Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics and Schooling in China

The Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University presents a talk with Andrew Kipnis on educational desire and its causes from four perspectives.

Andrew Kipnis - Senior Fellow in the (CAP) Department of Anthropology at the Australian National University
10 Sachem Street, Room 105

This paper summarizes the major arguments from Kipnis' book Governing Educational Desire. The book examines the intensity of educational Desire in Shandong-parents nearly universally desire their children to attend university, families and local governments invest heavily in education, and competition at all education institutions isfierce-and asks what are the social, cultural, political and economic origins of this desire. It examines educational desire and its causes from four perspectives: as a local phenomenon, as a national phenomenon, as an East Asian phenomenon, and as a "universizable" phenomenon, that is, one that relates to patterns of social desire seen elsewhere in the world. The book also discusses some of the effects this desire.

Dr. Andrew Kipnis is a Senior Fellow in the (CAP) Department of Anthropology at the Australian National University. In addition to Governing Educational Desire (University of Chicago Press, 2011), he is the author of Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self and Subculture in a North China Village (Duke University Press, 1997), China and Postsocialist Anthropology: Theorizing Power and Society after Communism (Eastbridge, 2008), and over forty articles and book chapters. With Luigi Tomba, he is co-editor of The China Journal.

Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP amy.zhang@yale.edu. Sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies and the department of Anthropology.