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.

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"Educating the Chinese Individual is an ethnographically rich and stimulating study. It enriches our knowledge about a relatively under-studied group—rural youth and young teachers—in a marginal setting. It challenges some common assumptions of the changing landscape of school education and everyday cultural practice of the younger generations in post-socialist China. . . . This book will attract a wide readership in educational studies but will also appeal to audiences in sociology and anthropology who are interested in social change and youth culture in contemporary China."

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"[E]xcellent. . . . [T]his ethnography is a fine depiction of a slice of life in China today. The important issues it handles show the value of having more ethnographies of Chinese secondary schools, including studies of first-tier, vocational, and urban high schools from many parts of the country."