Behind the Gate - Inventing Students in Beijing

Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-231-15238-9
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 562 g

Reihe: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

On May 4, 1919, thousands of students protested the Versailles treaty in Beijing. Seventy years later, another generation demonstrated in Tiananmen Square. Climbing the Monument of the People's Heroes, these protestors stood against a relief of their predecessors, merging with their own mythology while consciously deploying their activism. Through an investigation of twentieth-century Chinese student protest, Fabio Lanza considers the marriage of the cultural and the political, the intellectual and the quotidian, that occurred during the May Fourth movement, along with its rearticulation in subsequent protest. He ultimately explores the political category of the "student" and its making in the twentieth century.

Lanza returns to the May Fourth period (1917-1923) and the rise of student activism in and around Beijing University. He revisits reform in pedagogical and learning routines, changes in daily campus life, the fluid relationship between the city and its residents, and the actions of allegedly cultural student organizations. Through a careful analysis of everyday life and urban space, Lanza radically reconceptualizes the emergence of political subjectivities (categories such as "worker," "activist," and "student") and how they anchor and inform political action. He accounts for the elements that drew students to Tiananmen and the formation of the student as an enduring political category. His research underscores how, during a time of crisis, the lived realities of university and student became unsettled in Beijing, and how political militancy in China arose only when the boundaries of identification were challenged.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lanza, Fabio

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Interessengruppen, Lobbyismus und Protestbewegungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Sozialethnologie: Familie, Gender, Soziale Gruppen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroductionPart I: Lived Space 1. Through the Walls: Everyday Life in the University2. Untrained Bodies and Frugal HabitsPart II: Intellectual Space 3. The Displacement of LearningPart III: Political Space 4. Learning Politics5. Improper PlacesPart IV: Social Space 6. Between Streets and Monuments7. The Pedagogy of the CityEpilogue8. The End of Students?NotesBibliographyIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Fabio Lanza hails from Venice, Italy, and earned his Ph.D. in modern Chinese history at Columbia University. He is assistant professor of history at the University of Arizona, Tucson.