Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge

Melissa Schrift is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Marquette University.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Mao Consumption and the Chinese Political ImaginaryBadges in Context: The Early Years of the Cultural RevolutionManufacturing MaoAn Iconography of Mao BadgesBloodlines, Political Capital, and BadgesAluminum Gods: Mao Badges and Chinese Ritual LifeThe Red Old Days: Heritage, Historical Memory, and the Endurance of MaoReferencesIndex

This interesting book belongs on the shelf of those of us interested in the material culture of the Cultural Revolution. (China Journal) Strangely moving. . . . While [in China, Schrift] discovered a subculture of people who collected buttons bearing portraits of the Great Helmsman: thousands of varieties had been manufactured from the Cultural Revolution, when they served as one of the few permitted forms of personal adornment or aesthetic display. . . . I found reading the book a surprisingly emotional experience. (Newsday; Newsday Long Island) A wonderfully rich and riveting account, Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge represents an important contribution to our understanding of the Cultural Revolution and its place in Chinese culture. Schrift provides an informative examination of the Mao cultÆs recent transformation into its present form of pop cultural campiness. - William Jankowiak (author of Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City) An excellent study of symbolism and factionalism in Maoist China. Schrift shows how mundane objects were transformed into sacred icons of revolutionary ideology. This book offers new insights into the dynamics of the Cultural Revolution. - J. L. Watson (author of Golden Arches East: McDonaldÆs in East Asia)