Sophia Woodman is a sociologist who studies citizenship, human rights, social movements, and gender in contemporary China. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Her Ph.D. thesis, “Local citizenship and socialized governance—linking citizens and the state in rural and urban Tianjin, China,” is a study of daily interactions between citizens and state agents, showing how the local shapes people’s expectations about the state’s obligations towards them.

Her recent publications include: “Law, translation and voice: the transformation of a struggle for social justice in a Chinese village,” Critical Asian Studies 43, 2: 185-210, 2011 [PDF]; “Is there space for ‘genuine autonomy’ for Tibetan areas in the PRC’s system of Nationalities Regional Autonomy?” International Journal of Minority and Group Rights, 2010, Vol. 17: 137-186 (with Yash Ghai and Kelley Loper) [PDF]; and “Unused powers: autonomy legislation in the PRC”, Pacific Affairs 2009, 82, 1: 29-46 (with Yash Ghai). [PDF]

Last Updated: April 3, 2014

The NYRB China Archive

05.11.00

China’s Dirty Clean-Up

Sophia Woodman from New York Review of Books
Every year, millions of China’s poorest and most vulnerable people are arrested on the streets of the nation’s cities merely because the way they look or speak identifies them clearly as “outsiders,” not native to the city in question, or because...