Hansun Yang
I am a Ph. D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology and currently working on my dissertation writing. I received both B.A. and M.A. degrees in anthropology at Seoul National University in South Korea. In my M.A. thesis, I studied organic farming and cooperative community movements in South Korea and this study was published as a chapter of a book titled “New Social Movements in Korea” which was edited by the Korean Social Science Council in 1998. I started the Ph.D. program at UIUC with the overseas study grant from the Ministry of Education of Korea in 1995. I conducted my dissertation fieldwork in Wuxi, China in 2002 - 2003. During this time, I also had a chance to give lectures as a visiting scholar at Southern Yangtze University in Wuxi for two semesters. The main data of my dissertation were collected when I participated in “model tourism” as a tour guide in Huaxi village, the richest village in China today. My dissertation which is temporarily titled “Celebration of THE Wealth and Nostalgia of Collectivism: The Politics of Model Tourism in China’s Richest Village” examines the discourse of wealth and collectivism in model tourism in Huaxi village to understand how diverse groups of people in rural China negotiate social differentiation which is brought about by socialist state developmentalism and the neoliberal market economy. Based on the analysis of diverse discourses of wealth and collectivism in Huaxi tourism, I argue that Huaxi tourism is driven not only by the state ideology of developmentalism and xiaokang (moderately well-to-do) society but also by the ever-increasing force of neoliberal market economy and commercialism. Yet, I also argue that the forces of the state policy and neoliberal market economy are articulated by local politics including authoritarian leadership, familism, localism, unitism, and even the ideals of socialism.