SUBFIELD
Socio-Cultural Anthropology
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Social Anthropology, Harvard University, 1993.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Economic anthropology, social change and development, family and kinship, exchange theory, peasant study, and cultural globalization.
For more on Yunxiang Yan:
Guggenheim Fellowship
Levenson Prize-winning Research
Inaugural Shanghai Global Institute
PUBLICATIONS
Books
2009 The Individualization of Chinese Society. Oxford: Berg. (Chinese translation published in 2011 by Yiwen Publishers, Shanghai).
2003 Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999. Stanford University Press. (Chinese translation published in 2006 by Shanghai Shudian Chubanshe.)
1996 The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village. Stanford University Press.
2011 Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person, What anthropology and psychiatry tell us about China today. Team-authored by Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei, and Guo Jinhua. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Selected Recent Articles
2018 “The Ethics and Politics of Patient-Physician Mistrust in Contemporary China.” Developing World Bioethics 18(1): 7-15.
2017a “Doing Personhood in Chinese Culture: The Desiring Individual, Moralist Self, and Relational Person.” The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 35(2): 1-17.
2017b. “The Disenchantment of the Gift.” In Andrew Sanchez et al. “‘The Indian Gift’: A Critical Debate.” History and Anthropology 28 (5): 576-580.
2016a “Civility, Taiwanese Civility, and the Taiwanese Civility Reconstructed by Mainland Chinese.” In Steve Tsang (ed.) Taiwan’s Impact on China, pp. . London: Palgrave Macmillan.
2016b “Intergenerational Intimacy and Descending Familism in Rural North China.” American Anthropologist, 118(2): 244-257.
2016c “Between Morals and Markets: The Diversification of the Moral and Social Landscapes in China,” In Robertson-von Trotha, Caroline Y. (ed.): Die Zwischengesellschaft. Aufbrüche zwischen Tradition und Moderne? (= Interdisciplinary Studies on Culture and Society, Vol. 10), pp. 131-145. Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos.
2016d “Old and New Moralities in Changing China.” Anthropology of This Century, Issue 15, pp. 1-7.
2015a “Moral Hierarchy and Social Egoism in a Networked Society: The Chaxugeju Thesis Revisited.” Korean Journal of Sociology, 49(3): 39-58.
2015b “From Food Poisoning to Poisonous Food: The Spectrum of Food-Safety Problems in Contemporary China.” In Kwang Ok Kim (ed.) Re-Orienting Cuisine: East Asian Foodways in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 263-286. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books.
2015c “Parents-driven Divorce and Individualization among Urban Chinese Youth.” International Social Science Journal, Issues 213/214, pp. 317-330.
2014a “Hershatter’s Analysis of Virtues and the Construction of the Self.” The PRC History Review 1(1): 20-21.
2014b “Small Field-site and Big Issues: Exploring the World through Ethnography.” World Ethnology (in Chinese), no. 1, pp. 55-58 (2014).
2014c “The Moral Implications of Immorality: The Chinese Case for a New Anthropology of Morality,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 42(3): 460-493.
2013 “The Drive for Success and the Ethics of the Striving Individual.” In Charles Stafford (ed.) Ordinary Ethics in China Today, pp. 263-291. London: Bloomsbury.
2012a “Food Safety and Social Risk in Contemporary China.” The Journal of Asian Studies 70(3): 705-729.
2012b “Of the Individual and Individualization: the Striving Individual in China and the Theoretical Implications.” In Michael Heinlein, Cordula Kropp, Judith Neumer, Angelika Poferl and Regina Romhild (eds.) Futures of Modernity: Challenges for Cosmopolitical Thought and Practice, pp. 177-194. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Publishers.
2011a “The Changing Moral Landscape.” In Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei, and Guo Jinhua. Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person, What anthropology and psychiatry tell us about China today, pp. 36-77. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2011 "The Individualization of the Family in Rural China." boundary 2 38.1: 203-209.
2010 "The Chinese Path to Individualization." British Journal of Sociology 61.3: 489-512.
2009 "The Good Samaritan's New Trouble: A Study of the Changing Moral Landscape in Contemporary China." Social Anthropology 17.1: 9-24.
2008 "Introduction: Understanding the Chinese Individual." European Journal of Asian Studies 7.1: 1-9.
2007 "Managing Cultural Conflicts: State Power and Alternative Globalization in China." In Helmut Anheier and Y. R. Isar (eds.), Conflicts and Tensions. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.