Promotional Information

An outstanding and original contribution to the anthropology of education and a penetrating and vivid analytical picture of how contemporary Chinese society is changing and why. -- Peter Cave, University of Manchester Groundbreaking... Engages in inspiring dialogue with various social theories on the individual-society relationship as well as the cultural construction of the self... A landmark in China studies and the anthropology of the individual. -- Yunxiang Yan, University of California, Los Angeles Powerful... [Illuminates] the diverse practices that go into subject formation processes in contemporary China. -- Lisa Hoffman, University of Washington Tacoma

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Chinese Education and Processes of Individualization

1. Discipline and Agency: Quests for Individual Space

2. Text and Truth: Visions of the Learned Person and Good Citizen

3. Hierarchy and Democracy: Controlled Rise of the Individual

4. Motivation and Examination: The Making and Breaking of the Individual

5. Dreams and Dedications: Teachers' Views and the Construction of a Generation Gap

Conclusion: Authoritarian Individualization

Notes

Glossary of Chinese Names and Terms

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Mette Halskov Hansen is professor of China studies at the University of Oslo. She is the author of Lessons in Being Chinese: Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China and coeditor of iChina: The Rise of the Individual in Modern Chinese Society.

Reviews

"Educating the Chinese Individual is an ethnographically rich and stimulating study. It enriches our knowledge about a relatively under-studied group—rural youth and young teachers—in a marginal setting. It challenges some common assumptions of the changing landscape of school education and everyday cultural practice of the younger generations in post-socialist China. . . . This book will attract a wide readership in educational studies but will also appeal to audiences in sociology and anthropology who are interested in social change and youth culture in contemporary China." - Xuan Dong (The China Quarterly) "[E]xcellent. . . . [T]his ethnography is a fine depiction of a slice of life in China today. The important issues it handles show the value of having more ethnographies of Chinese secondary schools, including studies of first-tier, vocational, and urban high schools from many parts of the country." - Andrew B. Kipnis (The China Journal)