SOAN 309 | Anthropology of China: Contemporary Cultural and Social Issues

This course aims to engage students in an informed and critical study of contemporary China. Focusing on the historical continuity of Chinese society as well as its breaking away from tradition in the post-1949 era, the course encourages students to reflect on China's social transformations over the past seven decades from an anthropological perspective. Key topics include: 1) historical and sociocultural institutions (Chinese kinship, gender and marriage, popular religion and rituals, language and arts); 2) socialist transformations and aftermath (rural and urban transformations, socialist revolution, and the post-Mao reforms); and 3) China's global engagements (environment and development, media and young citizenship, and contested sociopolitical spaces). This course highlights the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of Chinese culture and society, as it draws from materials in other disciplines and beyond academia (such as journalism and documentary film) to supplement ethnographic readings on contemporary China.