Self and Otherness -- The Genealogy of the Self in Contemporary China

Author: (USA) Liu Xin, translated by Chang Shu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: In The Otherness of the Self, Liu Xin takes the commercial practice logic of a coastal city in South China as the research object. Through ethnographic descriptions of three types of people (officials, merchants, and prostitutes), she interprets the stories they tell about themselves or others, thereby revealing the structure of the self in contemporary China. The book's distinctive feature lies in conducting fieldwork with urban space as the analytical subject, implicitly or explicitly critiquing the classic anthropological research model that focuses on villages as the analytical object. The focus of ethnographic description is no longer people's actual experiences but the stories they tell. Contemporary China is undergoing profound transformations, and the character of the Chinese people is changing dramatically. They constantly change themselves and can even easily transform into different personalities, which is what the author refers to as the otherness of the self.
Author Bio: Liu Xin is currently an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of London in 1995, with her main research areas being anthropological theory and China-related issues. She has also published the English work In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-reform Rural China and edited New Reflections on Anthropological Studies of (Greater) China.