Course Description:

Over the past century, China has undergone a protracted period of extraordinary change and instability, including wars and revolutions, the founding of two modern republics, social and economic reforms, and, more recently, rapidly rising levels of socioeconomic inequality. While China’s growing stature and importance on the world scene has occasioned feelings of both alarm and curiosity in the West, many are largely unfamiliar with Chinese culture and society.

This course encourages students to think critically about many of the major developments in Chinese culture and society during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with an emphasis on understanding both cultural change and continuity in China. Drawing on ethnographic material and case studies from rural and urban China over the traditional, revolutionary, and reform periods, we will examine a number of topics in the anthropological study of China, including family and kinship; marriage, reproduction, and death; popular religion; women and gender; the Cultural Revolution; social and economic reforms; gift exchange and guanxi networks; changing perceptions of space and place; as well as globalization and modernity. Throughout the course our discussions will focus on how an informed understanding of China’s past can help us make sense of China’s present as well as give us an inkling of where China may be headed in the future.

Course Goals:

• To acquaint students with a wide range of classical and contemporary topics, themes, and theoretical frameworks used in the anthropological study of Chinese culture and society.

• To enhance student understanding and awareness of Chinese cultural and social beliefs, values, and practices by examining their historical, economic, and political contexts.

• To explore both spatial and temporal variations in social and cultural life in China, including the rural-urban divide as well as changes and continuities across the traditional, revolutionary, and reform periods.

• To encourage students to think critically about the effects of changing political and economic ideologies and modalities of state power on society and the individual in China.

• To give students the opportunity to further explore the topical and theoretical concepts learned in class by developing and carrying out an independent archival research project.