Synopses & Reviews
Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and marketization have led to startling social changes in reform-era China. Mindful of the many forms of social theory that relate modernity to individualism, this volume addresses social and cultural change through the lens of psychological anthropology. The contributors explore Chinese modernity through the psychosocial contradictions experienced by artists, dancers, and poets; by mothers and daughters; by school children and migrant workers; the mentally ill, and others. As a whole, the book provides a disturbing but hopeful portrait of Chinese society, an opportunity to rethink the significance of the concept of modernity, and a vivid reminder of the enmeshment of individual psyches in their wider social and cultural environments.
Review
Review
"Fresh, rich, provocative: this collection of essays on modernization and the psyche in post-Mao China revitalizes and re-focuses ideas about the links between modernization and individualism. Chapters on visual art, dance, `worker-poetry', emotional life, female fatalistic suicide, forms of psychotherapy, and the expanding market for educational services require us to think anew about the links between psyche and modernity in domestic life, art, industrial settings, booming cities and people's relations to the party-state and nation-building in today's China." - Francesca Merlan, professor of Anthropology, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra
"The chapters are grounded in fresh ethnographic research, address interesting questions, and analyze the empirical materials through a number of helpful theoretical lenses. The topic of this book is timely and is likely to attract many readers interested in the questions of modernity, emotion, mental life, and selfhood the rapidly changing China and beyond. Overall, this is an original and solid book." - Li Zhang
Review
'Andrew B. Kipnis's edited volume is a welcome contribution to anthropology and China studies alike. The collection of essays is lively, clear, and evocative, and is broken into three parts on art, gender, and self-improvement.' - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Review
Andrew B. Kipnis's edited volume is a welcome contribution to anthropology and China studies alike. The collection of essays is lively, clear, and evocative, and is broken into three parts on art, gender, and self-improvement." - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
"Chinese Modernity and the Individual Psyche is an important book. It advances an ongoing conversation about the changing relationship between power and subjectivity under Chinese modernity. It could easily be adopted in an undergraduate course on modern Chinese history or Chinese society, especially in courses that aim to destabilize the notion that socialism is bad while economic liberalization is good." - The China Journal
"I warmly recommend the volume for anyone interested in the topic of individual and self in China, in the ways Chinese individuals are governed through various institutions and in different cultural settings, and for those interested in theories of modernity and individuation in the context of China." - The China Quarterly
Synopsis
Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and marketization have led to startling social changes in reform-era China. Mindful of the many forms of social theory that relate modernity to individualism, this volume addresses social and cultural change through the lens of psychological anthropology. The contributors explore Chinese modernity through the psychosocial contradictions experienced by artists, dancers, and poets; by mothers and daughters; by school children and migrant workers; the mentally ill, and others. As a whole, the book provides a disturbing but hopeful portrait of Chinese society, an opportunity to rethink the significance of the concept of modernity, and a vivid reminder of the enmeshment of individual psyches in their wider social and cultural environments.
About the Author
Andrew B. Kipnis is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University. He is the author of
Governing Educational Desire (2011),
China and Postsocialist Anthropology (2008) and
Producing Guanxi (1997). Since August 2005, he has been co-editor of
The China Journal with Luigi Tomba.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Chinese Modernity and the Individual Psyche; Andrew B. Kipnis
PART I: CREATIVE EXPRESSION AND SENSES OF SELF
1. Post-70s Artists and the Search for the Self in China; Ling-Yun Tang
2. "Selling Out" Post Mao: Dance Labor and the Ethics of Fulfillment in Reform Era China; Emily Wilcox
3. The Poetry of Spiritual Homelessness: A Creative Practice of Coping with Industrial Alienation; Wanning Sun
PART II: FEMALE GENDER AND THE RELATIONAL PSYCHE
4. Gender Role Expectations and Chinese Mothers' Aspirations for their Toddler Daughters Future Independence and Excellence; Vanessa L. Fong, Cong Zhang, Sung won Kim, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Niobe Way, Xinyin Chen, Zuhong Lu and Huihua Deng
5. The Intimate Individual: Perspectives from the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Urban China; Harriet Evans
6. Modernization and Women's Fatalistic Suicide in Post-Mao Rural China: A Critique of Durkheim; Hyeon Jung Lee
PART III: GOVERNING INDIVIDUAL PSYCHES IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA
7. Working to be Worthy: Shame and the Confucian Technology of Governing; Delia Lin
8. Private Lessons and National Formations: National Hierarchy and the Individual Psyche in the Marketing of Chinese Educational Programs; Andrew B. Kipnis
9. Psychiatric Subjectivity and Cultural Resistance: Experience and Explanations of Schizophrenia in Contemporary China; Zhiying Ma