Professor
Department(s): Department of Geography
Chair: Global Studies
545 McCone Hall
Phone: 510-642-3903
Email: yhsing@berkeley.edu
About
Professor Hsing has been involved in Area Studies on campus for many years. She recently completed a five year term as chair of the Center for Chinese Studies, has served as the head graduate advisor in Geography for six years, and as the head undergraduate advisor for four years. She serves on the executive committee of IEAS and Global Metropolitan studies and is one of the most distinguished scholars in her field. She describes her interests as follows:
“My research and teaching has been focused on the political economy of development in East Asia, especially China. I am interested in the question of power and space. My first book, Making Captialism in China: The Taiwan Connection, focuses on the role of culture in inter-regional capital flows. In my second book, The Great Urban Tansformation: Politics of Land and Property in China, I examine the issue of territorality. I look at how the transformation of the state and the society shapes and is shaped by land battles in Chinese cities and villages. My co-edited book, Reclaiming Chinese Society, looks at China’s emerging social activism in the struggles over distribution, recognition, and representation. My current project concerns the cultural and environmental politics in Northwestern China. For my research I draw inspiration from ethnographical work: in-depth interviews and participatory observation with a reflexive perspective. I believe that theorizing starts from muddy realities. It is a process of open dialogues and self-reflections, of which the historical and the geographical, the institutional and the emotional are all indispensable parts.”