Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1910, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press), “Part.4 ‘The Progressive and the City’, pp.189-292.” Zwia Lipkin, Useless to the State: Social Problems and Social Enginerring in Nanjing, 1927-1937 (Harvard University Asia Centre, 2006).
Useless to the State written by Zwia Lipkin’s investigates the history and urban development of Nanjing between 1927-1937 and recounts in detail how the Nationalist aimed to boost the image of the new capital by eliminating various social problems including refugees, shantytowns, rickshaw-pullers, prostitutes and beggars in the city. Whilst in Paul Boyer’s Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, the chapter ‘The Progressive and the City’ examines various policies and projects undertaken for urban reforms in the United States in the Progressive Era. In Lipkin’s book, the Nationalist’s desire to transform Nanjing into a “modern” capital is she frequently emphasized through discussing the government’s continuous efforts to eradicate various social problems in the city. Conversely, Boyer explores how American reformers primarily focused on …show more content…
Some of these migrants often resorted to prostitution and had low moral practices, being deemed as “ignorant and vicious” (p.205). This was relatively similar in China in the 1930s when Chinese rural immigrants travelled to settle into Nanjing’s shantytowns as they could not afford proper housings that the affluent and middle-class citizens lived in. Most of these peasant migrants worked as rickshaw-pullers whilst most of their passengers were city dwellers, thus expanding the social gap between these two classes and ultimately, impelling the two governments to reform in order to
Useless to the State written by Zwia Lipkin’s investigates the history and urban development of Nanjing between 1927-1937 and recounts in detail how the Nationalist aimed to boost the image of the new capital by eliminating various social problems including refugees, shantytowns, rickshaw-pullers, prostitutes and beggars in the city. Whilst in Paul Boyer’s Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, the chapter ‘The Progressive and the City’ examines various policies and projects undertaken for urban reforms in the United States in the Progressive Era. In Lipkin’s book, the Nationalist’s desire to transform Nanjing into a “modern” capital is she frequently emphasized through discussing the government’s continuous efforts to eradicate various social problems in the city. Conversely, Boyer explores how American reformers primarily focused on …show more content…
Some of these migrants often resorted to prostitution and had low moral practices, being deemed as “ignorant and vicious” (p.205). This was relatively similar in China in the 1930s when Chinese rural immigrants travelled to settle into Nanjing’s shantytowns as they could not afford proper housings that the affluent and middle-class citizens lived in. Most of these peasant migrants worked as rickshaw-pullers whilst most of their passengers were city dwellers, thus expanding the social gap between these two classes and ultimately, impelling the two governments to reform in order to