Frank Dikotter, Hong Kong University, China After Mao

This talk will present China after Mao, a book which uses hundreds of hitherto unseen documents from municipal and provincial archives in the People’s Republic to examine forty years of so-called “Reform and Opening Up”. The author will cover some of the key episodes in the story of China’s transformation from impoverished Maoist backwater into powerful Marxist-Leninist state.

Jieyu Liu, SOAS, Family Life in Urban China: A Three-Generation Portrait

This talk will draw upon over one hundred life history interviews with three urban generations of men and women to examine how continuities and changes in family life have been shaped by the wider political, socio-economic and demographic transformations since 1949. The portrait it paints offers a forceful alternative narrative to Western modernity theorists’ overly homogenized view of intimacy and family life.