Being Modern in China (eBook)

Paul Willis is an ethnographer and cultural theorist and a founding editor of Ethnography.

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction and Theoretical Groundings

The Chinese Scene

Part I Modernity's Symbolic Order

1 Country Bad/City Good
2 Consuming Consumerism
3 The Internet as Deus Ex Machina

Part II Education's Symbolic Order

4 The GaoKao Regime
5 The Three Arrows and Experience
6 'People is the Fish'

Part III The View from the Saved

7 Passing GaoKao
8 Not Passing GaoKao

Part IV Closing Portraits

9 'Chen'
10 'My Own Song'
11 A Country Trip

Orders of Experience

Notes

'Written in a lucid and witty style, Paul Willis's book provides a uniquely penetrating lens to scrutinize the deeply held meanings and cultural nuances in China's relentless pursuit of modernity. A landmark contribution to China studies as well as the sociology of education.'
Yunxiang Yan, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of The Individualization of Chinese Society

'Paul Willis is a wonderful guide in surveying China's jarring juxtapositions. His analysis of the ideological imbrication of communism, consumerism and Confucianism, and his close attention to the feelings of shame, stress and guilt experienced by the losers of China's new rat race, are particularly insightful.'
Shehzad Nadeem, City University of New York

"definitely worth reading"
Michael W. Apple, Beijing Normal University

"Experimenting to break the boundary between academic and popular writing, Willis' account of his China experience, with its poetic and forceful prose, is a great pleasure to read."
China Review International

"Willis has produced a work which deserves the wide readership that he was aiming for."
Journal of International and Comparative Education

"The book is riveting and bristles with profound insights about contemporary China that leaves the reader in awe of Willis's brilliant scholarship."
American Journal of Sociology