Ungrounded Empires

This book examines Chinese transnationalism as a distinctive domain within the new "flexible" capitalism emerging in the Asia-Pacific region. Interweaving anthropology, cultural studies, and interpretive political economy, essays in this book are based on new ethnographic research, in a range of sites, that examine the connections of human agency, cultural politics, and indeed pathos. Critiquing the view that these changes are the product of the ways that late capitalism and its concomitants--flexibility, travel, sub-contracting, multiculturalism, and mass media--are reworking the identities of an ethnic population in different global situations. Contributors: Cristina Szanton Blanc, Prasenjit Duara, Takeshi Hamashita, You-tien Hsing, Ching Kwan Lee, Xin Liu, Katharyne Mitchell, Donal Nonini, Aihwa Ong, Carl Trocki, Wong Siu Lun, and Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang.