Anxious China

"An original and important exploration of the various ways that psychotherapies are being enculturated and popularized in China today. The result, Li Zhang so successfully shows, is a new instrument for self-transformations, institutional rationality, and political authority."--Arthur Kleinman, author of The Soul of Care "Anxious China is a fascinating exploration of the new power of psychological thinking and therapy in China. Rich with comparative insights, the book greatly broadens our cross-cultural understanding of the effects of psychological thinking for concepts of the self and sociality and for the maintenance of political power in postsocialist China."--Emily Martin, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, New York University "Li Zhang always has her finger on the pulse of key transformations in contemporary Chinese culture and society. This insightful and moving ethnography is not a narrative about the emergence of an individualistic self in China. Rather, Zhang offers a nuanced analysis of popular psy fever in what she calls the anxious times of rapid transformations in China, linking an inner revolution of self-care to a reshaped sociality and governance."--Lisa Rofel, coauthor of Fabricating Transnational Capitalism: A Collaborative Ethnography of Italian-Chinese Global Fashion