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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Driessen, Miriam, 1985- author.

Title Tales of hope, tastes of bitterness : Chinese road builders in Ethiopia / Miriam Driessen.

Publication Info. Hong Kong [China] : Hong Kong University Press, [2019]

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (viii, 198 pages) : maps
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents Pushed to Ethiopia -- Preserving purity -- The politics of intimacy -- Fashioning Ethiopian laborers -- Inspiring indiscipline -- Entangled in lawsuits -- Speaking bitterness.
Summary China's new globalism plays out as much in the lives of ordinary workers who shoulder the task of implementing infrastructure projects in the world as in the upper echelons of power. Through unprecedented ethnographic research among Chinese road builders in Ethiopia, Miriam Driessen finds that the hope of sharing China's success with developing countries soon turns into bitterness, as Chinese workers perceive a lack of support and appreciation from Ethiopian laborers and state entities. The bitterness is compounded by their position at the margins of Chinese society, suspended as they are between China and Africa and between a poor rural background and a precarious urban future. Workers' aspirations and predicaments reflect back on a Chinese society in flux as well as China's shifting place in the world. Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia sheds light on situations of contact in which disparate cultures meet and wrestle with each other in highly asymmetric relations of power. Revealing the intricate and intimate dimensions of these encounters, Driessen conceptualizes how structures of domination and subordination are reshaped on the ground. The book skillfully interrogates micro-level experiences and teases out how China's involvement in Africa is both similar to and different from historical forms of imperialism.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Foreign workers, Chinese -- Ethiopia.
Foreign workers, Chinese.
Ethiopia.
Roads -- Ethiopia -- Design and construction.
Roads.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Other Form: Print version: 9789888528042
ISBN 9882204414 electronic book
9789882204416 (electronic book)
9789888528042