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The Shop on High Street

At Home with Petite Capitalism

  • Book
  • © 2020

Overview

Authors:
  1. Souchou Yao

    1. Researcher and Critic, Sydney, Australia

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  • Unpacks the legacy of the Chinese diaspora through the pervasive economic form of the small family business

  • Examines Chinese petite capitalism by exploring issues not usually covered by other writers

  • Brilliantly intertwines economic analysis with ethnology

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Petite Capitalism: What Drives It?

    • Souchou Yao
    Pages 1-22

  3. The Shop on High Street

    • Souchou Yao
    Pages 23-39

  4. ‘She’s Not Your Kin, But She Is Your Aunt’

    • Souchou Yao
    Pages 41-59

  5. Women’s Fate

    • Souchou Yao
    Pages 61-81

  6. Shop-Floor Heroes

    • Souchou Yao
    Pages 83-100

  7. Tiger Parenting

    • Souchou Yao
    Pages 101-118

  8. A Lesson on Borrowing

    • Souchou Yao
    Pages 119-136

  9. Wholesale: The Road to Ruin

    • Souchou Yao
    Pages 137-154

  10. Family Legacy

    • Souchou Yao
    Pages 155-173

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 175-177
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Keywords

About this book

This book tells the story of a Chinese family owned shophouse in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, through the lens of petite capitalism. Neo-Marxist in spirit, literary in tone, it recounts the triumph and despair of a family in its struggles against the financial frailty and structural limitations of a pervasive economic form of the Chinese diaspora: the small family business. 

The daily realities of the Chinese shophouse are captured by the art of ethnography and the author’s own memories. The book examines Chinese petite capitalism afresh by bringing into focus issues not usually covered by writers on the subject—the concept of petite capitalism, the architecture of the Asian shophouse, the Hakka kinship, ‘tiger parenting’ and Chinese childrearing, the culture of debt, family legacy, and Chinese inheritance. 

The book reveals the business acumen for which the Chinese diaspora are renowned as part truth and part myth. Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’ haunts the small Chinese family business where hard work and individual efforts are helpless against the ever-evolving nature of capitalism. 

 

Reviews

“In the field of Overseas Chinese Studies, it is rare to have such a personal but theoretically informed account that sheds light on both the intimate life of family dynamics and the public life of nation-building. This in-depth case study of one stophouse owned by a Malaysian Hakka Chinese family could breathe new life in this sub-field of specialization by legitimizing similar autoethnographic studies.” (Jayde Lin Roberts, SOJOURN - Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol. 37 (3), November 2022)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Researcher and Critic, Sydney, Australia

    Souchou Yao

About the author

Souchou Yao is a writer and critic based in Sydney, Australia, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is a former Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney. His major works include Confucian Capitalism: Discourse, practice and the myth of Chinese enterprise (2002), Singapore: The state and the culture of excess (2007), and The Malayan Emergency: Essays on a small, distant war (2016).  

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Shop on High Street

  • Book Subtitle: At Home with Petite Capitalism

  • Authors: Souchou Yao

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2031-0

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore

  • eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-15-2030-3Published: 29 March 2020

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-981-15-2033-4Published: 29 March 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-981-15-2031-0Published: 28 March 2020

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 177

  • Topics: Asian Economics, Asian Politics, Ethnology

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