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Where You Labor Is Where You Sing

The New Folksong Movement of 1958 and the Fissured Mediascape of Maoist China

Bibliographic Data

ID6008667
AuthorsMark Mcconaghy (0000-0001-8419-1876, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume47
Issue5
Pages475-509
Publication date2021-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern China (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-7004 • E-ISSN: 1552-6836
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0097700420943586
OpenAlexW3047518498
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited13

This article examines the New Folksong Movement (NFM) of 1958–1959, which was launched by the Chinese Communist Party in conjunction with the Great Leap Forward (GLF) campaign. It employs an analytical strategy called fissured reading, whereby a discursive assemblage that seems ideologically uniform can be made to reveal the myriad tensions that its own positive facade works to conceal. While the NFM seems suffused with songs of praise for the GLF, closer inspection reveals a project riven with tensions regarding the creative agency of the people, the persistence of “old” songs in popular culture, and dialects. Such methodological concerns were in fact foundational to modern folk study in China as it developed from the 1920s onward. Understanding such historical connections can help us rethink the cultural revolutions in modern China as fissured projects, with tense cracks just beneath their surface that indicate unresolved contradictions passed on from one generation of reformers and revolutionaries to the next

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · China · Communism · Ideology · Literature · Media studies · Movement (music · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Praise · Social science · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law

  • “No revolutionary songs”

    Open Access•Siyue Liu•International Journal of Asian…•2025

  • The Bildungsroman of an Artist for New China

    Yi Zheng•boundary 2•2024

  • Rediscovering Fei Xiaotong

    Open Access•Ana Sinha, Pooja Lakhanpal•The American Sociologist•2022

  • Mass editing, mass writing

    Open Access•Benjamin Kindler•World Development•2025

  • Scripting a Multicultural Future

    Open Access•Lehyla G Heward•Sungkyun Journal of East Asian…•2023

  • Social Relations of Amateur Practice

    Open Access•Harlan David Chambers•Modern China•2025

  • Industrialization as Imagination and Reality

    Open Access•Zhaojin Zeng•Modern China•2025

  • Going to the People

    Chang-Tai Hung•Going to the People•1985

  • Fiery Cinema

    Wei Bao, Weihong Bao•Fiery Cinema•2015

  • Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World

    Open Access•Harry Harootunian, Rebecca E Karl et al.•Mao Zedong and China in the…•2010

  • Socialist Cosmopolitanism

    Nicolai Volland•Socialist Cosmopolitanism•2017

  • Nationalism and Language Reform in China

    William H Vatcher, John De Francis•The Western Political Quarterly•1951

  • "Promoting "Low Culture

    Open Access•Jie Gao•Journal of History•2015

  • The Social Life of Genre

    Sue Tuohy•Asian Music•1999

  • Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China

    Ralph Croizier, David Holm•Pacific Affairs•1992

  • Love songs and the Great Leap

    Open Access•C Fred Blake•American Ethnologist•1979

Unique citing works7
Citations per year1,75
Citation span2022 - 2025 (4)
Citation velocityrecent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 7

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