“Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions is the most notorious flophouse in Asia. . . . The shabby tenement is today as much about global commerce as tourism. What the building should be renowned for, argues Gordon Mathews in his fluid and enjoyable field study Ghetto at the Center of the World, is the ingenious way ‘low-end globalists’ eke out profits from petit arbitrage. . . . It reads like a first-rate business book.”

Wall Street Journal

“In this wonderful book Gordon Mathews takes on an intriguing project: daily life as it is lived, articulated, dreamed, denied, regretted, and defended in a rather rundown but very public building in Hong Kong. The residents of Chungking Mansions are economically blocked from the rest of the city and often racially discriminated against, so how do such marginalized people survive, much less prosper? This is the conundrum at the heart of Ghetto at the Center of the World. Mathews tackles it by providing a vivid description of the people who live their lives in the building’s dimly lit hallways, restaurants, and shops, and by analyzing the larger material and political forces at work. The resulting account is as informative and revealing as it is entertaining.”

William Jankowiak, author of Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City

“Ghetto at the Center of the World is an important book, for a number of reasons….the accounts Mathews provides are captivating, his argument is sophisticated and provocative but never unnecessarily complex, and, while the book is clearly in conversation with existing anthropological literature, this engagement is subtle.”

Ruth E. Toulson | Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“This then is a book not just for the China specialist or the observer of Hong Kong’s minorities, but for all those interested in the human impact of the vagaries of the geo-economics of the 21st century.”

Gregory B. Lee | The China Quarterly

“In arguing that Chungking Mansions might be the most globalized building in the world, [Gordon Mathews] also exposes a critical typology, commonly overlooked, of transient real estate spaces and critical hubs of international activity. Ghetto at the Center of the World explains not only how such a building is part of complex processes of cultural hybridization, but also that the flexibility of such buildings is key to facilitating the transactions that sustain a large part of global economies.”

Daniel Lobo | Urban Land