Service Encounters - 9780804758369

Service EncountersClass, Gender, and the Market for Social Distinction in Urban China\nAuthor(s): Amy Hanser\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Stanford University Press, United States\nImprint: Stanford University Press\nISBN-13: 9780804758369, 978-0804758369\nSynopsis\nThis 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 jobsservice work, in this case salesclerk workand 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 differencesand inequalitiesare recognized and justified. The study's.