Seminar: BA: Anthropology of China: Education, Labor, and Youth in Intensive Society - Details

Seminar: BA: Anthropology of China: Education, Labor, and Youth in Intensive Society - Details

Allgemeine Informationen

Veranstaltungsname Seminar: BA: Anthropology of China: Education, Labor, and Youth in Intensive Society
Untertitel Lecturer: Dr. Yukun Zeng
Veranstaltungsnummer BA_SE:SO/I
Semester SoSe 2026
Aktuelle Anzahl der Teilnehmenden 11
Heimateinrichtung Ethnologie/Kulturvergleichende Soziologie
Veranstaltungstyp Seminar in der Kategorie Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
Erster Termin Donnerstag, 09.04.26, 10:15 - 11:45 Uhr Seminar für Ethnologie/Seminarraum
Lehrsprache(n) Deutsch
ECTS-Punkte 5

Räume und Zeiten

Seminar für Ethnologie/Seminarraum

  • Donnerstag, 10:15 - 11:45, Wöchentlich (ab dem 09.04.26)

Modulzuordnungen

Kommentar/Beschreibung

This course examines contemporary China through an anthropological lens, focusing on the interconnected domains of education, labor, and youth within an “involuted” society. Involution is a buzzword in both academic and popular discourse in China, used to describe a hyper-competitive social atmosphere, especially in the realms of education, labor, and youth. At the same time, it is a concept with a rich anthropological genealogy. It originated in economic anthropology as an explanation of agricultural intensification in Indonesia. It also resonates with phenomena and discourses in other East Asian contexts, such as karoshi in Japan and the “burnout society” and “compressed modernity” in South Korea.
Involution is thus a theory still struggling its ethnographic situations. This struggle reveals not only: (1) changing economic and political conditions in China, and (2) grassroots affective reflections on lived experience; but also (3) entrenched moral economies of hardship in Asia, and (4) broader crises of growth, development, and meritocracy in modern society. In this course, students will engage with these dimensions through ethnographic texts and multimodal materials. They are also invited to think about involution in a global context from an anthropological perspective, rather than simply offering normative judgments.
Note:
The first class (April 9) will be an online session. The Zoom Meeting ID is: 978 6386 1905
Recommended Reading: Xiang, Biao. 2021. “Anthropologist Xiang Biao on China’s Involuted Generation.” Interview by Cai Yiwen and Xie Anran. Sixth Tone, December 27. https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1009312
Geertz, Clifford. 1963. Agricultural Involution: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia.
Chang, Kyung-Sup 2022. The Logic of Compressed Modernity.
Han, Byung-Chul. 2010. The Burnout Society.
Xiang, Biao. 2021. “Suspension: Seeking Agency for Change in the Hypermobile World.” Pacific Affairs 94 (2): 233–250.
Xiang, Biao, and Qi Wu. 2022. “Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World.
Martin, Fran. 2022. Dreams of Flight: The Lives of Chinese Women Students in the West.
Lindtner, Silvia M. 2020. Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation.
Pia, Andrea. 2016. The Long Day of Young Peng 小彭一天的旅途疲惫. Interactive digital ethnography game. http://thelongdayofyoungpeng.com
Anonymous. 2021. The Tangpingist Manifesto.
Anonymous. 2023. Mission Statement of the Institute of Work Abolition.
Chu, Julie Y. 2024. “Schlock Value and the Politics of Fiasco.” Public Culture 36 (2): 255–277.

Modulleistung: Seminararbeit
Besonderheiten: Der Kurs wird auf Englisch unterrichtet. Alle Studien- und Modulleistungen werden auf Englisch erbracht.