Yang Zhang, one of the Paulson Institute’s 2012 predoctoral fellows, provided a fieldwork report on his Ph.D. dissertation, “The Political Logic of the Anti-PX Movement in China.” Yang, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at The University of Chicago, is writing a dissertation that attempts to unpack the political logic behind the anti-PX environmental movement in contemporary China and, in particular, explain why in some cases Chinese authorities have challenged their colleagues and cooperated with social movement participants. His presentation sought to explain how a seemingly unitary and hierarchical state could create political opportunities for social movements, and their broad implications for shaping environmental politics and state-society relations in China today.
