ABSTRACT
In Beijing’s Liujiayuan-Tangjiayuan residential neighborhood, China’s economic reforms have caused sweeping and unplanned changes. In Liujiayuan-Tangjiayuan, and throughout Beijing, the term shehui diwei has become a typical expression people use to talk about their places in urban society. Work units had provided workers with jobs, incomes, housing, food, access to education and healthcare, and a place in China’s socialist cosmology, as the vanguard of the revolution. While workers and former workers bemoaned the institutionalized “laziness” they perceived to have crippled the state sector, numerous retired or laid-off workers of all ages had already “jumped into the sea” of the market economy, vigorously refashioning themselves as local entrepreneurs. The apartment brokerage business offers another example of the efficacy of local socioeconomic relations. Propaganda posters, placed outside and within residential spaces, show the interest of the state in promoting conformity to national, municipal, and district-wide directives.
