The broad social, political, and economic consequences of China's transition from a planned socialist to a free market economy constitute a significant area of sociological research. Service Encounters, which studies China's increasing social stratification from a cultural perspective, is a major contribution to this literature. This work analyses China's economic transformation from the counters of three distinct market settings: Sunshine, a luxury department store borne of China's 1978 economic reforms; Harbin No. X, a formerly government-run department store and remnant of China's socialist roots; and the Underground, a low-end clothing bazaar.
Drawing from Pierre Bourdieu, Michele Lamont, and Raymond Williams's work on the cultural construction of social boundaries, Amy Hanser argues that “the cultural dispositions and the structures of feeling experienced by various social groups combine to form an overall structure of entitlement” (p. 8, italics in the original). The changing structures of entitlement are observed through a particular form of labour that Hanser terms “distinction work,” the organization of service work to produce or maintain social distinctions in a relational manner. The reinforcement of social boundaries takes place both among retail organizations as well as between workers and customers. Embedding the changing structures of entitlement within the historical context of China's political and economic transformation, Hanser explores the consequent shift in societal notions of the ideal female worker: from the sturdy, gender-neutral woman worker of the Mao-era, to the sexualized, overtly feminine worker of the free market period.
The second chapter, “Revolution and Reform,” discusses China's retail sector before and after the 1978 economic reforms and the effects of transition from a shortage to a market economy on Chinese consumers and workers. Chapter three gives the reader a tour of Harbin No. X past and present. The store's socialist roots produced a work environment generally free of distinction work, as demonstrated by the presence of a socialist managerial mindset, strong socialist work culture, and relative equality between salesclerks and customers in service interactions.
The following chapter explores the sales floor of the luxury retailer, which was explicitly structured to produce class distinctions through its female workforce. Here, distinction work was engineered to distinguish Sunshine from its lower-end competitors and its workers from Harbin No. X and Underground workers. At the level of the service interaction, both managers and workers performed distinction work by showing extreme deference to the customer, often to the silent indignation of the Sunshine saleswomen.
Chapter five introduces the female workers of the Underground, a place where the low-status saleswomen challenged the distinctions separating high-end retail goods from their own cheaper imitations, and in doing so also blur the symbolic class boundaries maintained by the retail organizations. Despite the saleswomen and merchant's relative success in contesting the boundaries between their products and those of their competitors, they were much less successful in challenging their own low status. Returning to Harbin No. X, chapter six presents the argument that the increasingly competitive retail field in Harbin changed distinction work practices and sales floor interactions of the department store. Concerned with maintaining a reputable position within the retail field, salesclerks often drew upon nostalgia for the socialist past in order to distinguish themselves as a moral and reliable force within a risky and competitive market economy.
At several places in the book, Hanser draws comparisons between China and the retail fields of the US and Europe. However, she does not fully pursue the implications of their close parallels. Nor does she explain what elements of consumerism and the everyday enactment of social boundaries are significantly particular to the Chinese case. Here, this work would have benefited from discussion of China's distinct political economy, which Hanser sacrifices for a singularly cultural approach to class and inequality.
Overall, the book remains an application of Bourdieuian theory rather than a critique or advancement of it. The strength of the work lies in its empirical data, which illuminates how inequality is produced and enacted at the organizational and interactional level within China. Hanser utilizes ethnographic methods of participant observation and interviews in order to demonstrate through everyday social interactions what inequality “feels like,” how it is constructed and perceived, and she certainly succeeds in this endeavour. Her accounts of strict managerial control of sales clerks' actions and bodies, as well as her own experiences with workplace discipline, offer compelling evidence of the growing inequality and social stratification within Chinese society. While the book does not push the boundaries of Bourdieu's conceptual framework, the theoretical application specifically to China, where inequality has become such a pressing and significant concern at all levels of Chinese society, renders this work a necessary read for China specialists of all backgrounds.
