New Books In East Asian Studies

On this podcast today, I am joined by three scholars: postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Goethe University Frankfurt, Gil Hizi; assistant professor at Sun Yat-sen University, Xinyan Peng; and lecturer and researcher at the University of Ghent, Mieke Matthyssen. All three guests join me to talk about their chapters in the new book, Self-Development Ethics and Politics in China Today: A Keyword Approach (Amsterdam University Press, 2022) Self-Development Ethics and Politics in China Today takes readers on a journey into a central aspect of life in China, so-called "self-development." Twelve contributors have each written wonderfully elaborate chapters drawing on a wide range of material from practices in education, labor, and self-help as they spotlight "keywords" by which individuals make sense of their self-development journeys - including new forms of resistance to social norms. The book consists of twelve chapters and twelve keywords. In this episode, we talk about how three terms relate to self-developmen