ANTH 370/JSIS A 370: HAN CHINESE CULTURE AND SOCIETY
Readings for Unit VII: NATION AND PEOPLE

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READINGS
Time & Space
Persons
Family & Gender
Rural
Urban
Migration
Nation & People

ESSAYS
Family & Gender
Rural
Urban
Migration
Nation & People

RESOURCES
Maps of China
ANTH Writing Center
JSIS Writing Center 		Wednesday, March 13: The role of the state and the questions of democracy and authoritarianism
First, think about the local state. Read or reread the descriptions of effective Party secretaries in Huang Shu-min's The Spiral Road, and in Chan, Madsen, and Unger's Chen Village, and of more corrupt officials in Lora-Wainwright's Rural China in ruins. In all the preceding readings, notice several important elements of how the state has worked locally in the People's Republic:
  • The nature of the connections the local cadres have with the community
  • The nature of the connections the local cadres have with higher levels of the state
  • What happens to the moral authority of the cadres in the reform period, and especially the 1990s, and why
  • The changing nature (declining nature?) of state legitimacy from High Socialism to the Reform era.
Friday, March 15: Being Chinese
For the last day of class (and the last essay, so you will actually read it!), tie everything together with Vanessa Fong's second book, Paradise Redefined, which about her singletons, their aspirations and the role of studying abroad, and what this has led them to think about being Chinese.