Educating the Chinese Individual
Life in a Rural Boarding School
Published on 1. August 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-0-295-99409-3 (ISBN)
Description
In twenty-first-century China, socialist educational traditions have given way to practices that increasingly emphasize the individual. This volume investigates that trend, drawing on Hansen's fieldwork in a rural high school in Zhejiang where students, teachers, and officials of different generations, genders, and social backgrounds form what is essentially a miniature version of Chinese society. Hansen paints a complex picture of the emerging "neosocialist" educational system and shows how individualization of students both challenges and reinforces state control of society.
Reviews / Votes
"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)
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Seattle
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
658 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-295-99409-3 (9780295994093)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
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.
Content
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
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