Service Encounters: Class, Gender, and the Market for Social Distinction in Urban China

"Hanser provides a vivid account of the everyday implications of Post-Mao era economic reforms and how boundaries of class and gender are both articulated and made permeable. Her concise and careful use of social theory makes it a useful introduction to practices of class and gender distinction." -- Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific "A pure pleasure to read, Hanser's ethnography probes the little-known world of retail clerks in post-socialist China. An important, contemporary contribution to the eternal questions about inequality and stratification that remain at the core of sociological research, this book will be an ethnographic classic." -- Deborah Davis "Hanser presents a detailed, refreshing ethnographic account of three radically different retail settings and practices, skillfully tracing the shifting symbolic boundaries of class, gender, and service in urban China." -- Li Zhang, University of California * Davis *