Educating the Chinese Individual

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

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.