Being Modern in China

This book analyses modernity and tradition in China today and how they combine in striking ways in the Chinese school. Paul Willis - the leading ethnographer and author of Learning to Labour - shows how China has undergone an internal migration not only of masses of workers but also of a mental and ideological kind to new cultural landscapes of meaning, which include worship of the glorified city, devotion to consumerism, and fixation upon the smartphone and the internet.

Massive educational expansion has been a precondition for explosive economic growth and technical development, but at the same time the school provides a cultural stage for personal and collective experience. In its closed walls and the inescapability of its 'scores', an astonishing drama plays out between the new and the old, with a tapestry of intricate human meanings woven of small tragedies and triumphs, secret promises and felt betrayals, helping to produce not only exam results but cultural orientations and occupational destinies.

By exploring the cultural dimension of everyday experience as it is lived out in the school, this book sheds new light on the enormous transformations that have swept through China and created the kind of society that it is today: a society that is obsessed with the future and at the same time structured by and in continuous dialogue with its past.

Aceasta carte analizeaza modernitatea si traditia din China de astazi si cum se combina in moduri izbitoare in scoala chineza. Paul Willis - etnograful de frunte si autor al cartii Invatand sa lucrezi - arata cum China a suferit o migratie interna nu numai a maselor de muncitori, ci si de natura mentala si ideologica catre noi peisaje culturale de sens, care includ inchinarea la orasul glorificat devotamentul fata de consum si fixarea pe smartphone si pe internet. Extinderea educationala masiva a fost o conditie prealabila pentru cresterea economica exploziva si dezvoltarea tehnica, dar in acelasi timp scoala ofera o etapa culturala pentru experienta personala si colectiva.