The breathless pace of China's economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people's inner landscape. Faced with increasing market-driven competition and profound social changes, more and more middle-class urbanites are turning to Western-style psychological counseling to grapple with their mental distress. This book offers an in-depth ethnographic account of how an unfolding "inner revolution" is reconfiguring selfhood, psyche, family dynamics, sociality, and the mode of governing in post-socialist times. Li Zhang shows that anxiety-broadly construed in both medical and social terms-has become a powerful indicator for the general pulse of contemporary Chinese society. It is in this particular context that Zhang traces how a new psychotherapeutic culture takes root, thrives, and transforms itself across a wide range of personal, social, and political domains.

About the Author
Li Zhang is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of two award-winning books, Strangers in the City and In Search of Paradise.

Reviews
"While grounded in the ethnographic specificities of middle-class Chinese urbanites, Anxious China offers powerful insights to scholars working on similar questions in diverse regions of the world." * Somatosphere *



Book Information
ISBN 9780520344198
Author Li Zhang
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 318g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 15mm