Anthropology of Ascendant China

This volume represents the latest research in cultural anthropology on an ascendant and globalizing China, covering the many different dimensions of China's ascendancy both within China itself and beyond. It focuses not only on the real and perceived successes of China in the past four decades, but also on the difficulties, tensions, and dangers that have emerged as a result of rapid economic development: class polarization, state expansion, psychological distress, and environmental degradation. Including contributions by some of the most well-known cultural anthropologists of China, as well as rising innovative younger scholars, this book documents and analyzes China's multifaceted transformations in the modern era-both within Chinese society and in Chinese relations with the outside world. It features the unique perspective of anthropology, with its on-the-ground deep cultural immersion through long-term fieldwork, coupled with a macrolevel global perspective, a strong historical perspective, and theoretically engaged analyses to present a balanced account of China's ascendancy. Anthropology of Ascendant China: Histories, Attainments, and Tribulations is suitable for students and scholars in Anthropology, Sociology, History, Political Science, and East Asian Studies, as well as those working on contemporary Chinese society and culture more broadly.

Mayfair Yang is Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at University of California Santa Barbara. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at University of California Berkeley, and specializes in the Anthropology of Religion, Modernity, and the State, as well as Gender and Media Studies.

Introduction to the Volume - Mayfair Yang; I. Historical Genealogies of China's Ascendant Present; 1. China's Ascendancies and the China-India Experience - Tansen Sen; 2. The Belt and Road Initiative in Global Historical Perspective - Prasenjit Duara; 3. An Emerging Outlook of Multiethnic China - Liang Yongjia; II. Socioeconomic Features of China's Ascendancy; 4. Chinese Consumer Culture: Luxury, Nationalism, and Class Formation - John Osburg; 5. Governing the (Un)Healthy Body: Big Food, Small Government - Susan Greenhalgh; 6. The Olympic Ritual Economy and China's Rise - Susan Brownelll 7. Under the Seal's Whip: Ecological Excess and Making Vital Commodities between China and Namibia - Jay Ke-Schutte and Xiao Schutte-Ke; 8. Wanghong Spaces: The Spatial Effects of China's Ascendant Digital Culture - Carwyn Morris and Yan Cong; III. State, Civil Society, and Nationalism in China's Rise; 9. Health, Medicine, and Well-being in 21st-Century China - Nancy N. Chen; 10. Education, Nationalism, and Identity Construction among China's Youth - Orna Naftali; IV. Gender, Sexuality, and Kinship in China's Modernity and Globalization; 11. Diversifying Chinese Families and Family Desire in the 21st Century - Sara L. Friedman; 12. Gender and Migration: Chinese Women in Latin America - Luciana E. Denardi and Ximena Alba Villalever; 13. The Nation-State, Crisis of Chinese Masculinity, and Contestations of Same-Sex Attracted Men - Tiantian Zheng; V. Distress: Unforeseen Consequences of Rapid Development; 14. An Ascending Society in Distress - Li Zhang and Zhiying Ma; 15. Transforming Ethnic Minority Ecologies in China's Rise - Brendan A. Galipeau