jQuery does only make some regexp checking before calling the native browser method window.JSON.parse(). If that is not available, it uses eval() or more exactly new Function() to create a Javascript object.

The opposite of JSON.parse() is JSON.stringify() which serializes a Javascript object into a string. jQuery does not have functionality of its own for that, you have to use the browser built-in version or json2.js from http://www.json.org

JSON.stringify() is available in all major browsers, but to be compatible with older browsers you still need that fallback.