam’s Socialist Servants: Domesticity, Gender, Class, and Identity (2014) and Waste and Wealth: An Ethnography of Labour, Value, and Morality in a Vietnamese Recycling Economy (2018, winner of the Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Prize 2019). She is also author and coauthor of five special issues and multiple articles in journals such as American Ethnologist, Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, Development and Change, Ethics and Social Welfare, Journal of Peasant Studies and Economy and Society.

     



  • Phill Wilcox, Bielefeld University

    Phill Wilcox is research associate at Bielefeld University, Germany. Her research interests include the anthropology of development, aspiration, and future making. She is the author of Heritage and the Making of Political Legitimacy in Laos: The Past and Present of the Lao Nation (2021). Her work has also appeared in journals including: Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Finnish Anthropology, Civilisations and Southeast Asian Affairs



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Published

2025-02-19

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 2 (2024): Special Issue - Rural Futures in Late Socialist Asia

Section

Editorial

How to Cite

Mao, J., Nguyen, M. T., & Wilcox, P. (2025). Rural Futures in Late Socialist Asia: The Countryside in a Globalising World. Journal of Political Sociology, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.54195/jps.18021