Shaping Socialist Childhood and Youth: Political Socialisation, Generations and Age Identities under Maoism

Session of the research seminar ‘Socio-anthropology of the Life Stages in Contemporary China’.
Enfant à cheval sur un cygne à bascule
An Hong’s first year, 31 septembre 1969 © Beijing Silvermine, Thomas Sauvin Archive‎

Seminar summary

Drawing on the tools of the socio-anthropology of the life course, this research seminar analyses the ways in which life stages have been structured in China, and how contemporary Chinese society now regulates and shapes the experience of age, life courses and intergenerational relationships. The first year of the seminar will focus more specifically on the social construction of life stages and the thresholds that define them. More specifically, it will seek to historicise the categories, representations and changing meanings attributed to childhood, youth, adulthood and old age in the history of contemporary China, paying attention both to the evolution of the terms used to describe these life stages, to the factors (political, economic, institutional and cultural) that shape these experiences, and to the resulting social phenomena. Combining an introduction to key texts in the social sciences on the stages of life with the growing body of literature on these subjects in 20th-century China, this research seminar is aimed at researchers and PhD students as well as Master’s students.

Organisers: Justine Rochot (View e-mail); Marie Bellot (View e-mail)

Suggested reading

● NEUMANN, Matthias. 2012. “‘Youth, It’s Your Turn!’: Generations and the Fate of the Russian Revolution (1917–1932)”. Journal of Social History 46(2): 273–304.
● YANG, Guobin. 2016. “Flowers of the Nation”. In YANG Guobin, The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China. New York: Columbia University Press. 48–68.