Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-15T14:38:20.138Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Learning Individualism: Hesse, Confucius, and Pep-Rallies in a Chinese Rural High School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2013

Mette Halskov Hansen
Mette Halskov Hansen*
Affiliation:
University of Oslo, Norway. Email: m.h.hansen@ikos.uio.no.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Chinese public discourse, it has almost become a truism that the generation born after the mid-1980s is more selfish, individualistic, and materialistic than previous generations. Consequently, an important task for public moral education is to correct this behaviour and to generate compassion for others beyond the family, to strengthen nationalist sentiments and to imbue a sense of duty to the greater community. Schools provide the Chinese government with a key opportunity to achieve this. Based on fieldwork in a rural high school in China, this article demonstrates how the official visions of the learned individual portrayed in textbooks collide with a more powerful ideology of individualism that is implicitly promoted through activities within the school, and is reflective of an ongoing process of individualization, not only in Chinese society, but also within state institutions, such as the school.

Keywords

educationindividualizationhigh schoolindividualChina
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 213 , March 2013 , pp. 60 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anagnost, Ann. 2004. “The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi).” Public Culture 16 (2), 189–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakken, Børge. 2000. The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control and the Dangers of Modernity in China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Bary, William Theodore, Bloom, Irene and Adler, Joseph. 2000. Sources of Chinese Tradition Vol. 1. (2nd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich, and Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth. 2002. Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich, and Grande, Edgar. 2010. “Varieties of second modernity: the cosmopolitan turn in social and political theory and research.” The British Journal of Sociology 61 (3), 409–443.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chang, Leslie T. 2010. Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China. London: Picador.Google Scholar
Dillon, Sam. 2010. “In PISA test, top scores from Shanghai stun experts,” The New York Times, 12 July.Google Scholar
Ding, Fan et al. (eds.). 2008. Yuwen (Language and Literature) Vol. 1 (first semester high school). Hangzhou: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe.Google Scholar
Han, Sang-Jin, and Shim, Young-Hee. 2010. “Redefining second modernity for East Asia: a critical assessment.” The British Journal of Sociology 61 (3), 465–488.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hansen, Mette Halskov. 2012. “Learning to organize and to be organized: student cadres in a Chinese rural boarding school.” In Bislev, Ane and Thøgersen, Stig (eds.), Organizing Rural China: Rural China Organizing. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 125–140.Google Scholar
Hansen, Mette Halskov, and Svarverud, Rune. 2010. iChina: The Rise of the Individual in Modern Chinese Society. Copenhagen: Nias Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, Mette Halskov, and Woronov, T.E.. 2013 (forthcoming). “Demanding and resisting vocational education: a comparative study of schools in rural and urban China.” Comparative Education.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanser, Amy. 2009. “The Chinese enterprising self: young, educated urbanites and the search for work.” In Perry Link, Eugene, Madsen, Richard and Pickowicz, Paul (eds.), Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 189–206.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Lisa. 2010. Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China: Fostering Talent. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew. 2006. “Suzhi: a keyword approach.” The China Quarterly 186, 295–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew. 2011. Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics, and Schooling in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleinman, Arthur, Yan, Yunxiang, Jing, Jun, Lee, Sing and Zhang, Everett (eds.). 2011. Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person. Berkeley and London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Wing On, and Ho, Chi Hang. 2005. “Ideopolitical shifts and changes in moral education policy in China.” Journal of Moral Education 34 (4), 413–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Rui. 2007. “Guanzhu xuesheng wenhua – jiaqiang xuesheng tuanjie jianshe” (‘Pay attention to student culture: strengthen the building of student communities’). Jiaoyu guanli 1, 20–21.Google Scholar
Ma, Xiangxiang. 2008. “Hangshi xuesheng zizhu guanli – youhua xuexiao deyu gongzuo” (‘Improve the students' self-responsibilty: optimize the ideology work in schools’). Kaoshi zhoukan (week 7), 220–22.Google Scholar
Michels, Volker. 2007. Sämtliche Werke, Hermann Hesse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.Google Scholar
Murphy, Rachel. 2004. “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens: ‘population quality’ discourse, demographic transition and primary education.” The China Quarterly 177, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nienhauser, William H. Jr. 1985. The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature Vol. 1. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Pang, Cuiming. 2011. “The Power of Cyber Communities: Building Collective Life in China.” Phd thesis, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Pieke, Frank N. 2009. The Good Communist: Elite Training and State Building in Today's China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shirk, Susan L. 1982. Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies in China. Berkeley and London: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vickers, Edward. 2009. “Selling ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics,’ ‘thought and politics’ and the legitimisation of China's developmental strategy.” International Journal of Educational Development 29 (5), 523–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woronov, T.E. 2009. “Governing China's children: governmentality and ‘education for quality’.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 17 (3), 567–589.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yan, Yunxiang. 2003. Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949–1999. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yan, Yunxiang. 2009a. The Individualization of Chinese Society. London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Yan, Yunxiang. 2009b. “The Good Samaritan's new trouble: a study of the changing moral landscape in contemporary China.” Social Anthropology 17 (01), 9–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yan, Yunxiang. 2010. “The Chinese path to individualization.” The British Journal of Sociology 61 (3), 489–512.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yan, Yunxiang. 2011. “The changing moral landscape.” In Kleinman, Arthur (ed.), Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 36–77.Google Scholar
Yang, Guobin. 2009. The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Everett, Kleinman, Arthur and Tu, Weiming (eds.). 2010. Governance of Life in Chinese Moral Experience: The Quest for an Adequate Life. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Xiaohua. 2006. “Xuesheng zuzhi yu zhongxue deyu de ‘muxuesheng tong xiaoying’” (‘The organizing of students and the ‘bucket effect’ of moral training in high schools’). Party Building in Schools and Ideology Education 7, 42–43.Google Scholar
Zhu, Xiaoman. 2006. “Moral education and values education in curriculum reform in China.” Frontiers of Education in China 1 (2), 191–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar