Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person - Paperback

by Arthur Kleinman (Author), Yunxiang Yan (Author), Jing Jun (Author)

Deep China investigates the emotional and moral lives of the Chinese people as they adjust to the challenges of modernity. Sharing a medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry perspective, Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei, and Guo Jinhua delve into intimate and sometimes hidden areas of personal life and social practice to observe and narrate the drama of Chinese individualization. The essays explore the remaking of the moral person during China's profound social and economic transformation, unraveling the shifting practices and struggles of contemporary life.

Front Jacket

How do Chinese people formerly embedded in family and village justify their individualistic pursuits in a society undergoing vast changes? Here a uniquely trained senior psychiatrist/anthropologist and six Chinese with Ph Ds in anthropology probe the inner lives of Chinese people. --Ezra F. Vogel, author of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

"Based on solid, in-depth ethnographic research, Deep China seeks to understand how emotional and moral lives of Chinese people have been affected by drastic changes that have taken place over the past several decades. The authors refuse to stay on the surface in their inquiry, and try to delve deeper into the intimate and sometimes hidden spheres of personal life, emotion, and social practice. A wonderful collection of engaging and timely studies!" - Li Zhang, author of In Search of Paradise: Middle Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis

Deep China provides an indispensable antidote to the copious body of politically and economically oriented literature that dominates current writing about the Chinese super-power. This scholarly collection of ethnographic essays depicts the way in which Chinese are confronting and creating an entirely new moral landscape, one strikingly discordant with that of the recent past. Profound tensions between individual aspirations and claims made by families and social and political collectivities are laid bare through insightful discussion of suicide, depression, changing sexual mores, and much more. --Margaret Lock, author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death

Eschewing the broad brush and facile generalizations that make for instant China experts, Deep China examines the struggles, accommodations, and embodied sufferings and pleasures of individual Chinese people at an unprecedented moment in their moral history. True to its title, it adds dimensions to its subject. --Haun Saussy, author of Great Walls of Discourse

Back Jacket

How do Chinese people formerly embedded in family and village justify their individualistic pursuits in a society undergoing vast changes? Here a uniquely trained senior psychiatrist/anthropologist and six Chinese with Ph Ds in anthropology probe the inner lives of Chinese people. --Ezra F. Vogel, author of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

"Based on solid, in-depth ethnographic research, Deep China seeks to understand how emotional and moral lives of Chinese people have been affected by drastic changes that have taken place over the past several decades. The authors refuse to stay on the surface in their inquiry, and try to delve deeper into the intimate and sometimes hidden spheres of personal life, emotion, and social practice. A wonderful collection of engaging and timely studies!" - Li Zhang, author of In Search of Paradise: Middle Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis

"Deep China provides an indispensable antidote to the copious body of politically and economically oriented literature that dominates current writing about the Chinese super-power. This scholarly collection of ethnographic essays depicts the way in which Chinese are confronting and creating an entirely new moral landscape, one strikingly discordant with that of the recent past. Profound tensions between individual aspirations and claims made by families and social and political collectivities are laid bare through insightful discussion of suicide, depression, changing sexual mores, and much more." --Margaret Lock, author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death

"Eschewing the broad brush and facile generalizations that make for instant China experts, Deep China examines the struggles, accommodations, and embodied sufferings and pleasures of individual Chinese people at an unprecedented moment in their moral history. True to its title, it adds dimensions to its subject." --Haun Saussy, author of Great Walls of Discourse

Author Biography

Arthur Kleinman is Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard University; Yunxiang Yan is a Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; Jing Jun is a Professor at Tsinghua University (Beijing); Sing Lee is a Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong; Everett Zhang is a Professor at Princeton University; Pan Tianshu is a Professor at Fudan University (Shanghai); Wu Fei and Guo Jinhua are Professors at Peking University (Beijing).