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Wednesday, January 16: Status and face; politeness, truth, and self-interest One of the most basic elements in culture is the way people think of themselves and their relations to others, and the way this concept of self is related to how people interact with one another. We have to be subtle and careful here. All cultures have some sort of concept of personhood, which includes both individual personality and position in a social structure. The difference between one culture and another in this regard is one of emphasis. How autonomous is a person? To pursue this topic, we begin with a classic exposition of the concept of face, from Martin C. Yang's 1940s ethnography, A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province. We then go on to Susan Blum's attempts to understand the relationship between truth and propriety in two chapters from her recent book, Lies that Bind. Friday, January 18: Socialism and the hero; neoliberalism and the consumer A lot of the Chinese conception of personhood is old and relatively stable, but not everything. Today we look at recent changes, beginning with the Communists' attempt, during the period of High Socialism, to change the very nature of personhood from a node in a system of social relationships to a selfless hero, in Mary Sheridan's The Emulation of Heroes. For our final transition, we look at the consuming individual in the present "neoliberal" order, and reflect on how much has changed or not changed. To do so, read the introduction and chapter 1 of Vanessa Fong's Only Hope, the rest of which we will read for Unit III.
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