This lively study explores how social and economic changes to Chinese society create new cultural values and forms of inequality. Amy Hanser examines changes to a particular set of jobs—service work, in this case salesclerk work—and the nature of the social interactions involved. It argues that a new "structure of entitlement," which makes elite groups feel more entitled to public forms of respect and social esteem, is constructed in settings like new, luxury department stores. The book not only shows how this change involves increasingly unequal relations between clerks and customers, but also demonstrates how marketplaces have become sites where social differences—and inequalities—are recognized and justified. The study's importance lies in its attention to ethnographic detail, its application of cultural theories of inequality to China, and its contribution to our understanding of contemporary China. Unlike other studies of inequality in urban China, this book takes a unique setting—the marketplace and the interactions between customers and salespeople—and a unique approach—the author herself worked as a salesclerk in three settings.

Amy Hanser (PhD in Sociology, UC Berkeley) is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. She has published articles and a book, Service Encounters (Stanford 2008), on service work, consumption, and inequality in urban China. Her current research projects include study of consumer rights' discourse in China, of North American media portrayals of China-made products, and of street markets and street vendors in urban China.