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By Nimrod Baranovitch. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 2003. 364 pp. US$65.00 (Hardcover), US$24.95 (Paperback). ISBN: 0-520-23449-9 (Hardcover), 0-520-23450-2 (Paperback)
This excellent book focuses on popular musical culture in China in the period of reform. It looks at music both in its own terms, and also with respect to ethnicity and gender. It combines theoretical advance with a great deal of new empirical material relevant to its subject. The author himself says (p. 7) that the main contribution of his book "lies in its treatment of ethnicity and gender in the context of popular culture."
There are definitely major new insights in this book, and they appear to this reviewer to be apt and well argued. For instance, one central notion is that Western scholars have, on the whole, overplayed the "hegemony-resistance" concept of popular culture in the reform period. In other words, they have tended too strongly to see all popular culture as being against the authorities and the Party-state. Of course, much of it has indeed been hostile to official viewpoints. But Baranovitch stresses that much of it has been either supportive of the government or more or less neutral. Personally, this analysis accords strongly with my own impressions of popular culture and the ideas of young people in China, especially since the 1990s.
Baranovitch discusses a definition of the term "popular culture," but refuses to pick on features that "essentialize" such a concept. What he does instead is to analyse whether there should be a consonance between "popular" and "unofficial" culture, in the sense of departing from the state-imposed version of "mass culture." He decides that popular culture is in fact a bit broader than simply...