Contemporary Chinese Culture Lecture

The lecture will begin at 2pm and will be followed by a reception.

The Chinese family ideology, broadly defined as the widely accepted ideas and ideals regarding the family institution, family relations, and family life, is currently undergoing a divergent process of reflection within public discourse, particularly among middle-class individuals. On one hand, Chinese youth are redefining the family as an instrument for personal happiness from an individualistic perspective. In doing so, they explore and highlight the burdensome aspects of family life, as seen in their reflections on marriage refusal, birth strikes, relationships with their families of origin, and the “full-time children” phenomenon. On the other hand, taking a cultural nationalist approach, a growing number of Chinese scholars are advocating for the family as the philosophical foundation of Chinese culture, the methodology of Chinese social theories, and the key to effective governance. While the former disenchant the family and may exacerbate the declining fertility rate, the latter seeks to re-enchant the family in order to establish a distinct Chinese path to modernity. The disagreement between these two strands of public discourse reveals the inherent tensions within Chinese family dynamics and society at large.

Yunxiang Yan, professor of anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village (Stanford University Press, 1996), Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999 (Stanford University Press, 2003), and The Individualization of Chinese Society (Berg 2009). He is the editor of Chinese Families Upside Down: Intergenerational Dynamics and Neo-Familism in the Early 21st Century (Brill 2021). His research interests include family and kinship, social change, the individual and individualization, and the impact of cultural globalization.

Host or Publisher BU Anthropology Department