Tamara Jacka's primary research interests are in gender and rural/urban inequalities; and the interconnections between social change and individual experiences and agency. She has carried out field research in a number of sites in northern and central China. She is the author of four books: Women, Gender and Rural Development in China (co-edited with Sally Sargeson; Edward Elgar, 2011), Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration and Social Change (M. E. Sharpe, 2006), On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China (co-edited with Arianne Gaetano; Columbia University Press, 2004) and Women's Work in Rural China: Change and Continuity in an Era of Reform (Cambridge University Press, 1997). Her book, Rural Women in Urban China, won the American Anthropological Association's Francis Hsu award for Best Book in East Asian Anthropology (2007). She is also a co-editor of the journal Critical Asian Studies and a member of the American Anthropological Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the Asian Studies Association of Australia and the Chinese Studies Association of Australia. She has over twelve years' experience of teaching undergraduate courses on Chinese society and politics, and supervises postgraduate students in Chinese studies, gender studies, anthropology and development studies.

Part I. Social Institutions: 1. Families, kinship and relatedness; 2. Marriage, intimacy, sex; 3. Citizenship, household registration and migration; 4. Community institutions; 5. Work; Part II. Cultures, Socialization and the Formation of Identities: 6. Religion, ritual and religiosity; 7. Ethnicity; 8. Education and the cultivation of citizens; 9. Modernity, youth identities and popular culture; Part III. Inequalities, Injustices and Social Responses: 10. Class and stratification; 11. Regional, rural/urban and within-community inequalities; 12. The 'woman question' and gender inequalities; 13. Collective action and social change.