Underglobalization

"UNDERGLOBALIZATION examines the cultural logic of the fake that has shaped globalized politics and culture in China. Joshua Neves shows how this interest in faking encompasses more than just China's infamous counterfeit luxury goods and pirated films, extending into questions about political legitimacy and Chinese ambivalence about being assimilated into hegemonic global modernity. Neves looks at various cultural practices in post-socialist Beijing-ranging from the consumption and circulation of cinema and film, to the proliferation of televisions and screens in private and public spaces, to the design of urban spaces and architectural landmarks-to understand how notions of legitimacy and faking operate as forms of neoliberal and neocolonial control. Pushing back against claims that Chinese modernity is incomplete, unrealized, or "counterfeit," Neves argues that the strategy of "faking globalization" deploys illegality and illegitimacy as cultural and political techniques of being global. Neves begins by outlining the history of Beijing's post-socialist transformation, showing how this transformation is structured temporally--as the ruins of the past have been cleared away--to mak