上海的公共性与国家

Focusing on the associations in Shanghai since the late Qing, the book is attempting to explorethe relationships between urban community, public sphere, and state. The three parts conver the urbanization of Shanghai that provided a stage for associations, the responsibilities of the assosiations, and the reorganization of the associations in the newly-defined urban space under the govern of the nationalists.

The good thing is her views on the associations as the representataives of public interests, seeing them as the mediators between the state and the public commoners. It seems this approach is a good way that avoids the deficit of social structure that is too abstract, and at the same time precludes the fracgmentation that could be generated by the close look at the actual people within the community.

But the problem lies here as well: by highlighting the associations that occupy the middle ground (if there is any) between citizens and state, this approach runs the risk of de-humanizing the orgnization and the operation of society. We would like to ask who are in these associations and what were the real motives and strategies behind what they did. Under the grand narrative of "public interests" that integrate all the association into a story, we would like to know if there were any disputes, collisions, cooperations, and conflicts between the citizens, local elites, associations leaders, and local officials. Even more, how did the associations obtain their ligiemacy, and how did citizens perceive their functions? In other words, if the associations are mediators between people ans state, the relationship between people and them are still unclear. The real dynamics, tensions, and changes of Chinese society may lie no where but the details of the daily reactions and perceptions.