Laurence Coderre, "Newborn Socialist Things: Materiality in Maoist China" (Duke UP, 2021)

New Books in Sociology · Oct 19, 2021 · 1h 19m

Laurence Coderre’s Newborn Socialist Things: Materiality in Maoist China (Duke UP, 2021) is an exciting book that considers Chinese socialist culture seriously in terms of materiality and theory by tracing the contours of Maoist China through the heretofore unexpected lens of the commodity and consumerism. In Coderre’s book, the “newborn socialist thing,” a critical concept developed by theorists working to give shape to the coming utopia, is both a historical object and a model that provides the conceptual mapping for her project. Across six chapters that handle terrain as diverse as…