Being Modern In China Av Paul Willis

<p>This book analyses modernity and tradition in China today and how they combine in striking ways in the Chinese school. Paul Willis ¿ the leading ethnographer and author of <i>Learning to Labour</i> ¿ shows how China has undergone an internal migration not only of masses of workers but also of a mental and ideological kind to new cultural landscapes of meaning, which include worship of the glorified city, devotion to consumerism, and fixation upon the smartphone and the internet. </p><p>Massive educational expansion has been a precondition for explosive economic growth and technical development, but at the same time the school provides a cultural stage for personal and collective experience. In its closed walls and the inescapability of its ¿scores¿, an astonishing drama plays out between the new and the old, with a tapestry of intricate human meanings woven of small tragedies and triumphs, secret promises and felt betrayals, helping to produce not only exam results but cultural orie