Comments on: Fuller on Becker on Beijing

By: wu ming

wu ming — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:29:53 +0000

BTW, that video’s pretty awesome.

By: JamesP

JamesP — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:27:40 +0000

That said, the book was crying out for a comparative evaluation, not with the British experience, but with other contemporary Asian cities – Seoul, most obviously.

By: JamesP

JamesP — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:22:45 +0000

I can’t help but feel that he’s looking for the wrong things in Becker’s book, though; nobody expects deep analysis out of what is, essentially, a personal memoir of a city’s history by a journalist. (That said, the personal could have done with emphasising to make that point.) It’s not like his terrible book on North Korea, which is supposed to be a work of serious political reportage and analysis and is just … bad. So very, very bad. The strength of the book is in the vignettes and the interviews, not in the grand sweeping statements about the nature of China, but nobody – I hope – was buying it for the latter, whereas the former are very enjoyable and often illuminating.

By: wu ming

wu ming — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:04:27 +0000

if i am reading fuller correctly it’s the general way that becker (and many commentators on china) treats the consequences of modernity as uniquely chinese problems, and omitting the global experience of modernity (in all its ugliness, destruction and repression) in his own country, which he’s contrasting favorably (or would that be favourably?) with china for rhetorical purposes.

not only would a comparative approach (or just a nod to same) illuminate what’s actually unique about chinese modernity, kitsch, urban renovation, etc., it would also prevent the sort of “who’s more civilized?” binary that becker toys with.

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:44:58 +0000

Stuart,

I might agree that an explicitly comparative methodology is not always appropriate, but I suspect Fuller is arguing that Becker himself is not always aware of the intellectual baggage weighing down his analysis. Again, I haven’t read the book, so I’m reading into what Fuller might have meant rather than indicting Becker myself.