Mengqi Wang, "Anxious Homes: Inflexible Demand and China's Housing Market" (Cornell UP, 2026)

New Books in Sociology · May 19, 2026 · 1h 1m

Anxious Homes: Inflexible Demand and China's Housing Market (Cornell UP, 2026) is a study of the power that shapes the forms of the homes Chinese citizens strive for and the possible paths they may take to realize their home ownership dreams. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Mengqi Wang discusses how the Chinese real estate industry functions in the everyday, welding aspirational middle-class families, especially migrant families, to the property-owning class and the urban growth machine. Urban housing was a socialist benefit in China until the market reforms and privatization in…