Anxious China by Li Zhang

Anxious China by Li Zhang

The breathless pace of China’s economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people’s inner landscape. Faced with increasing market-driven competition and profound social changes, more and more middle-class urbanites are turning to Western-style psychological counseling to grapple with their mental distress. This book offers an in-depth ethnographic account of how an unfolding “inner revolution” is reconfiguring selfhood, psyche, family dynamics, sociality, and the mode of governing in post-socialist times. Li Zhang shows that anxiety—broadly construed in both medical and social terms—has become a powerful indicator for the general pulse of contemporary Chinese society. It is in this particular context that Zhang traces how a new psychotherapeutic culture takes root, thrives, and transforms itself across a wide range of personal, social, and political domains.

"While grounded in the ethnographic specificities of middle-class Chinese urbanites, Anxious China offers powerful insights to scholars working on similar questions in diverse regions of the world" * Somatosphere *

Li Zhang is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of two award-winning books, Strangers in the City and In Search of Paradise.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780520344198
ISBN 10	0520344197
Title	Anxious China
Author	Li Zhang
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University of California Press
Year published	2020-08-04
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable