China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation
by: Karl Gerth

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Asia Center, 1st pbk, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 445 pages, b&w illustrations. In China Made, Karl Gerth argues that two key forces shaping the modern world-nationalism and consumerism-developed in tandem in China. Early in the twentieth century, nationalism branded every commodity as either "Chinese" or "foreign," and consumer culture became the place where the notion of nationality was articulated, institutionalized, and practiced. Based on Chinese, Japanese, and English-language archives, magazines, newspapers, and books, this first exploration of the historical ties between nationalism and consumerism reinterprets fundamental aspects of modern Chinese history and suggests ways of discerning such ties in all modern nations. Clean copy.