Description
Book SynopsisInvestigates that trend, drawing on 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.
Trade Review"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 *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
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
